Week 1- Discovering My Unique Voice

For the past few years, I’ve been fortunate to start the new year with an internship to help further my career. This year, that opportunity is with Charming Stranger Films.

This week marks the first week of my internship with Charming Stranger and I’ve already learned so much. From technical skills to interpersonal skills, I’m learning a lot of new things to implement into my short film and I’m so excited! Extremely terrified, but mainly excited!

We are currently in the beginning stages of our short films. I’m revising the rough draft of my script and look book of the visual elements I want to include in the film. One aid that is helping me through this process is Mira Nair’s MasterClass. She spoke on different topics such as filming on a budget, finding the story and telling the story. But the one that stuck with me the most was “Discovering Your Unique Voice”.

While I was developing the initial concept of my short film, I wanted to make something “cool”, something that was impressive and similar to other work I’ve seen if my peers. But after watching the second chapter of Mira Nair’s MasterClass, I realized that my individuality is what will make my film impressive. So then before I started writing I had to think to myself, well, who am I? What is my unique voice? Unfortunately, I can’t end this post with a profound answer because I’m still trying to figure it out. As I hone my script and go through out this internship, I’m excited to see how I will answer that question in the end.

One way I can help discover my unique voice and who I am as a person today is by revisiting where it all started. For an assignment in chapter 3 of the MasterClass, one of the prompts was to go somewhere we haven't been before or a place we haven’t been to in a while. I decided to go to the library on the other side of town and I filmed a little bit of that journey.