E-magazines, audio books, journals… We get a wide range of assignments for our degree and usually they are individual work. This time it was to write a script and making a short film. In case, if you are confused, we are not studying filmography, it’s an English degree. So we were pretty much clueless when a short film was thrown at us.
Luckily, it was a group work. It was such a relief as four is better than one. Our only comfort zone was making the script but when it comes to acting, editing and filming… well they were not quite our things… Brain storming part was fun because we were bringing in so many funny and interesting ideas for the plot line. And finally we were settled down in the concept around the pressure that one has to undergo due to the patriarchal femininity.
After that only came the depressing part. We had to work in a totally strange field to plan how to make our short film. It is actually 5mins film, but we were no actors and directors and we had so many other submissions to do as well. We watched so many short films to gather some knowledge and ideas and we confirmed a date for filming. And for that one day, I became an actress. I called my mum in that morning and told her, “Mum, I’m going shooting today" 😂
Our setting was a school and my character was to be the school prefect. One of our group members had found a school uniform for me and my friend who was also doing a character of a school student. It feels so good to wear a uniform after four years. We made silly mistakes while filming and acting, but it was fun actually. We had a good laugh after so many stressful weeks.
The most enjoyable part was naming. We were talking about the discrimination but we named the school as “Samanatha Balika Vidyalaya” which means Equality in English. The motto we made for the school was “Wiwidatwayen Perata” (Moving forward with variety) when we depicted the pressure that one has to deal with by not fitting the societal frames. We fancied ourselves thinking that we had a good satire in naming 😅🙊
This became one addition to all the weird assignments we have done so far and expecting many more to our collection in the near future 😅
On a serious note, it is never a characteristic of a wise man to confine another person’s life in their own personal frames and belief systems. Everyone is unique. World becomes such a beautiful place to live because of that uniqueness, not because of uniformity.
Thanks for reading!
Have a nice day!