So once upon a time in my video class I got the chance to work on amazing project.  That amazing project is a future feature length documentary called Girl. The title may seem general and straight forward, but thats because the movie is the same way. It follows at risk girls through a summer camp in the Kansas City/ St. Joe areas that teaches them all about film production. All the steps. Every. Single. One. From preproduction (storyboarding, location scouting, casting) into production and through post production. They focus on storytelling, editing and shot composition. My part in all of this awesomeness was to log all of the footage into a spread sheet so that the Director, Producer, and Editor could easily find the clip they wanted and be able to read what specifically happens in the duration of that clip.

      When our group got the footage it was all neatly tucked away in a 4tb hard drive and the clips separated by the days they were filmed. In total there were 15 days of footage and the amount of clips varied, so in one day there could be 9 clips and in others there could be more than 25. This made the logging process very long and tedious. We started working on this project it was just after our winter break, so around January 3rd, and couldnt have been more excited. Here we are just 4 regular high school film students WORKING ON A HOLLYWOOD MOVIE and getting to talk to the Director; asking her questions about the film itself and about her career as a director, which is very cool because out in Kansas you really dont get to meet or even talk to actual Hollywood/ L.A. style anybody, and as we talked to the director we found out that she had contacted our school district, wondering if there were any girls here that we thought would qualify as "at risk"; and living in Olathe, Kansas we obviously said no because compared to others most people out here have a pretty good life. All the girls in the film had some sort of back story, whether it was abusive parents or drugs there was always something. If you put 2 and 2 together you can probably figure out really quickly that if you put alot of teenage girls together in a classroom for a long period of time, there is bound to be a little bit of drama. Which we got to see when logging all of the footage, and it was interesting to listen to these girls tell their side of the story in an interview and then the next clip be the other girls side of the story and compare them side by side. The team and I definitely got emotionally attached to these girls stories for sure, because after hearing all of their backstories you really cant help but feel bad for them and want to give them a hug. But there were times when our arguably favorite girl started some stuff and the team was just like "Girl? What was that? Come on, get with it". Even though all the footage was captured like 8 years ago the universality of these girls stories transcend time and are something that everyone can relate to in one way or another.
            
             I personally can connect to one girl in particular because to the way her parents act and the way they are treated at home. I dont think I have it as bad as that girl in any sense of the word but there are instances that, in my life, are completely similar to what that girl has been going through; and this is coming from a 17- year old guy, so if you say you cant connect to their stories at all I challenge you to think back to your teenage years or even look closer at your present and then say that you did not have struggles then or now.

            The film is still in its early editing phases now and will hopefully premier in the next few years but, STORY TIME, one day when the team was talking to the director she kept asking us questions, more and more after the last was answered. After we had answered all of her questions she announced to us that she wanted to fly out to Olathe to personally INTERVIEW US FOR THE MOVIE!!!! Like I will be in this movie and be put in the credits as an assistant editor! Anyway so the film is called Girl, premiers in a year or two? And has great stories and sub-plots.

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