When you’re pushing to get a project done, sometimes it can be easy to lose sight of why you’re making the project in the first place. This was definitely the case with my class at West Marredpally as we worked to complete our video on alcohol. In my rush to move through the process of choosing a topic and writing a script, we ended up with a story that felt a little disconnected from the students’ actual experiences with alcohol in their communities. So, instead of moving on to the next steps of pre-production, we took a day to just step back and discuss the message we wanted our video to send. We talked through reasons why people choose to drink, researched the long-term and short-term effects of alcohol abuse, shared personal experiences of peer pressure, and in the end rewrote the script to be something the students would want to show their friends to encourage them to make smart choices about alcohol. From there, we plunged back into pre-production with renewed excitement. The girls put their all into writing a shotlist, rehearsing the dialogue, and decorating the set. As an added bonus, we filmed the birthday party scene on the date of my actual birthday. The students made me wear a sari (which they had to retie when I arrived at school) and once we finished filming, they turned the set into a party for me. This was definitely one of my most memorable birthdays, and that’s due a lot to it capping off a project that meant so much to the students. It wasn’t a celebration for me as much as it was congratulating ourselves for our hard work.

Here I am cutting the prop cake (not super tasty after three days of sitting on set).