FINAL blog post

I feel very strongly that my final project really reflects who I am as a Mormon artist and shows a glimpse of my goals for future projects as a Mormon artist and as a member of the BYU film program. I feel very passionately about both my explicit and implicit projects for different reasons. My implicit project really comes from my heart. There is a lot of room for interpretation on the part of the audience. There is no specific sin committed that is overtaking the main character’s being. This open ended sin allows the audience to place themselves in the main character’s shoes because we have all been in a place like that before. We have all felt like our sins have gotten out of control and caused us deep despair that brings us to our knees. I really wanted the character to seem relatable and inspirational in the sense that his sins are forgiven him and they are also forsaken. My goal was to make the repentance process seem possible and worth the despair because we can be happy again if we repent and become clean. Personal interpretation is a huge part of my implicit piece which I hoped to intrigue the audience with.

My explicit project is a documentary about children’s view on the repentance process. This was slightly more difficult because the kids did not respond in ways that we were expecting. This is a lesson that we as young filmmakers needed to learn at some point—things do not always work out the way that you expect them to. Sometimes you have to go with the flow, make do, or maybe even change your story based on the material that you are able to capture. However, I feel like we were still able to capture the point of the documentary. I really wanted to show repentance through the eyes of children because of how spiritual and inspiring children are. All of these kids will one day have to repent if they have not already and it is important for them to know the importance of repentance as well. Also, there is a lot that adults can learn from children, even in the gospel and I wanted to exalt the children’s views and opinions because often times they are overlooked by adults even when they have such important things to say. Sometimes we just need to kneel down and listen, which was my goal of our explicit documentary.

Working in a group was extremely helpful and wonderful. I love collaborating on projects because I feel like the possibilities of the projects grow with the more people that are involved. I know that there is a lot that I need to learn that I can learn from working with my classmates so I really enjoyed collaborating on my ideas with my group members. It is always a pleasure to work with other aspiring Mormon artists and to incorporate all of our ideas really takes our projects to the next level.