A Level Portfolio Project. Day 6: The science + smiling

 RICK AND MORTY

    There is a bit of shame in me when I admit that this show has undeniably changed a lot of my humor, altough to be fair it also kind of changed humor in television. Rick and Morty is a beloved sci fi comedy adult animated tv show that airs on Adult Swim. The show follows Rick, the smartest man in the universe, and his grandson Morty, a typical 14 year old middle schooler, the two go on adventures, yada yada yada, you likely know all of this, you likely also know about the show's absurdist style of comedy, and altough these days people think the show is edgy and obssessed with itself, I can't deny it's influence on me. This particular kind of absurdism where characters won't question bizarre things and where horribly messed up things will happen around the characters, things that if they were to happen to someone on any other TV show it would leave them traumatized or at least partially scared are just put in as throw away jokes.

    One of the most iconic gags in the show is on episode 8 season 4, "vat of acid." In this episode Rick makes Morty a device which can save a specific period of time and take it's user back to it like loading a save file in a video game or like in the finale of futurama before HULU made the 2 most forgettable seaons of television since arrested development. Now when Morty gets the device instead of showing what he does with it were shown a montage of him using it. At first Morty does all the typical things youi'd expect a 14 year old boy to do, asking his crush out, stealing a car, trying every free sample at an ice cream place, that kind of thing. Until eventually the montage's loud and exciting music turns nice and calm and we see Morty, the usually timid and awkard lame 14 year old, suddenly gets the confidence to hold the door open for a random girl. The two hit it off and the montage now turns into a cliche, cutesy, love montage, there is no dialogue, we're just shown the two falling in love for each other, until their relationship starts to sour and the two nearly break up, again all of this is still in a montage. Eventually Morty apologizes and tries to sweeten the relationship by getting the two of them a flight to some vacation place. The montage continues until it again is completely turned around as the plane the two are on crashes into the artic. The two survive the crash and have to do what they can to keep surviving, lighitng fires, huddling up, eating vegan leather shoes (which is a great visual gag), and eventually eating other passanger. Morty looks at the device and realizes he can go back to right before the two met and save them from this hell, but he doesn't, he knows that was months ago and he'd lose the woman he loves so he ventures high up a mountain to try and get a signal and call for help. Now the montage shifts again to be somewhat more emotional and heroic as we are shown Morty's trek, nearly dying several times until eventually he reaches the top and just barely calls 911 before fainting. Suddenly, we cut to the hospital, the music becomes cheery and the two have survived. Morty's family throws the two a welcome back party, and while they are all watching the TV Morty's idiot father Jerry reaches for the control remote, accidentally grabbing the device and turning time all the way back to before Morty met this girl to which he tries aimlessly explaining to her what had happened and being pepper sprayed, the music switching back to the one playing at the very start of the montage.

    Now I spent a lot of time explaning that montage because it's genius. This relationship or this girl are never mentioned again in the episode or the show, the only reason it's in there from a story perspective is to give Morty a reason to get tired of the device and return it to Rick, thereby moving the plot along. Plus in the actual show Rick and Morty much more bizarre things happen to Morty than him being trapped in the Artic and his genius, space traveling grandpa not being able to find him after he crashes into the artic would normally be a plot hole, however you don't question it here because of how absurd it is, it's more absurd for the audience that the characters act like people and go on normal people adventures, not like the wacky sci-fi characters they are. This kind of humor which makes reality seem absurd speaks to me in volumes, I love it and WILL be incorperating it to my short.

SMILING FRIENDS

Smiling Friends seems like a good thing to pair Rick and Morty with, both being Adult Swim cartoons with a similar style of comedy that took over audiences for it's style of comedy never seen before in television. Smiling friends also has characters acting completely normal in bizarre scenerios. However while in Rick and Morty the absurdism came in how wacky the characters and the world they were in is the comedy in Smiling Friends comes from how normal the main characters are in comparison to the world they live in and everyone around them. The Smiling Friends work for a company that helps people smile but the office they work at - despite it being a giant yellow smiley face - has a normal, semi bleak-looking break room where our characters wait wasting time for their next job. Characters like Charlie will often just talk the insane wacky characters they try and help smile like a regular human would, he's the straight-man but where the straight-man would be weirded out and confused by the silly events happening around him, Charlie sees everything as normal, they're world being naturally weird..

A Level Portfolio Project. Day 5: The squad + strangelove

CRUELTY SQUAD

 Now if you're feeling the strangest wave of deja vu upon reading the title for the video game "Cruelty Squad" it might just come from my portfolio project from last year where I talked a bit about it. The game takes place in the far future where the evils of big companies and consumerism has turned the world into a shithole, people rummage the streets shooting people and facing no consequences, everyone you interact with is incredibly hostile, and all aesthetics have completely vanished leaving all clothes, streets, art, and symbols looking like a pile of rainbow vomit as consumers will buy anything thats sold with a big and vibrant logo.

    You play as an empty fuck (that being the play on words of his name: MT Foxtrot) who is hired to work for a gigantic company called Cruelty Squad who's purpose is in assastinating figured deemed contriversial. This ranges from killing people who have thrown away money that Cruelty Squad invested into them in cheap "chunkopops" to a assassinating a politician who wants to pass an incredibly extremeist and contreversial legislature dictating that trillionaires be taxed 1%. There's a level that has you be hired by three up-and-coming billionaires to exterminate their recently retired father so he doesn't throw away their inheritence and another level that has a very popular eugenics company's board of shareholders hiring you to kill the company's CEO as he has been missing on work due to burnout.

    What cruelty squad gets right is that it's not afraid to pull any punches. It knows that the best way to deliver it's anti-consumerist it needs to be as grotesque as possible with its imagery, to the point where  some audiences would definietley be turned off from it. It's honestly an idea that has shaped how I think about the art I one day hope to make.

DR. STRANGELOVE OR: HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE BOMB

    You and me? Yeah, we're gonna meet again, not sure where or honestly even when, but for sure when we meet again, it's gonna be bright as the BOMB. Wanna hear a joke? Ok so, the cold war, the Yanks send a nuke on accident to the Ruskies and they can't pull it back, and the Ruskies, they get so scared they send a missile to explode the plane with the nuke, but the missile only scrapes the ship, now eventually the Yanks get the code they need to bring the ship around they try to send it to the pilot, but the communications broke, why? FROM THE MISSILE! Hilarious I'm aware.

    Dr. Strangelove looks at the absurdity of the nuclear arms race and chooses to laugh as there is not much else one could have done, it points at the people in charge of our country and characterises them as childish, moronic, reactionaries, and actual nazi's who were hired by the government operation-paper-clip style. The whole movie has many sexual undertones, starting with an image of a ship docking on top of another before adding its "tube" into it and pumping it with gas, later on the movie ends with the titular Dr. Strangelove getting so excited about his ideal dystopian future that his arm erects into a sieg heil in what is definietley a raunchy innuendo for something I'm probably not aware of. 

    Kubrick combines all of the era's paranoia and cynicism of knowing you weren't in control of your fate and chooses to laugh at the icompetance of those in power. I have similar cynicism for religion and how people are unable to understand those who want to stray off of it so I'm definietley putting a bit of personal angst into my short.

    

A Level Portfolio Project. Day 4: The 'saac + substance

 THE BINDING OF ISAAC

    I grew up watching people play The Binding Of Isaac and now that im older I watch myself play as the previously mentioned Isaac. It's one of my favorite video games ever made, I think I have about 1000 hours on it and I could honestly do 1000 more, hell after I'm done with this I'll likely go and play it. As you can likely gather from the title, TBOI take great inspiration from christianity, being a light retelling of the abraham story, one important as it explores the idea of faith. While the original has Abraham, a worshipper of god being told by said god to sacrifice his son, Isaac, to him, thereby showing his devotions, the game has Isaac living in a small house on a hill with his mother who watches christian broadcasts on the television, until one day god gives her the command to strip away all his clothes, toys, and drawings and to lock him in room, eventually telling her to sacrifice him and show his devotion. Now where the original story has god stepping in at the last second and telling Abraham "hey it was all a prank :P," telling him to sacrifice a lamb instead, the game has isaac finding a trapdoor in his room and espcaping into the basement. where he know needs to fight his way through a giant maze full of monsters, items, and trauma. All of the items and monsters in the game being based off of either Isaac's past trauma, or of religion.

    Now, that's all pretty fucked up, but the comedy element comes in the fact that the game is all meant to take place in a child's mind, Isaac is actually just imagining that he is having an adventure, so you have a lot of very silly material that fills the game. One reoccuring piece of imagery in the game is that of poop, poop is actually a reoccuring piece of imagery in every videogame by the developer, Edmund Mcmillen, who's made a lot of beloved indie classics, classics that do in fact feature a lot of poop. There are items based off of poop, enemies based off of poop, poop bosses, poop obstacles, a whole character in the game is based off of throwing literal shit at his enemies, however once you unlock that enemy you start to realize there is a dark side as to why you see so many references to the brown stuff (if you dont mind me calling it that). See Isaac's mom never went into his room and ended his life, he likely tought it would happen and went to hide in his toy chest, and in there he suffocated to death while comforting himself with stories and adventures, which is what the actual game is. The chracter you unlock is called by the game's community as "Blue Baby," being a reference to one of Mcmillen's old games, the character is just a blue version of Isaac with X's in his eyes and you find him laying inside of a giant chest, the implication is that this is you playing as a blue, suffocated Isaac, and the reason you throw shit at your adversaries is because of the myth that once you die you shit your pants. The reason that the game is because isaac was likely thinking, right before he died, that he was going to shit himself as he was dying. Now that, is a messed-up joke.

    Now that long example I gave was just meant to give you an idea of how the game rolls, it's not scared to pull any punches and that's a big part of what I wanna bring to my story. I love the dark, depressing mood that you feel when you play though the game as if it's aware of how dark it is and it doesn't care about how uncomfortable that makes the audience, it leaves you to just instinctivley laugh, almost as if that's the only reaction you can really have. Of course those themes of religion and in how they can traumatize a child will be heavily applied to my short film, Otto's sister will have past trauma from being a lesbian and being forced to go to conversion camp. I think the way the game shows you Isaac's perspective, thereby hiding the darker truth behind it, makes the story very interesting, it forces you as an audience member to piece the pieces of his life together.

THE SUBSTANCE

I'll try to keep this one a little short.

The Substance came out in 2024 and took the world by storm, being nominated for multiple oscars, including best picture and director. Just like Isaac, it's a pretty clear metaphor for a kind of worship, not the religious kind however, but the material one. 

    The Substance picks apart at the material, patriarchal, and most times disgusting ways in which women are given and taken influence in hollywood. Demi Moore's character being a washed up celebrity who's old age has taken away her sex factor in the eyes of the industry, that is until she starts taking a (are you ready for it?) SUBSTANCE, that turns her into a young, beautiful Margret Qualley, the procedure of taking the (oh i'm gonna do it again!!!) serum eventually having some unexpected, monkey-paw effects.

    The film's dark satire is shown in the ridiculous way it goes about depicting the rich and powerful men of the industry, beggining the film by having these tight close-ups of the TV executive eating shrimp in a truly disgusting mannor, or using a urinal while making a truly inspiring face. 

    The gross-out aspects are quite funny for pretty childish reasons but they serve to depict that these men are just as gross on the outside ad they are in inside. 

    For my short I intend to have such similar chilidish yet dark humor that The Substance, and The Binding Of Isaac have.

A level portfolio project. Day 3: The stuff

     Off the bat (like one out of hell (which is quite fitting for our subject matter)) we knew what the genre was gonna be, hell I knew what the genre was gonna be before I even got in a group, my favorite genre for anything, dark or black comedy. Dark comedies are great, they make you feel like the world around you has lost it's mind while still having room to take itself seriously.

    While researching dark comedy I found this great article called What Is Dark Comedy And How To Master It, Now I have a few funny bones shaking around inside of me so I knew a lot about this, but it covers the main characteristics that make dark comedy comedic. The main thing to focus on is the social commentary aspect, something that we want to focus on heavily on our short. 

    To cut the short short, the plot will focus on a character who is power hungry giving up their humanity for control of the world through satanism, it's a pretty obvious metaphor, Otto, the main charcter, uses the power of religion to fufill her own personal desires while being manipulated by someone who wants something out of her, it's a critique of religion and of the people who see it as a means to grow their status. We'll make jokes throughout the whole thing that play into how ridiculous the situation that Otto - someone dissatisfied with her lack of power through christianity and turns to satan - is in. One joke I had in mind was having Otto putting up these ridiculous flyers with incredibly satanic imagery with text surrounding it talking about salvation of the soul and what-not.

    Not too sure what image to attach to this so I'll just put a drawing of a pentagram I made, that seems quite fitting.

 before you judge me and say that that's not what a star looks like, just know I have a serious medical condition that makes me uncapable of drawing stars. (keep this little joke of mine in mind for later)

A level portfolio project. Day 2: The Schedule

    With how often my projects are hurt by a lack of planning I'm glad that we are being required to make a schedule like this for this one. I'm glas my team and I have an idea of what the next few weeks are going to look like surrounding this project, I'm sure this schedule will make it all very easy to plan out and we'll be able to stay calm knowing whether we are on schedule or not. Here below is a schedule that was mostly written by my wonderful teammate Emi:

    

    This part is pretty self explenatory so I'll cut it quickly. We have a pretty optimistic look for the future of this project!

A level portfolio project. Day 1: The Short

 

    I've finally reached the final project in my media studies career and I know just what I want to do to finish it off. Since the start of the year I have been waiting for this moment patiently, I am going to make a short film package. My teammates this go around will be people who I've never worked with before, but we're excited to see how our mind synergize together, my teammates Emi and Andrew are both equally excited to work in the same group as I am. We knew going in that we wanted to make this something weird with a dark comedic underline, I have similar inspirations for this project that I had for my portfolio project last year so I'll likely be looking back at my last blogs to see what approach and ideas I had when I was writing that project. We know this: it's gonna be funny, it's gonna be dark (both visually and figuratively), and it's gonna star Emi wearing a fez I found in a thrift store about a month ago, simply because we think it'd be intersting.

    We do have a few ideas going around. The first idea I had for the story was about the devil hiring someone as a hitman and paying them in drugs that they would then take and use as a weapon, one idea I had would be Emi smoking something and the smoke that comes out of her mouth would become demons who would grab her target. The whole thing would have had an anti drug message as Emi's character Otto would slowly ruin her life the more she worked. Eventually I expanded this idea into a potential retelling of the Ivan the Terrible tragedy where he struck his son with a cane, blinded by his anger, and accidentally killed him, a recreation of that iconic painting of Ivan holding his son would likely have been this version of the short's ending. My plan was to have Otto have a girlfriend she loved and after doing a lot of drugs she is sent on her final mission by the devil to kill said girlfriend, to which she panics and tries to warn her, however the very high Otto isn't able to communicate what is happening in a way that makes sense and winds up scaring off her girlfriend. The short would end with Otto deciding to kill the devil and waiting as he knock on her door to which she shoots him through it, but as the door opens the corpse of her lover falls through and lands on her arms as she cries and holds her.

    My team wasn't 100% on board with everything I had written about, saying it's too dark and needs to focus less on tragedy and more on comedy. I definetley understand their concerns but I have such high ambitions for this short that I know we will have to find a way to settle in the middle ground, which I already know will be hard.

Critical Reflection

 

For my documentary project, my team and I tackled the topic of walkable cities, talking about the benefits they bring and comparing them to unwalkable suburbia, more specifically we wanted to comment on the South Florida cities of Miami and Weston.

The main inspiration for this documentary and the one thing I did the most research on was Michael Moore’s many documentaries, but especially Roger & Me (1989) and Bowling For Columbine (2002). I’m a big fan of his documentary style, his dark edge always engages me thoroughly and I think it’s very effective for telling this type of documentary that is focused on larger issues in a society rather than some of the documentaries we viewed in class like Exit Through The Gift Shop and American Promise which had a focus on an individual level. We knew how relevant and at times polarizing the topic walkable cities was during the time we were making the documentary (the incredibly widely talked about NYC election that had just concluded before we began working on this documentary bringing this topic in particular to the frontlines) so we knew that there wasn’t a way of handling this topic without being a bit political, that's why recreating the style of a Michael Moore feature was so important to me in the making of this, from the narration that can be a bit drab and quiet, to the sarcastic dialogue that is far more biased than you might assume from the tone of the speaker.

One thing I believe we really failed at was at connecting with our audience with these issues we wanted to talk about. Yes we certainly commented on a lot that makes suburbia such a headache but we never really got to the root cause of its many many issues, plus we never really discussed the ways in which suburbia tries to make up for their lack of any real walkability. We originally wanted to comment on Weston’s Town Center which is an incredibly compact area that promotes walkability and community, filled with shops and services which has lead it to be incredibly popular in Weston, and we did actually film a lot of footage while we were there, there was even an event happening where a lot of people set up shops and made a little market area to sell their goods. The problem we ran into was that Alejandro, who was responsible for the script, wound up cutting out a big portion that delved into this aspect of the community. Were we to have added this it would have made the documentary far less biased and probably more informative. That's without even mentioning how we didn’t mention any downsides to living in a city, even if it’s walkable. I understand that documentaries are meant to show bias from the creatives behind it but I think we weren’t able to deliver on our themes to our audience very well and ended up just preaching over teaching.

Another overall issue we had is that the documentary lacked a sense of branding. While most of our peers were able to find a style that suited their documentary and made it stand out, ours felt kind of standard and average, which is a shame on account of how heavily Michael Moore inspired me as I said since his documentaries are filled to the brim with personality, originality, and life. We did have some elements to make some brand identity, for one I always knew I wanted our B-roll to look kind of empty and deserted, especially when filming the suburbs, both because I just like the way it looks, making the footage look cold and distant, reflecting that same aspect of the suburbs and how lonely they can be. This also worked because when we got to the city it was impossible to film without showing multiple buildings and people in a shot, adding to the whole community and walkability aspect of the video.

The conversation surrounding walkability in cities is pretty complex and there is a lot that our documentary didn’t really delve into. We never really went into the aspect of public vehicles and how they do a lot in helping cities be more accessible, even if they aren’t necessarily walkable, we got footage in a monorail in Miami but again that segment was cut out of our script, I ended up editing some of that footage into the final video but all that is shown is more implied than anything. We also didn’t really delve that deeply into the community aspect of the city, we got a lot of footage while getting our B-roll but it wound up going mostly unused. There was certainly a communication error between us, we weren’t able to get a lot of our ideas across and by the time we had the full script finished it was too late to make any changes and I just had to get to editing and finish it.

Overall there were a lot of things that I enjoyed about our documentary, in better hand some of that B-roll and that entire topic could have turned into a better documentary but I’m glad we got to delve into the topic, both because it is incredibly interesting to all of us but also because of how important it is to the world we’re currently living on. I’m sure a topic like this will still be considered relevant in the years to come and documentaries like mine will be seen more and more.

Documentary #4

 #4

    I was the one responsible for all of the editing behind the documentary, I was running out of time and had to edit the entire thing in less than a day which was stressful and forced me to cut a lot of corners, especially due to a lack of certain aspects that would have been necessary for this documentary to be good. For one, I asked Nina if she could get music for the video which she never got to, I later found out she had an emergency and couldn't get to it so I just used my usual pick for music when I don't know what to use, Claire De Lune by Claude Debussy, the song wasn't a great fit but it was good enough for my melancholy dialogue and blue and liminal looking footage.

    Another big problem I ran into was that Alejandro was still working on the script while I was editing so the whole video was essentially a train going at full speed while train tracks were being placed in front of it. It was a messy, problematic, and unfruitful production, and after the headache it was to get this video together I doubt that next time I'll do as I did here, I'll probably work with a different group and focus more on planning.

Documentary #3

#3

     Production for this project was all around pretty awkward. When we got to Miami to finally film we were pretty unprepared, all through out the car ride I got multiple shots of the street as we were driving, most of which wound up finding their way into the final film. When we actually got to Miami we mostly walked around and filmed anything visually interesting, the hardest part to deal with was that by then we didn't have a finished script and had to guess what we wanted to film. We also didn't have anyone to interview in Miami so by the end of the few hours we were up there the whole trip felt pretty aimless.

    The second trip to Weston wasn't helped either. In this second trip Alejandro and Nina could never fit the filming in their schedule at the same time so me and Nina wound up having to do it alone which didn't help our finished product as Alejandro wound up writing the script and cutting out any inclusion of Town Center and the time we spent there. Me and Nina also wanted to get our interviews there, we had a few questions planned but we couldn't get anyone there to agree to an interview, we went around to about 5 or so shops before we bit the bullet and decided to interview Nina as a last resort, this is really our fault for not having a real alternative for the city planners even though it was pretty reasonable to assume we would get at least 1 interview from any of the vendors. I guess not even Town Center can make that much community happen in the suburbs after all.

    The last interview we filmed for the interview was filmed by me over a face time call with my sister's room mate Anha. Anha was a pretty good get for the interview as she had experience living in both a city and a suburb that had a wider sense of community around it as she grew up in Pensacola for many years. Unfortunately I didn't send Alejandro this interview so we wound up not having any real spot to talk more about Pensacola and had to go mainly with Nina's experience growing up in a suburb.

Documentary #2

 #2

    The first thing we had planned for the documentary was getting an interview with South Florida city planners, specifically for Miami and Weston. Nina was the one in charge with emailing them and seeing if we can get a good interview but we sadly never heard back from them so we had to switch to an alternative.

    We knew we wanted to film in Miami first but we didn't really plan out too well what we were going to film which did end up being very inconvenient at the end of the shoot, same thing applies to when we filmed in Weston Town Center, although when the time did come to shoot we were lucky that Town Center was full of merchants selling goods, that really helped the whole community aspect of the whole thing.

    Our original outline was pretty good, we wound up focusing more on the suburbs than we expected but if anything that made it better to me.

    For our script, Alejandro was responsible for it, all I added was the opening paragraph and a little blurb at the end, ending the whole thing off with the title "A Walk In The Park"

Script: 

• (V.O.)  

INTRO: 

South Florida, the deepest part of the American Peninsula. From the humid swamps to the lively beaches, to the empty uninhabitable fields, to the Orlando mouse parks, to the lively city, and the quiet suburbs, South Florida is one of the most diverse and popular parts of the country. Many out-of-state tourists will flock to beloved beaches in Miami and experience the state’s large melting pot community. 

However, this is not the reality for many of us living in Florida. Some of us live in tightly compacted suburbs locked behind a gate, such as the master-planned Weston. Founded in 1996, Weston is any suburbanite dream home; it’s even filled to the brim with almost identical housing, so you can feel at home wherever you are! 

Now a big issue with the suburbus is the very sidewalk you walk on. In the suburbs anywhere from anywhere is too far away to walk, if you don’t have a car then you won’t get far. This issue is nonexistent in most cities where the infestructure focuses on keeping all places you might need to go to close together while the suburbs have planning more focused on keeeping you safe. 

Suburbs: 

But what does this kind of planning really breed? 

If the goal of the city is to bring people together, the goal of the modern suburb seems to be to keep them apart. Look around. We are surrounded by high walls, meticulously manicured hedges, and gates that separate us from the outside world, and from each other. Weston and countless suburbs like it are designed to be driven through, not walked. The streets are wide, the sidewalks are often empty, and the places you need to go, like the grocery store or a friend’s house, are just too far away. This is not a failure of will, it’s a failure of infrastructure. 

(B-ROLL: Slow, steady shots of wide, empty suburban streets) 

In this landscape, socialization isn't an accident; it has to be a planned event. You don't bump into your neighbor while grabbing coffee; you schedule a meeting at the community pool. The only truly shared space is the road, and that’s a place reserved for single-occupancy vehicles. Walkability isn't just about fitness; it's the invisible framework that enables community. 

City: 

The contrast is clear. Just a short drive away, the city itself functions as one massive, accidental social club. 

Look at places like Brickell City Centre in Miami. 

(B-ROLL: Fast-paced shots of crowded sidewalks in Brickell. Show the MetroRail, people eating outside at restaurants, and the "iconic photo angle" footage of tall buildings.) 

Here, density is an advantage. People live stacked on top of each other, sharing walls in apartments and condos. While this can lead to its own issues like overcrowding, noise, and traffic, it ensures one crucial thing: constant, unavoidable interaction. People HAVE to mingle. The proximity of essential commodities, from the bodega to the entertainment venue, means that hundreds of people are compressed into the same small geographic area every single day.  

The community is built right into the pavement. 

Toss to interview: (City) 

For people who grew up in this environment, this kind of spontaneous community is simply the norm. 

(A smooth transition into an interview clip, maybe with some dramatic classical music to kind of interrupt the serious nerd talk with something unexpected) 

We spoke with (NAME OF INTERVIEWEE 1), who grew up in a city environment where everything was just a walk away. 

(INTERVIEW CLIP 1: Start the interview. The interviewee talks about growing up in a city where facilities were walking distance.) 

Toss to interview 2: (Suburbs) 

So, what is the cost of the single-family home, the two-car garage, and the master-planned isolation? It’s not just inconvenience; it’s a fundamental difference in how we build a life. 

In the suburbs, the car is king. You cannot participate in the community, even the “perfectly” planned Weston, without it. 

(B-ROLL) 

The vast parking lots and multi-lane roads are the veins and arteries of the suburbs, connecting houses to the few commercial centers. They also act as insurmountable social dividers, physically separating us from our neighbors and forcing us to experience the world through a windshield. The city, on the other hand, prioritizes public and active transportation—the bus, the train, the bike, and your own two feet, all of which put you in direct, unfiltered contact with the public. 

To understand how drastically this changes the experience of growing up, we spoke to (NAME OF INTERVIEWEE 2), whose childhood required a car just to buy a snack. 

(INTERVIEW CLIP 2: Start the interview. The interviewee talks about growing up where facilities were NOT walking distance.) 

Conclusion: 

The difference isn't about better or worse people; it’s about better or worse city design. 

While the suburbs offer the undeniable advantage of personal space and less density, they trade this for social distance and required planning. The city, for all its chaos and crowding, forces people together, creating the kind of tightly knit community that relies on constant, unplanned collisions. 

It's difficult to create a truly integrated, diverse community when the infrastructure itself is designed to lock people in and keep the world out. The people living behind the gates of Weston are often friendly, but they are not a community in the way the city is. Their proximity is chosen, their interactions scheduled, and their connections require an engine and four wheels. 

(B-ROLL: maybe a slow, meditative shot contrasting an empty suburban street with a bustling, diverse city square.) 

The suburban dream promised peace and quiet. For many, it delivered on the quiet, perhaps too quiet. Some may still see the safety, beauty, and education of the suburbs as enough of a reason to claim them as their home, and if you do then I’d reccomend maybe going outside for a bit, experience the beauty of life, walk down the sidewalk not that you have an option. Wouldnt it be nice to be able to get to do it every day for a short period of time to get basically anywhere? It’d easy, as easy as a WALK IN THE PARK 

(FADE TO BLACK.)