by Ella Picketts
When I was told I would be watching a film for school, I was expecting a documentary of sorts, something scientific and straightforward. I was not expecting a breathtaking display of emotions that left me speechless. The film my class and I saw was titled Over/Under, going from the perspectives of a girl named Stella to her friend named Violet. This film opened my eyes about filmmaking, how I look at artistic expression as a whole, and was an overall work of art that touched me on a deep level.
Throughout my life, art in the form of sketching and painting has always been a way to express myself and my emotions, but as I left the theater, I was blown away at how expressive this film was. The writers, directors, and cinematographers captured so much life and vibrance into Over/Under that I was left with tears in my eyes. The sadness and pain of the two girl’s journey was almost tangible as well as the sheer joy and love woven into it. Seeing how the journey was communicated through the scene choice, soundtrack, stellar writing, and an astronomical acting performance, made me think of how I could incorporate that into my art. Because of this film, one that will be the standard for movies in the future, I was inspired to consider using music, videos, and photography to create art moving forward. Another piece of the film that greatly impacted me was Stella’s, one of the main characters, relationship with her mother. In the film, her mother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer in a scene that had the wind knocked out of me. For context, my own mother has been diagnosed with a brain and nerve disease called Multiple Sclerosis or MS in the past month. This disease affects her ability to do basic things, going as far as to impair her ability to walk or talk on bad days, symptoms that were reflected in Stella’s mother. This knowledge has of course been hard on my whole family but the raw pain and emotion that was displayed in Stella’s character was something that I immediately connected to. The fear that goes along with news like that was shown so painfully beautifully that it went as far as to bring me to tears in the theater. My friend, who was sitting next to me in the theater, was also crying but for different reasons. While I connected to Stella’s character, she connected to Violet’s and we were able to bond and talk about our different but equally heartbreaking experiences. Over/Under was a tragic and loving and honest film that has inspired me not to use cinematography as a hobby but to express and react to new things in my life through making short films.
In conclusion, my experience with the short film Over/Under has inspired me to become more in depth with the filmmaking industry and my career ambitions. The fact that it touched my classmates and I so deeply through such little time showed me how much care and passion can be immersed into a film that piqued my interest. In the future, I aspire to create an environment and experience that transports my viewers into a story that I create. I want feelings, passion, and emotion to be fiercely incorporated into my future films to even fractionally resemble the breathtaking feature that is the layered and loving Over/Under film.