Academics

Welcome back to my second, and final, year of Odyssey!

I want to begin my first blog of the year talking about my amazing summer! This summer I was able to attend the National Student Leadership’s Film Production & Scriptwriting summer program held at UCLA. The program was 9 days and included guest speakers, field trips, and lots of filmmaking. There were about 60 students, all divided into a group of 12, each assigned a team advisor (TA). In our groups we made films, worked on our leadership skills, and became friends. All of our TAs were college students in film school, there to help us learn about film and college. Our field trips included visiting the Santa Monica Pier where we watched the Chinese film, In the Mood for Love; The Trailer Park Group which is a company whose job is to make trailers for film and tv including: Wicked, Mad Max: Furiosa, Wednesday, Oppenheimer, and many more; Warner Brothers where we got a tour of the lot; and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures while they were having their John Water exhibition.

Our guest speakers included: a set decorator, costume designer, writer, photographer, and my personal favorite, Aaron Becker. Aaron Becker is the owner of Filmograph, a company that makes title sequences. The two he walked us through were for Wednesday season 1, and Aquaman. He talked to us about his previous boss Kyle Cooper who made the title sequence for the movie Se7en which always reminded me of the title sequences in American Horror Story. My TA Nic asked him if Kyle Cooper also did American Horror Story, AND HE DID!!! My dream is to work with Ryan Murphy and I am now one step closer to that goal than I was at the beginning of summer.

At NSLC I made two films. A 48 second film that we were given a genre and prompt for, and our final five minute film. Everyone’s 48 second film was fun and funny, and a great way to start the program. For our five minute film our TA split us in half so we worked in a group of six. Pre-production for our film was easy because we all agreed. We all wanted to make a psychological horror/thriller. Everyone was happy with the role they were assigned in making our film happen. Me and (my now best friend) Sidney were co-directors! There was an award show on the last night where every film won a different category. Our film won “NSLC Overall Best Short!” It was truly such an amazing experience and I’m so grateful to have been given this opportunity and to have a family that helped me make it happen. I will never be able to thank them enough.

I am definitely a little behind where I want to be in my Odyssey film, but I have a storyline planned out and will be working on my script as much as possible to have it done by a reasonable deadline.

I’m so excited for this second, and final year in Odyssey!

October has been a very cult-filled month!

This month I discovered Steven Hassan, a former recruiter for the Unification Church who is now a cult psychologist and founder of the Freedom of Mind Resource Center. In 1988, Hassan published, Combating Cult Mind Control, which shares his experience being in a cult as well as others’. He goes into explicit detail describing the workings of cults, how they recruit, and how people get out. This book is my holy grail and I would, no question, join a Steven Hassan cult.

My research has deepened my understanding of cults and fueled my curiosity to learn even more about them. Hassan writes something along the lines of, “If you had told me in high school that I would become a cult expert, I wouldn’t have believed you.” That’s where we differ, I would love to become an expert on cults.

I'm grateful to be taking psychology this year, as Hassan covers many psychological concepts that I can discuss with my psych teacher. He brings up the Stanford Prison Experiment, the Milgram Experiment, the hot seat, and more. I have a very hard time reading so I am listening to the audiobook of Combating Cult Mind Control and I am currently halfway done. Through listening, I have learned about cognitive dissonance which is still a concept I am having trouble completely understanding. I believe that I have a large basic knowledge of cults, but I want to get to the deeper level. I wanted to understand the why behind the why.

While I continue writing my script and working on my research, I have also been working on getting my interviews for this semester. I have an interview scheduled for next week with a cult psychologist and I am incredibly excited. My dream interviewee would be Steven Hassan but his people wrote me back explaining that he was too busy but they wished me luck on my project. After learning more about him and listening to his book I plan to reach out again.

Next month I plan to get my interviews, work on my script, and finish my college applications!

Wish me luck!

I got an interview! This month I was able to interview William Goldberg, a cult psychologist. He and his wife work with ex-cult members and have been for the last 40 years. They were mentioned in Deadly Cults: The Crimes of True Believers. Although we had to reschedule, I was able to complete my interview. We discussed what got him interested in cults, how cults recruit, modern day cults, and lots more. He is incredibly knowledgeable and I am very grateful that he was willing to speak to me, a cult-obsessed high school student. We finished the interview with him suggesting The Wave, a German film from 2008 about a secret cult. After explaining the concepts of my film to him, he thought that The Wave could help inspire me.

This month I was also able to finish Combating Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan. I am in love with this book. I was lucky enough to be able to use it not only for Odyssey, but also as my self-selected reading in my English class. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, Steven Hassan is a genius. He seems to know anything and everything about cults. At this point my blogs are just a fan page for him.

As for my project itself, I am not where I would like to be. I had hoped to have my script finished by now and to have started casting and creating shot lists. I have been struggling with writer’s block big time. I want so badly for my film to be perfect that I’m scared to write. I feel like there are very high expectations for my film and not only do I want to meet these expectations, I want to surpass them. I follow @outstanding.screenplays on Instagram where they post quotes from big people in film. My favorites include:

“All good ideas start out as bad ideas, that’s why it takes so long.”

-Steven Spielberg

“As a screenwriter, you need enormous amounts of time alone. Writing is ninety percent procrastination.”
-Phoebe Waller-Bridge

I just need to write and let it be bad so I can edit it to be good. I need to get out of my own way.

This winter break I am going to write, write, write, and write until I finish my script. I will come back in January with a finished script, ready to move on to the next step!

I started this year excited to work on my project after spending the summer at UCLA making films with people who cared as much as I did. At the end of 11th grade I felt unhappy with my film class. I felt like I was putting in much more effort than my peers and I didn’t want to work in a field where I would be the only one putting in effort. Attending NSLC showed me that there are lots of upcoming people in the film world who also love working endless hours to make amazing films. NSLC was the greatest experience of my life and I am so incredibly grateful that I was able to attend. When picking my community observation for this semester I struggled deciding because of how many amazing things I participated in.

I was excited to go into my film class with everything new I had learned this summer. I was especially excited to edit as I had edited A LOT this summer. While I was not able to enroll in film this year due to conflicting classes, I am still taking a film editing class where I edited a film called Anesthesia. If I do say so myself, it is the best editing I have ever done. The cuts could be cleaner, but I’m proud of my sound design. We had the video clips and some audio provided for us, but the majority of the audio I’ve had to find and sync myself.

This third semester in Odyssey has been my hardest. Due to not finishing my script this summer, I’ve had to push back my schedule multiple times. While I wasn’t as productive with my script as I would have liked to be, I had to figure out what was stopping me from writing so I could push past it. I realized that I felt like I couldn’t write about cult recruitment without understanding how it worked. So I researched. A lot.

This semester, I read sections from Deadly Cults: The Crimes of True Believers by Robert L. Snow, the head of the Homicide Branch at the Indianapolis Police Department, as well as Cults In Our Midst by Margareth Singer Thaler and Janja Lalich, both cult psychologists. I also read all of Combating Cult Mind Control by Steven Hassan, a former high-ranking cult member in the Unification Church, current cult psychologist.

I have struggleddddd with writer’s block. I want so badly for my script to be perfect that I keep putting it off. Occasionally I’ll have an idea and write it down or immediately add it, but usually my mind goes blank. I want to be able to introduce small, “nothing,” details in the beginning that all make sense at the end and leave the audience thinking, “What did I just watch?”

My mom was watching Black Swan for the first time the other night and it made me so excited to see her reaction. Black Swan is one of my all time favorite films. You never know what is real and what isn’t the entire time. I love it. Darren Aronofsky is one of my favorite directors and I want my films to feel like his. I want it to mess with the audience and leave them sitting there at the end rethinking the entire film. I want people to notice something new every time they watch it. I want it to be perfect.

When my mom had finished Black Swan she brought to my attention how Nina, the main character, was willing to do anything to be perfect (spoiler alert!) including killing herself to get there. My first thought was, “well, at least she was perfect?” I couldn’t believe that I thought Nina pushing herself to the point of death was ok because she was perfect. I need to do some self-reflection over break.

Perfection can either lead you to greatness or to complete and utter failure. I need to get over the fact that the first draft of my script is not going to be perfect. Maybe not even the second draft. I need to just write and let whatever happens happen. Maybe subconsciously I’ll include things I’ll notice as I rewrite. I just need to sit and let whatever happens happen. I read somewhere that a screenwriter lets the story unfold itself and that they would figure out what was going to happen as they were writing rather than if they would just plan it. I used to think that would never work for me so I wouldn’t even try it. Maybe I need to try it?

I didn’t write absolutely nothing this semester though. With the help of Chat GPT and Ms. Jaramillo, I was able to name all of my characters as well as my cult “support group.” All of my characters’ names are either anagrams for something that relates to them as a character, or are similar to the name of a cult or cult leader. As for my cult, I am calling it CYNX (Creating Youth for Next-level eXcellence). I took inspiration from the cult NXIVM, pronounced nek-see-uhm. NXIVM was also a “support group” and I loved the idea of my group’s name being an acronym.

Last year I waited until the very last minute to finish my annotated bibliography and literature review. While I still could have finished sooner than I did, I was able to turn everything in on time. While I was writing my literature review and had a revelation: “I just wrote a literature review about cults. I am a cult expert.” I am so interested in cults that I thought my friends and family thought I was a bit-much, but they send me stuff about cults all the time. My friend even got me a pin for Christmas that’s a picture of the kool-aid guy and says, “Let’s start a cult!” She knows me so well, I love it!

I have a new goal. I am going to finish my script during winter break. There’s no “if I don’t…,” because I have to, and I will. I have a script started, I just need to finish it. This has been an ongoing problem for me. I always have trouble starting things. Whether it’s homework or even taking a shower, I don’t want to do it. Once I start doing homework, I am on the homework grind and nothing can stop me until I finish. Once I get in the shower, I don’t want to get out. I need to sit in a quiet place and write, write, and write some more until I have a story with a beginning, middle, and end. It doesn’t have to be good, that’s what the editing is for. But that’s the idea I need to get over. Finishing this script won’t just be beneficial for my Odyssey project, but also for myself.

So that’s my plan for break. I don’t plan to be finished with research though. During break I want to read Festinger’s, When Prophecy Fails about a UFO cult as well as watching The Wave, which was recommended to me by Mr. Goldberg, and The Stanford Prison Experiment about authoritarianism and how Zimbarod’s experiment ultimately failed but also succeeded in proving his hypothesis. I also want to find an exciting community observation for next semester and I already have a few things in mind. I am currently in contact with parents at Prep who work in film so hopefully something comes from that! I proposed visiting our local Church of Scientology as my community observation this semester. Jaramillo wasn’t amused. Maybe I’ll go over break? Lol I’m jk. Am I? Find out next year!

Happy holidays!

It’s my final semester of Odyssey! Crazy.

January was a crazy busy month and while it felt slow, I can’t believe it’s over. Not only was I able to get an interview, but I finished my script!!! I am still making edits, but I have a script finished and am beginning to cast!

This month I had an interview with Jennifer McDaniel and Gabe Pfieffer. They are a couple who work in film in New Mexico as a makeup artist and camera operator. We spoke about the rising of the film industry in New Mexico, where they started, and how to get involved. They were both incredibly kind and offered to stay in contact if there’s anything I ever need. It felt more like a conversation rather than an interview which I loved because it was so much more comfortable and flowed rather than was the basic “question and answer.”

My script is done!!! I know that I will be continuing to change my script up until the final edit of the film, that’s just how it goes, but I have a script! I am currently in the process of revising some of the concepts I’m using as well as beginning my casting process. Last week I posted a casting call and emailed all of upper school. I am holding auditions the first two weeks of February, followed by a readthrough. I hope to begin filming at the end of February but am aware that there are conflicts with our spring musical so I may end up beginning filming soon after.

You know when you close opposite eyes, objects in front of you seem to shift? That’s called parallax and it’s your mind’s way of knowing how far an object is. The more it moves, the closer it is. There is an experiment where you hold a rolled up piece of paper to one eye, keeping both eyes open. This causes an illusion where you see a hole in your hand. I am including this in my script as a metaphor. “Metaphor for what,” you ask? I guess you’ll have to wait and see.

I’m including A LOT of metaphors in my film and I’m at a point where I’m wondering if it’s too many. In my experience if you feel like you have too much of something in something art-related, you either tone it down, or add even more. In this case I am adding a million more, so hopefully it works. But like I said earlier, if things change, they change. And believe me, I will be changing things.

I’m excited to cast this month. Most of the casting advice I’ve been getting is to not discard someone because they don’t fit the image in your head. While I do think this is great advice, it isn’t very applicable to me because I have no images in my head. I’m not quite sure how to explain it, but the images I have are of their eyes, hands, posture, small things like that. I don’t know what to expect and I love the suspense. I can’t wait to find my cast!

This summer I had an internship at a warehouse that rents and sells film equipment. I learned about all different things used on set, and even got to drop some equipment off at Netflix Studios. The company is mainly woman owned and it was nice to hear about the film world from a female perspective.

This year in Odyssey I hope to have an idea and possibly the beginning of a script for my short film. I plan to study other films and tv shows. I want my short to be styled like American Horror Story.

This month, I have been watching horror and psychological thrillers, including Talk 2 Me, We Need to Talk About Kevin, and the most recent episodes of American Horror Story: Delicate. I also watched the film Se7en with Morgan Freeman and Brad Pitt.

Talk 2 Me was exceedingly gruesome, which isn’t my taste, especially because I was a huge fan of the story. I didn’t know what to expect going into We Need to Talk About Kevin, but whatever I would have thought, I would have been wrong. The jumps through time kept me intrigued, the use of color was amazing, and even the acting was incredible.

Having good actors is such a vital part of making a good film. In the new season of American Horror Story: Delicate, Kim Kardashian is a recurring character throughout the show. I think, actually, I know that casting her was a mistake. Don’t get me wrong, I keep up with the Kardashians, but I think the only reason she was cast was for her name. I’m not able to point out what exactly is wrong; she just feels out of place and it pulls you out of the story.

And with Se7en, everything about the film is amazing. The concept was insane, and the ending even crazier. I can’t believe it took me so long to watch.

This month, I didn’t do a lot for my project other than watching films, however, I did have to act in my film class, which gave me a new respect for actors. I truly don’t know how they do it.

See you next month.

Happy Halloween! This month, I watched a YouTube video by the account Film Riot. They are filmmakers who have hundreds of videos about films and how to make films. I watched a video about horror effects and learned how to change someone’s face using Photoshop, After Effects, and Premiere Pro. I plan on using this effect in my next film in my film class. Mid-October, I visited Sacramento State. It’s the only California State school that has a deal with New Mexico for in-state tuition that has a film major. Although I didn’t get to meet any film students or talk to any professors, I had two tours and met students everywhere I went because it is a college town. I definitely plan to apply next year. Fun fact: the director of Black Panther, Ryan Coogler, went to Sac State.

This month I started a big project for digital film. We are working on our first project with actors from the acting class and submitting some of the films we make to a competition. Once I’ve had my script submitted, editors are going to give me feedback. I will have already filmed everything, but it’s still incredibly helpful. We were given a small criteria and 2-3 actors who we would write for. I wrote a seven page script with 12 scenes that we are going to film in the first two weeks of December and edit when we get back from winter break. I’m taking inspiration from the 2003 film Thirteen. It’s almost all handheld and is meant to be "cinéma vérité" which is a documentary style.

Other than that, I’ve been working at Outpost and working on the annotated bibliography.

My main accomplishment this first semester was gaining knowledge. I did a lot of research and built my understanding of the behind the scenes of film, I interned, and I also researched summer film programs. Something I noticed as I was doing my research was that everytime I learned something new and I watched something I had seen before, I noticed what it was that I had just researched. My project has always felt like doing visual research would be more helpful than reading articles, but both are critical to my learning.

This semester I did want to have an idea of what I wanted to film, and I still don’t know yet. I even thought about changing my project but I am on the same track as of today. This upcoming semester, I plan to work on the idea and storyline of my film. One of the reasons it’s so difficult is because I have to come up with an idea that is actually filmable. As a student filmmaker, I don’t have a ton of resources. I need a film that can be filmed in Albuquerque with non-professional actors, which is one of the variables I am most nervous about. When I work on my film for Odyssey I want to work with people who want to work on it with me because if I’m working with people who don’t want to be there it makes the entire process a thousand times more difficult. Not only does it slow down the process, but it can also cause me to lose interest which I know from past experiences.

This semester I had an internship at Outpost Ice Arena working on camera to broadcast the Ice Wolves’ games on tv. I learned a lot and overall it was a great experience and I’m very lucky to have had that opportunity. 

I’m so lucky to have teachers to help me through my ideas and film and I can’t wait for next semester to take the next step in my Odyssey journey.

This January felt productive as I watched Breaking Bad, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and rewatched Midsommar. I also filled out and submitted my application for the National Student Leadership Conference (NSLC), and made a short film in class.

Although Breaking Bad is very different from the vision I have for my film, they are both going to have a lot in common, both being located in Albuquerque, and how can I consider myself a filmmaker from New Mexico who hadn’t seen Breaking Bad? Now I have. The writing, the cinematography, everything about the show is so well done and I am taking a lot away from it. The way that they can make a regular middle-class house in ABQ look cinematic is something I need to learn.

The assignment for my short film was “5 Second Film.” I wanted to use light and shadows so I used my nephew as the actor and took a flashlight and got to filming. My plan was to have him walk and his shadow stay. Even though it took 10+ takes, that wasn’t the hard part. The hard part was figuring out how to edit his shadow out. Schoepke was a big help with editing. Having access to Adobe Premiere Pro is amazing and it comes with so many things to learn. I want to keep working with lights and editing.

This February I plan to finish Breaking Bad, work on the storyline for my film, and finish the scholarship application for NSLC.

This month started with a meeting between me, my parents, Jaramillo, and Schoepke. We worked on a plan for the following months with my film. We scheduled time out of class for me to work on my film. I also came up with the basic idea of what I want my film to be about.

My next steps are watching How to Become a Cult Leader on Netflix so I can write my story accurately.

Hi! Recently I have been rewatching American Horror Story, of course, as well as getting my first interview and rewatching cult movies. This April I interviewed Tracey Kelly. Not only is she a writer for the long-running show The Bold and the Beautiful, but she is an old family friend so it was nice to catch up. I am not a fan of soap operas, however, I don’t have to like what someone writes to be able to learn from them. Writing for soap operas is different in what is written but the format for the script is the same and all writers struggle in similar ways. She shared ways that she gets herself out of writer’s block. She told me about her education and how she got into the business. Overall it was a really great experience and she was super interesting.

In addition to American Horror Story, I rewatched 3B, Midsommar, and Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Midsommar is probably the first movie that comes to mind when thinking about cults. And while it’s the most popular, it’s a very stereotypical cult and what I want to do is more related to a secret cult. 3B is about a girl who moves into an apartment building and everyone else who lives there is in a cult and they torture her into joining. It was a good movie, but it focused less on the psychology than I would have wanted. Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is one of my all time favorite movies. The first time I watched it I didn’t realize what it was about until the end. Rewatching the movie knowing that it’s going to turn into a false version of the Manson murders makes it so much more enjoyable. Quentin Tarantino is amazing and the way he tells his stories is so different. I always learn something new when I watch anything of his.

Finally, the end of the year! If I’m being honest, I was not as productive as I wanted to be this year but I think that by the end of the summer I will look back at this year and see that I actually did a lot. I spent most of the year researching which felt like a slight waste of time. Odyssey has definitely helped me with time management and finding scholarly sources as well as writing scholarly papers. I definitely plan to start my annotated bibliography and literature review this summer to maximize my time because I know I am going to be incredibly busy next fall.

This summer I am going to write my script and give myself a deadline to make sure it has been polished before school starts. I may have Schoepke look over it at the beginning of the year just to have another set of eyes, but other than that, I want it to be done so that I can start casting and location scouting. I need to go back to Traditions this summer to speak to the owners to make sure that I can film there because if I’m not able to, I need to change my story. I want this film to feel unique and not feel like every other Prep film and that means filming in places that are unusual to most people. Anytime you drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe you drive past Traditions, but most people don’t really know what it is and have never been there. How cool would a short film be if it took place at an abandoned strip mall?! 

This summer I will be attending the National Student Leadership Conference’s “Film Production & Scriptwriting” program hosted at the University of California, Los Angeles. I first heard about the program when I got a brochure in the mail. I wasn’t at all sure how they got my address, probably from the amount of accounts I have with anything college-related. The program is very expensive and so in order to be able to attend I started a GoFundMe. It was incredibly easy to make an account and I got $1700 in donations. It was very hard to get the money out of GoFundMe and into our bank account. I spent weeks trying to figure it out and eventually found a way to make it work. Not only will almost half of the program be covered by the GoFundMe, but I also applied for a scholarship and got a $750 scholarship. For the scholarship I wrote two essays and got a recommendation from Schoepke.

I will be at UCLA for 9 days this summer living in a dorm with one or two other roommates; it will be a baby step into what college will be like. Although everything I will be doing at the program isn’t really advertised, I know that I will be making films and learning from the best. There are unknown guest speakers lined up, and lots of field trips. We will get a tour at Warner Brothers studio, the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures, the Dolby Theater (where the Oscars are hosted), and many more including Westwood which is the town that backs up to UCLA. The website has sample schedules and if the program is anything like the schedules they show, it is going to be the experience of a lifetime.

Since Film Prize Jr., I have reached out to Lisa Lucas letting her know that I am still interested in working with/for her on set. She let me know that she is keeping me in mind for a show set to start filming in January and she will let me know if they have anything in August. I would absolutely love to work on a set, a dream come true.

Other than UCLA, this summer I will be in Hawaii and San Diego. I plan to take my laptop everywhere and to hopefully stop adding ideas to my notes app and to start incorporating my ideas into my script. I think my biggest fear when it comes to writing my script is that it won’t be as good as I want it to be. And I want it to be early seasons of American Horror Story good. I’m going to take advice from Tracey and just write and if it’s good then it’s good, if it’s bad, then try again. I need to not be so hard on myself and do what feels right. I trust myself that once I start writing, everything will work out.

I am going to continue reaching out to every contact I find in the film industry and start working on college essays and studying to take the SAT. I am also hoping to have appointments in admissions at UCLA and USC while I’m in LA. Other than that, I plan to have fun because this is my last summer before college! Have a great summer!