Senior Vicky Liu's short film chosen as an Official Selection in All-American High School Film Festival

Friday, October 9 is the kick-off event for the All-American High School Film Festival, and senior Vicky Liu's short film "Who Belongs" will appear as an Official Selection. Vicky shared the background of her film as well as an additional competition that she and classmate Ronnie Zhang produced.

Over the summer, I worked on an independent short film named "Who Belongs," which discusses the boundary of feminism. It proposes feminism as a liberation movement for both women and men. This film is inspired by a book I read in my English class called The Heidi Chronicles and my reflections on model feminist expectations. I revised my screenplay and refined my editing with Ms. Cutalo, Ms. Baldwin, and Mr. Wilkinson. I submitted this work to the All-American High School Film Festival, and it is one of the official selections under the drama category. This film festival accepts films ranging from documentary and animation to sci-fi and comedy. It releases its official selection list in July and hosts a festival with official selection screenings and award ceremony in October. Because of COVID-19, I decided to format "Who Belongs" into a computer screen film (viewers are watching a computer screen), with actors and actresses filming themselves. They placed cameras at an angle similar to their web-cam, and I reconstructed a computer screen using Adobe Illustrator and added the camera footage in Adobe Premiere.

The All-American Film Festival also has a Film Invitational competition from September to October this year, so I am currently collaborating with Ronnie Zhang to produce a film for its Music Video Challenge, which asks us to create a video for the song “Are You Bored Yet?” by Wallows. The lyrics of the song are about a young couple who are bored with their relationship. With the help from Ms. Baldwin and Mr. Wilkinson, Ronnie and I reinterpreted this song as a young man who imagined a girlfriend and is questioning himself if he is bored about this fantasy yet.