Huong's Assessment.docx

Oct 25, when discussing the plot, we decided on a story about three women in a polygamous relationship, but later, we was no longer happy with the story. We thought there was so many issues and sub-plot that the story needed to explore, which would make it better expressed by a feature film. However, we could not schedule another meeting to discuss a different plot idea before I flew to Danang, Vietnam to attend a film acting workshop and subsequent film events from Oct 28 to Nov 8. I planned for the film event in September, before knowing about Uyen’s project. Still, I scheduled important tasks with Uyen, thinking that I could work in-between my acting workshop timeline. I was wrong. The course was difficult and intensive, and to make it worse, I decided to apply for a pitching slot at Commercial Film Project Corner, which double the work for me during my time in Danang. I was tired and sleep deprived all the time and decided to write the screenplay later, when I got back home. Uyen was very understanding. She said that in the meantime, she would try to come up with a different plot based on what we had discussed earlier. When I got back to Hanoi, the deadline for finishing the screenplay had come so near that we decided to abandon the task of planning each scene, but jumping on writing the screenplay right away. It turned out that writing the screenplay right away might be a better choice, since we didn’t have to spend extra time discussing each other’s drafts of each scene, but only give feedback on final products. We also decided to cut short the researching process to save time, as Uyen and I had deliberately attempted to learn about the LGBTQ community in Vietnam before through meetings, watching queer films and documentaries and reading queer literature, knowing that we would definitely carry on an LGBTQ-related project in the future. Fortunately, our previous knowledge about Vietnam’s LGBTQ community and human sexuality seemed adequate for this story. We will do more research related to issues that we discuss in this story, however, to help explore it further and make sure we stay true to the life of queer humans in our film. Uyen and I live in different time zones and are both busy with our study and work, so scheduling a meeting out of the previously decided timeline was very hard. Fortunately, our meetings are usually productive. Thanks to our countless time discussing different issues with each other and several times working on various projects together, we understand each other’s way of thinking very well. There weren’t many major disagreements, and when there were, we often settled our dispute pretty quickly. However, our similarity might be a trap because our assumptions were not often challenged. Therefore, we would perhaps show our final product to a diverse group of people for feedback. The most important lesson for me to learn from this is to never overestimate my ability to multitask. As has been proved time and time again, I always assign myself too many tasks at the same time, resulting in either abandoning some of them or constantly running behind schedule. Another lesson for me is to prioritize. There were times when I chose less important work over this only because they seemed more urgent or easier to do at the time. As of now, I am happy with our screenplay. Uyen and I will continue to perfect it from now to June 2019, when Uyen comes back to Hanoi and we start the production of this film.