Final Project Proposal: Short Film on Body Image

Do it for yourself

For my final project, I am going to do a short narrative film around the concept of body image. My film will be focused on two characters, who face obstacles of what should be accepted as the ideal body. Now with these characters, they are taken on this journey to finding the purpose of exercising, in terms of a physical and mental view. In other words, do they exercise just to be accepted within the norm? to be independent? To compete? To feel dominant? Or to exercise just so they can have the body of their hero/celebrity? At the end, they find out that must do it for themselves.

Now in this short film, you will experience a variety of obstacles that deal with body image. Since we have two characters, they will be going on two different paths that allows you to follow two different experiences of how they accept and respect their body for what it truly is: comfortable. When I say comfortable I mean they need to exercise to feel comfortable in their own skin. If they wanted to lift weights, not because it’s manly, they should be accepted and allowed to do so. If they wanted to exercise to help build self-esteem and confidence, then they should be able to do it for them. They shouldn’t do it to impress people, and they shouldn’t do it to intimidate others.

Both characters are college students, which places them in their 20s. It will be set in the fall at their college, Hunter College. Therefore you should know that these actors are from Hunter, but they shall have no acting experience. I’m trying to incorporate their personal experiences, when dealing with the idea of body image, within this film. In addition we are going to have 1 female and 1 male character, because of their sex, these characters will both deal with their situations differently.

I wanted to make this because I needed to express a personal side of what I was dealing with for the past few months. I was making this for an audience around their early 20s to mid 20s. It will be published on Vimeo, and it will part of my reel. When the semester is over, I wanted to make a vlogging series that will follow up from the short film, like a prequel. Right now, I am in the middle of pre-production. I am writing up my script, selecting people for my actors, and deciding on my locations.