The Most Beautiful Thing

     Hey Everyone! For this week's reflective response, I'll be sharing with you a short film I stumbled upon on YouTube. From the channel, "Cameron Covell", this short film won the LACHSA 2012 Moon Dance Best Film Award, and also Best Actor Award. This film is about a love story, between a deaf girl and a hearing boy. The boy, named Brandon, dreads school, doesn't have any friends, and whose parents are never home, has to decide who to take to Prom. He meets this girl, named Emily, and realizes that she is deaf and mute (which means she does not speak). They both communicate through writing little notes in a notebook. He wants to ask her out to Prom, but doesn't know how. When he shows up the next day with flowers, he catches Emily being kissed by this other boy. Emily confronts him, and spoke to him what actually happened, the stranger hit on her. Brandon then in turn, signed in ASL, or American Sign Language, asked her to Prom. The actor actually made a mistake, because instead of signing M, he signed E, but I think we all got the message very clearly. I think my favorite thing about this film is just the story and plot in general. Instead of the traditional cliche love story, the filmmaker decided to use a controversial issue within it. As Helen Keller said, "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, they must be felt with the heart." I think this is a great video in example of that. This film was very touching and emotional, and was overall amazing. There were a lot of rack shots in this film, but I think it helped add to the mood. I especially loved the shots where it was so compressed that the background was full of bokeh. Instead of just dead silence and some dialogue, you could specifically hear the NAT sound, for example, the scribbling of a pen, or the tearing of a napkin. However, the NAT sound wasn't the only audio, there was music in the background. I think the music really suited the video, as it added emotion and depth to it. Something else I really loved was the acting! This is probably by far one of the best acting I have ever seen. In the scene in the bathroom at school, you could tell he was upset. You could see the frustration as Brandon tried to get a napkin, he kept pounding on it and ruffling his hair. But you could also see the happiness in him whenever he looked at their notebook. In my opinion, this short film definitely deserved those awards. This video is very moving, and was well put together. I hope you take the time to watch this great short film! That's it for my reflective response! Thanks for reading! Bye!