Alternating Fights

Description
The Movie “Alternate Fights” was inspired by Ella Washington who accomplished a lot in her life and inspired many to think that it’s never too late to pursue your dreams. Alternate Fights is a coming of age story following a person trying to find his perfect career choice. It is a PG film for all ages to watch and enjoy.

Plot Summary
The movie follows the story of a young man named Kaleb in the year 2045 who is in their first year of college as an undecided major. Kaleb is troubled by his decisions and ponders over possible careers he could want to join. After much consideration, Kaleb has decided between a major in Computer Science, Finance, and Cinematography. Kaleb wants a career as either a Software Developer, Investment Banker, or Film Director. At his point in time, technology has gone advanced where you can use a virtual headset from the company Future Eyes Inc. where you can view your future in alternate universes. Kaleb decides to put on his Virtual Reality headset and starts exploring the reality where he became a software engineer. When he explores this alternate reality, he comes across many issues that this career path holds. His main issue was that the reason he wanted to become a software engineer was for the reason to explore his creativity and create apps that he would love to use. If he works as a software engineer, the first few years of him working at a company will consist of less creative tasks. He will be working on fixing bugs for the company he is working for and won’t work on creative engineering programs until he is promoted to a senior software developer. Even when he becomes one, he won’t have much say in what creative projects he will be assigned to or add his creative ideas to the end product. When he follows his reality of pursuing a career in the Investment Banking Industry, he comes across the issue of rigorous work and timing. He will spend a long time at his work where he could be working up to 100 hours per week (Range on average is 60-100). There will be constant pressure in workload throughout this career and the hours of work may not go down until he is promoted to a senior position in the company. Finally, he visits his reality where he decided to pursue a career in the film industry as a director. He notices that it will take a lot of work to get recognition and work on the films he wants to pursue. The percentage of filmmakers that make it into Hollywood is low. He comes to terms that all careers take time commitment before you mostly get to be creative in their perspective field. In the end, Kaleb decides to choose the career of becoming a filmmaker first after thinking back to his childhood and remembering his dream of making films such as his favorite ones, but he knows that eventually he will switch to a different career when he finds interest in something different. The film ends with Kaleb running off to his class and the scene cuts when the advisor from his school asks him what major will he pursue.

Research Elements
I wanted the professions that I implemented in this film to portray the career facts as accurately as possible so I decided to research each career and possible promotions. I added statistics about each job in the film when Kaleb asks the virtual reality headset for questions the way we do with Siri or Google Assistant. As much as there is great success in each profession I will portray those careers in the narrative of an average person working in that field. One of the sources I will use will be the statistics that are documented on the website of the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. I know that on average, many college students and high school graduates come across the issue of being lost in what career they will want to pursue so I will implement my research in that field of study to accurately interpret the stress and thoughts that a college student may go through. To put myself on their shoes I could view websites where students talk about how they made their decision for career choice. I also thought about an article talking about whether it is a good idea for 17/18-year-olds to make decisions on career choices that could last them their lifetime when their brains are not fully developed to make those kinds of life-lasting decisions. I think the information from articles discussing is something important to implement in my film to talk about the bigger picture of the plot happening in my film.

Creative Style
I took inspiration from the show Black Mirror, specifically the episode called Playtest. The episode Playtest consisted of a person testing out a horror virtual reality game by a company and it took a dark turn at the end when the person thought he died inside the horror game but actually died in real life. I wanted my film to be PG so I took a different ending to the one Black Mirror portrayed and wanted to send a positive message to it. Since this is a science fiction film, the concept of traveling in time is fairly popular but I took inspiration from the movie “Avengers Endgame” where heroes go back in time to stop a villain in the present. I decided to give my film a different approach by making my protagonist travel forward in time but an alternate universe to his life. The concept of alternate universes is also a concept I took from the show “Rick and Morty” which explores the concept of traveling to alternate universes in a fun and action-filled way. I don’t know of many science fiction shows that portray a coming of age story, but I tried to tackle this topic through my film by providing the thoughts of the character while he is experiencing different careers. One of the most creative aspects of my film is probably the scenario I am envisioning as 2040 to look like in our world. I assume that many structural advances to buildings will be implemented and advanced technologies. This is why I will interpret my vision of the future into the background scenes of the film.

Target audience
Since this is a film about a college student and some science fiction concepts, my target audience is any student or adult who is interested in science fiction or coming of age films. I want to target this audience because some of these people may be able to relate to the pressure of deciding what career they wanted to follow. There are also some individuals who decided to pursue a career but eventually went back to school to pursue a different one. This is a PG film so technically anyone can watch it, but I doubt that children will be into films like this. My message to this target audience through my film is to not be afraid of not knowing what to pursue. It is never too late to go back to school and try something new. Sticking with one career may sound scary to some people but it doesn’t have to be that way. There is no such thing as being too late or old to go back to school and pursue a different career. I received this message after watching a video on an 86 year old woman who graduated from Liberty University with an associate degree in interdisciplinary studies and I thought it was such a powerful message to include this. I hope anyone would like this message and enjoy the film.