BREAKOUT ROOM HORROR
WHAT WE'VE ALL BEEN DREADING
After weeks of constructing our ideas, location-scouting, and getting attached to our characters, it was finally time for what all students dread: sharing these thoughts with others in the hellhole that is a Microsoft Teams breakout room. It is not only the awkward pauses and "...so what are we doing?"s that made this task worrisome, but also the fear of my ideas being downright awful. Many questions came to mind, such as "what if this all sounds better in my head?" and "what if this concept is some famous movie already that I haven't heard of?"
PHEW.
Thankfully, however, this did not seem to be the case. After a few minutes of awkward interaction and me pushing others to speak up, I finally decided to just present my ideas first. I presented our plans from the very beginning, even walking my peers through the entire outline of our opening. Sadly, however, I did not receive much feedback that I consider inherently helpful, because "that's cool" isn't the most detailed response. But, even then, I decided to ask my peers for help on a specific concern I have: how do we reinforce the fact that our protagonist is the final human on the planet? At first, the breakout room answered with a heavy-weighted silence that really made me think "why did I even bother?," but I judged too soon because I did receive some beneficial advice. One of my peers mentioned how our original idea was to have Aria (reminder: that's our protagonist's name) break into the office to begin her scavenge. They suggested that if we did away with that plan and instead had the door to the office be wide open, that could suggest that the location has been abandoned. A break-in style sequence may be more suggestive of a burglar rather than a survivalist.
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