Actually...
LOGAN L Productions said:
I'm also surprised California, New York, and Texas are last. They are the most populated states...hmmm...makes you think. My high school (in Texas) was chuck full of teen moms. That really surprises me. The whole list seems backwards. Is it?
It is. I googled teen pregnancy and several lists have California at #1 Texas at #8, etc. That's a big mistake. Might want to fix that.
Otherwise, I honestly only liked that house y'all filmed at. Great location. The rattler was REALLY cool, BUT you kept showing the same shot of it. The snake wouldn't have lost it's impact if the camera got closer or moved every time you cut to the rattler.
The acting was usually okay, but sometimes it seemed really fake (probably just because the ladies are stage actors using a different acting style). Great location and decent writing.
Actually, those are the correct stats for the pregancies...
Apparently, the way they are ranked is based on the amount of pregnancies per capita... Of course Texas and California have more teenage pregnancies than Vermont and other small states... But they are smaller states with smaller populations. In other words, there is a higher percentage of teenage pregnancies in these states. The stats are accurate.
Here's where (among other places) I got my ranking stats:
TeenPregnancy.org teenage pregnancy ranking list
TeenPregnancy.org isn't the only place I checked either... But I felt they had the most accurate stats... I too wondered about the stats when I first saw them since I come from California... But then I figured if I just copied them the way they are on TeenPregnancy.org, they would be slightly ambiguous and cause people to dig up their own stats... Apparently, it worked... LOL.
And about the snake...
That is not the same shot of the snake... I shot the snake for just under 8 minutes. That's how long he was on the defensive. I just shot him until he eventually slowed his rattling down and stopped. Zensteve had it right when he called it the omnipresent snake... It wasn't even in the script. It just happened to be there so I got some footage of it...
The shack that we shot at is an actual "hangout" for teenagers... This is where a lot of teenagers hang out, talk, and smoke dope... LOL.
As far as the acting... It is a little stiff in the beginning... It does get better at the end... But as for stage acting... Not sure what that means... I wanted them to walk around the shack... I wanted them to move within the camera frame. I hate talking heads. I find talking heads pretty boring so I had them move around. Moving them around also helped put them more at ease... Maybe this was due to their acting on stage?
As far as the story...
All I wanted to do was to elicit a reaction... Not persuade anyone to think one thing or another about the subject matter. I want them to come to their own conclusion about the subject matter. We screened it here in town about a month and a half ago and that's exactly what happened... Some people were pissed off that the girl kills herself at the end (does she?). Some people were just plain mad about teenage pregancy. Some people told me that they were going to go home and have a talk with their daughter... LOL.
So actually, I'm pretty happy with it overall... It projected well and there were a lot of gasps at the end. Everyone liked it (and no, none of the audience were family members). Like I said, I was going for a reaction be it good, bad, whatever...
filmy