STUDYING CINEMA

Exploring the goals of the Contemporary Literature film unit

BY JAMI LIM

As the final unit of the senior Contemporary Literature class, the film unit introduces students to the vast world of cinema through studying filmmaking and editing techniques. These practices culminate in the task of creating their own short films. Contemporary Literature teacher Jireh Tanabe aids her students through this unique opportunity.

“One of the things that I think is really special about this unit is that [students] actually analyze very much the same way that they would analyze texts, but they’re using films to do so,” Tanabe said. “Being able to visually see and tap into that part of your life that we normally use to analyze books is pretty powerful. It’s another way of practicing the same skill analysis and having the creative power to create something on your own.”

Utilizing the intensity of the thrillermystery genre, senior Katherine Chui’s group wrote a script containing heavy themes of social media’s impact. The story follows a teenage girl being peer pressured to maintain a social media presence – but as a result, catches the attention of an online stalker who infiltrates her life.

“We were researching the dangers of social media and how it can affect your life,” Chui said. “We decided to call [it] out because it’s a really prevalent issue in today’s society.”

In the same vein of peer influence and social media, senior Joey Bloom’s short film team, a group of avid gymgoers, felt compelled to explore the issues they were often exposed to in gym culture. Wanting to address its selfdestructive nature, they began creating a story about a gym-goer who sets out on selfimprovement and physical transformation, but is swept under the influence of online gym influencers who promote eating disorders and unhealthy habits as a means of achieving physical goals.

“We wanted to be a little more serious because obviously mental health is an important issue, but also make it something that people can relate to,” Bloom said. “We also want it to be an awareness movie of [how] putting in the work to better yourself doesn’t mean you have to harm yourself. [You can] be motivated to shape the better version of yourself but keep your values and morals so you don’t push things aside to reach those goals.”

Similarly, senior Krupa Shanware’s group wanted to highlight the detrimental effects of competitive high school sports. Shanware describes the story as a portrait of a student athlete as he is catapulted into stardom and overshadowed by his talents. Unsettled by his lack of genuine connections, he embarks on a period of self-discovery, encountering lifealtering revelations along the way.

“I’m hoping that it’s an insight into someone’s life more than anything,” Shanware said. “I hope anyone who’s watching can connect with [it] if they are an athlete, and it’s a movie that makes you reflect a little bit about people you would consider celebrities.”

As the director of her short film, Shanware is tasked with management, as well as directing for an impactful visual experience. Shanware shares that the experience students gain through the assignment are personally rewarding.

“I’m realizing so much about what I watch,” Shanware said. “When I make my own movie, I’m realizing there’s an infinite amount of conscious choices I have to make and it just makes the film so much cooler.”

Seniors compete in student run games

BY SOPHIA MA AND ANGELA ZHANG

Senior Assassins

enior Assassins was an unofficial event held outside of school exclusively for seniors that ran from April 11 to May 16.Inspired by the Senior Assassins trend from other schools, senior and co-organizer Student A, who remains anonymous because this was not a school sanctioned activity, was motivated to host an event to bring the senior class together. After announcing signups over the Senior Assassins Instagram, Student A recalls receiving phone calls from numbers they have never seen before from people interested in participating.

“My phone number was like a currency distributed around the school,” Student A said. “People were not as big as other schools, people took this game more seriously. That’s what made it a lot more fun because we don’t have that many opportunities to have fun, [but when] we have the opportunity, we go hard.”

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The game was structured as a roundbased tournament, beginning with approximately 41 duos who contributed $5 per person which culminated to a final prize pool of $340. Students tracked their assigned targets on Life360 with the goal of submitting recordings of them eliminating their targets with toy water guns to the Senior Assassins Instagram reels.

During the game, players would be safe from elimination if they wore protective immunity items — a bicycle helmet, pool floaties and swim goggles. The school campus and places of work were safe zones where players could not be eliminated.

Assassins champions Mulyn Kim and Joyce Lui devised various game plans such as keeping immunity items on them as if they were phones, keeping track of their targets’ houses and strategizing for hours outside Lui’s house. Despite their tedious planning, they often made eliminations spontaneously after seeing their target’s vulnerability. This was the case when they saw their target off-campus on Life360, which led to Kim running to his location so quickly that she scraped her knee, elbow and hand.

“I feel like a lot of our kills were a spur-of-the-moment thing,” Lui said. “If it happens it happens. It’s kind of like fate sometimes because it’s just under the right conditions.”

During the finale, the nine finalists participated in a free-for-all week-long purge, where the team who eliminated the most players would win. After getting three kills, the most out of all the teams, Kim and Lui won the game.

Despite initially believing they had “zero chance” of winning, Kim and Lui say they joined Senior Assassins to show their school spirit. Throughout the games, they bonded with unexpected people over shared Senior Assassins stress, allowing them to connect with their class one last time before graduation. Kim reflects that Senior Assassins was ultimately a fun and rewarding experience, and was glad to have the opportunity to participate in it.

“My advice is [to] participate in the game,” Kim said. “It was something Joyce and I never would have done so it was a very spur-of-the-moment thing and out of our comfort zone. If we didn’t [participate in] Senior Assassins, we would just be doing our everyday life stuff. Even if you’re scared to do it, you should still do it.” rom April 6 to 26, 110 seniors competed in MVHS’s first ever Senior Games, a series of challenges that culminated in a free prom ticket for the winner. Senior and Leadership students Itai Lavi and Darpan Singh were inspired to host the games in order to bring the senior class together for the last time.

“We did this to incentivize some camaraderie between our class because we thought that was a bit lacking,” Lavi said. “We were trying to have something exciting for the senior class that hasn’t been done before.”

Lavi and Singh took inspiration from Lynbrook High School’s version of Senior Games but changed some of the challenges to make MVHS’s version unique. Descriptions of each challenge were posted on the Senior Games Instagram account the day before.

The first series of challenges were dress-up tasks, where participants wore hats, mismatched shoes, sunglasses and gloves to school. If another player took a picture of someone not wearing all their items outside of class time, that person would be eliminated. Senior Aditya Mishra, a finalist in the games, enjoyed this challenge.

“One of the days you had to wear four of the items, [which] became a really cool challenge,” Mishra said. “Seeing everybody walk around trying to get people out was also really fun.”

In the next series of challenges, players were assigned randomly to groups and tasked with taking a selfie together at various locations. Groups that did not submit their selfie in time were eliminated.

“That was actually my favorite part, seeing all the different groups together smiling,” Lavi said. “These are people that for the most part we didn’t think were friends with each other. [This challenge] really brought people together.”

Finally, the last 14 contenders competed in the finale game of Simon Says on April 26. Mishra was one of the first people to be eliminated after raising his hands by accident.

“I was trying pretty hard and I really wanted to win,” Mishra said. ”I was pretty disappointed. I thought [the finale game] should have been more creative because the rest of the challenges were a lot cooler.”

Senior Stephanie Zhao, the final winner of the Senior Games, agreed that the finale game was underwhelming. Nevertheless, Zhao felt proud after ultimately winning the grand prize.

“I honestly expected the finale to be a lot more difficult, so I didn’t think I was gonna win,” Zhao said. “But after there were five people [left], I thought that I had a chance.”

Senior Games was a success due to the positive reactions he saw from fellow seniors participating in the game. However, he says that they could have planned the challenges more in advance, as some of the challenge updates on Instagram were not posted in time.

“We were very grateful that people actually ended up enjoying the games,” Lavi said. “Obviously, there were some bumps in the road, like managing when to post and coming up with different games, but we think for most of us this first ever attempt was actually really successful.”