PEEP IT!

 Welcome back to the absolute best blog ever! Today, I'll be discussing some easter eggs that we snuck into our film 😏. Some things that you'll only notice if you pay CLOSE attention and maybe watch it a few times. Let's get to it!

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First, I'll start with my FAVORITE easter egg, which is the... calendar! Phi suggested some clips of the calendar counting down the days we will leave for college. We thought this was a great addition as it represents time passing and shows some of the hangouts the girls had planned before parting ways😞. We also added some extra reminders so that Vale's life wouldn't look SOOO boring. For example, some events include a pool day, lunch with Mami, a doctor's appt, and (our favorite) the Santi story! If you take a close look, you can see that Vale had a date with her boyfriend, Santi, and then planned to break up with him the day before leaving for college. We thought this could add some humor to the overly emotional vibes of it all😉. There are also a few reminders to pack here and there, which can be seen during our actual packing scenes! Additionally, to make it look cuter and girly, we doodled around with hearts, flowers, and stars. This adds some characterization for Vale, demonstrating that she is a put-together, girly lad🥰! Overall, this calendar was essential to add realism to the film opener and made it easier for the audience to understand what was going on. Thank you Phi I guess (she won't stop mentioning it was HER idea🙄)...

Another little something we threw in there was the group pictures! As you may know, our initial idea for the project included some scenes with pictures of our friends, so when we decided to change our plot, we stuck with this idea (as it continued to be fitting). Nahomy, Phi, and Leah are some of my closest friends, so finding pictures of the four of us came very easy! I simply asked the girls to send pics of us together, then took a look into my 'Otis Mandem' album (that is the name of our group chat😛) and picked some of my favorites. We then got these printed at CVS, and if you take a closer look, you can see them throughout our film! Decorating my room with them added to the summer, girly vibe that we wanted to include. The fact that I worked on this project with my favorite lads, makes this film SO much realer and more significant to me. Each of these pictures represents real memories of us hanging out at my house, the beach, or parties!

Finally, the last 'egg' we featured was the college sweatshirts! Since we began the project, we had already planned to represent our schools by wearing their specific apparel. So Nahomy would wear an FSU sweater, Phi a UF hoodie, Leah a USF sweater, and I would end up wearing a UM sweater! This can be seen in our going away party clips, where we are each representing our school! However, getting these sweaters was not that easy😭. We had all decided to buy merch for our school but ended up waiting too long, so they wouldn't come in on time even if we tried. Desperate times called for desperate measures, so we started asking around to see if any of our friends had merch for our schools. My friend Janelle Agurcia lent me her UCF sweater (which we didn't end up using), and Abdelhamid Saled lent us his UF hoodie! Nahomy bought herself a cute, red seater at the FSU giftshops and Leah made her own with some letter patches she ironed on. After the UCF incident, I couldn't be shown wearing that merch, so I too had to get fabric transfer paper and iron on a UM logo on an old sweater! Yes yes, we are crafty AND innovative😜!