Passion Project

I’m super into movies. And equality in movies. Something I especially love is the Bechdel Test, an informal metric created by Alison Bechdel to gauge how much a film focuses on and develops female characters. The test asks: Do two named women talk to each other about something other than a man? While it’s not a definitive measure of the quality of a movie, it does raise questions about how we treat and value women in film. Although it’s a simple test, you’d be surprised how many beloved movies don’t pass it.

My goal for this passion project was to combine my value of feminism, desire to be a screenwriter, and love of learning new things. My process went like this: I sat down and watched one movie a week, took notes on the plot, dialogue, and themes of the movie, brainstormed a possible new scene, scene extender, or some other solution, taught myself how to write a screenplay, then made a TikTok for each movie summarizing the film and my script-writing process. This was harder than it looked—and for brevity, I’m only including my three favorite scenes I wrote. (Gold, silver, and bronze.) Spoilers ahead!