“A young man discovers a bag of perfume bottles which when used transforms him into different personalities and characters, he uses it to go through different life experiences until he realizes that he is tired of changing between characters that aren't his true self, resulting in the realization that he should just be himself.”

Victoria (Cinematographer): We were tryna think of bottles that are unique and not stereotypical. We were brainstorming and after talking about our story, we landed on the perfume bottles. It’s really unique and there’s many different possibilities, so that’s what we wanted.

Celeste (Screenwriter): We wanted to be niche. When you think of it everyone did like water bottles. And no one said you can’t have multiple bottles. So, we thought of something that varies in different sizes and looks and shapes.

Chloe (Director): I think it was cause we thought regular bottles were boring. We asked Mr. Snow about what does bottle even mean, when we received the email. He said we were free to do anything we wanted, so I think we really just wanted to think outside the box. I was really excited about the whole perfume bottles concept cause it’s definitely something new and it’s fun to play around with.

Kandi (Editor): I think Victoria thought about it; I’m not sure why.

Victoria: To shoot in an unfamiliar place and area, with limited time. You don't know the environment of the location, if it’s suitable for what you want to film. It’s hard to find a specific place to showcase your story. The limited time is actually really tough. Asa cinematographer, there isn’t any time to retake or reshoot. There's no leeway to make any mistakes. It really tests your creativity and all about collaborating with each other. There’s no practice or rehearsal.

Celeste: Panlong is a relatively busy area, so there wasn’t a lot of space to film.

Chloe: For me, I think it’s definitely having too much freedom. Which is funny cause usually that means we would have a lot of ideas, but I think we really didn’t have any pointers to which direction to head towards making it harder than expected. All we knew was that the prop was bottle, the shot we had to include, and that we were filming in Panlong.

Kandi: I think time is really limited, and our script and plot were kind of complicated. Lucas had to switch to many different costumes, and we had to frequently change locations.

Victoria: I think COTT is more challenging; it’s a completely new and different environment. There’s a lot of different schools and people you’re competing with; there’s more pressure. S2F2 there’s more time for planning, (4 days) COTT only gives us 1 day and planning is something we thought would be easy, but it’s actually the part where we struggled the most. The form of the competition was really fun with the lucky draw and meeting many new people.

Celeste: The environment, Paris was not as busy as you had more space. And you had more freedom with what you wanted to do; we chose our own genre for 4x4x4.

Chloe: COTT gave us more direction as I mentioned before. COTT, we had a lucky draw of the genres, actor/actress, and location. There were so many details that had to be carefully planned cause we had to check all the boxes given. But for 4x4x4 it’s just a bottle, shot, and Panlong... Which you might think is a specific location, but Panlong is huge and in Paris, they gave us like around 20 meters of space? It’s completely different.

Kandi: COTT was more stressful cause there were more schools to compete against. It was harder since you didn’t know the location or weather.

Victoria: So, our film is about a man discovering a bag of perfumes and so he tries to spray it and he found out that whenever he sprays one bottle, he changes into that personality. And the experiences a lot of different lifestyles using different personalities. At last, after being curious and with different personalities and styles of living, he loses himself and who he is. So, he drops the perfume bottle, and it breaks, showing that he has to return back to his normal life and his original self.

Celeste: It is about selfidentity and being okay about you being you. Realizing that being other people isn’t that much better than just being yourself.

Chloe: It’s about finding yourself and understanding that there is no one else better than just being yourself.

Kandi: A man got a bag of perfume bottles and then every time he sprays a bottle he has a different personality. In the end, he became exhausted from the changes and found himself.

Victoria: There is a specific meaning. It’s in the title “Be Your Own Essence" tells the whole story and message, and theme of our film. We wanna tell people not to be performative and pretend to be others. Just be yourself, be who you are, and that is like your true self and who you should be.

Celeste: Be your own person you know.

Chloe: The special meaning is just to tell the audience to be yourself. There is no point in changing yourself to try to be other people. Just be you.

Kandi: I think people should live authentically and people should accept their authenticity.