All This Panic

Before the Senior Project period starts, all seniors participating are required to research their topic and write an essay on it. Because the "teenage experience" isn't exactly the easiest thing to learn about via book or scholarly article, I scrambled to find ways to conduct research. One of the first resources I came across was a movie called "All This Panic." "All This Panic" is a documentary that was born when Brooklyn-based filmmaker Jenny Gage and her cinematographer husband noticed the interesting teenage girls who lived next door: Ginger and Dusty. Gage asked the girls if she could follow them around with a camera and document their experiences. Soon, Gage became acquainted with Ginger and Dusty's entire friend group, and ingratiated herself into the lives of the girls. Gage and her husband ended up following seven Brooklyn teenagers – Ginger, Dusty, Lena, Sage, Olivia, Ivy, and Delia – over the course of three years, effectively documenting a large part of their transitions from childhood into adulthood.

I had high expectations for the film when I sat down to watch it. To be honest, it only lived up to some of these expectations. I found the edgy, hipster girls featured kind of hard to relate to, and wished the film was a little more linear, with less confusing cuts and skipped periods of time. Apparently Gage and her husband had hundreds of hours of footage, though, so I can understand that there were probably some important moments that they just had to cut.

The film focused on a friend group of girls rather than girls who lead completely separate lives. It made me kind of glad that the girls I'm filming don't know each other (for the most part), because I think that choosing to film girls in different places rather than girls in the same friend group provides a greater breadth of diversity in experiences and opinions.

Overall, the film was honest, which is important to me. I want my film to have that same kind of honesty. I also liked that the film included the girls facing both big problems (Sage transferring to a predominantly white school, Olivia grappling with her sexuality, Lena's struggles with her parents and financial challenges) and small problems (figuring out who to invite to their parties, obsessing over boys, etc.).

Here is the trailer for "All This Panic," which is available on iTunes and Amazon Video. Check it out!