Friendsgiving Free Write

Friendsgiving will tell the story of a group of friends, some of whom have known each other since the young age of five and some of whom met as late as their junior year of high school. Nonetheless, these sophomore college students share a bond that the distance of their universities did not break. The girls are a close knit group of friends and being as far north as SUNY Oneonta in upstate New York or as far south as the Savannah College of Art and Design in Georgia is no obstacle in remaining close. My film will explore female friendship and how this group has grown together, how they communicate now that they don’t see each other everyday, and what it means to choose your own family. Further, a new holiday has evolved in the past few years and this group hopped right on back in their sophomore year of high school. Although common among groups of friends more recently - especially in the millennial generation - Friendsgiving has been celebrated by these girls for years. Each “squad” has a different way of celebrating, different traditions and expectations. For my friends, our first of the make-shift holiday was planned and organized. We stated all of the traditions we wanted and that we would continue this every year. The film will explore what has changed and what has remained the same over the years. Over Thanksgiving break, when we celebrated Friendsgiving, I created a lot of content with the girls. I made sure to get some clips of various important instances throughout the night, including the seven of us setting the table, laughing at jokes, and telling stories of our times at college. These candid moments will be used as transitions and examples of what happens at Friendsgiving - which for the most part is like any other hangout of ours except for the meal. I also sat us all down and planned some topics for us to discuss. Our first topic, I decided I wanted at the dinner table. Here, we discussed what Friendsgiving is, how it originated for our group specifically, what our traditions are, and finally how those traditions have evolved - especially now being in college. An additional unplanned subtopic to Friendsgiving was how our traditions for our own little holiday might change in the future. Even though it wasn’t planned I think this was serendipitous content because it brings an understanding of what Friendsgiving is meant for. If we have to move the day so everyone can make it, then that’s more important than keeping the structure of a holiday that’s mean to celebrate our friendship. After we finished our meal, we moved to the hosting friend’s living room. In this setting, we discussed our variety of topics. The first thing to talk about was our roles in the friend group, what each of us means to each other and what we would look like if we were an actual family. We discussed the range of interests our group has; despite all of us being so different, we’re all still so close - which is the opposite of what you expect from a group of close friends. Then, we recalled some of our favorite funny and even nostalgic memories together. Later we got a little more serious. Throughout high school, we gained a few friends but we also lost one. We talked about the downfall of that friend and what it was that made her not so great of a friend - where she went wrong and where we did too. Our last topic as a whole discussion was about communication. What’s different from high school to now college? How has our communication changed from our freshman to sophomore years? After our group discussion, I interviewed each of my friends individually for a broader range of content. In the individual interviews, I had everyone introduce themselves and then I had them each discuss similar topics to those in the group discussions. The idea to do this was so that I can pull content for the final video from both individual thoughts and what we talked about as an entire group. While filming and looking back at the footage my friends and I made, I’m excited to put everything together for the final product. Talking about what each of us think of our friendships has only made me remember why these girls are so important and I think made our whole friendship stronger too.