Random rants from a random rambling soul

Yes finally a title for my reflections.haha! Thinking of titles is a real chore.I wonder how people can endless come up with movie/book titles ? Im pretty sure they use a Thesaurus whenever they need titles. But then again some of them take the easy way out but just adding numericals at the end. Scary movie 1,2,3 etc…
Sigh!What is the media doing this days? I mean yes it is a continution of the previous movie.Oh wait it does not apply for scary movie since it’s a parody of other movies in a really odd way at times.But yeah what is the media coming up with nowadays?

Another dreary thing in the media. Like mentioned before, the weather channel. Who in the world will watch the weather channel. Unless the person is an insomanic who is trying new ways to get some sleep. I doubt anyone would want to watch it for more than 5 minutes. Moreover it’s a real pain to wait 30 minutes as they list countries and cities just so you can find the weather in the destination you are looking for. 30 long minutes ( and they say it a small world??!!) and by then I am pretty sure the weatherman decided to change gears. Check the window!Check the newspaper its faster. Check the god damn internet its just as reliable as the weather channel anyway.

Ever wondered why despite having a thing called the weather channel people still get caught in the rain?Bring bikini in freezing Snowville?Bingo you got it right? Its our dearest weatherman on the weather forecast channel. I like the fact that some of them are honest though like saying there is “50% percentage chance of rain tomorrow evening at woodlands.” But to ensure that they sound convincing i think they use a higher numerical like 70%. I remember reading somewhere that people tend to believe you more if you add numbers or statstics to your arugments. {Oh i will try and find that article and post the link here one day} Maybe they are following it here?

I seriouly hate the weather channel as everytime i carry my umbrella it would tend to be useless and just an extra weight that i have to lug around.This is especially true when you are chasing birds and trying to escape from mad squirrels at the Botanics. Whenever i do not bring the umbrella and really far away from any civilisation, i will hear the rumble of thunder and get drenched.

Ah i might as well just look out of the window or even at ants.Oh did you know that When ants travel in a straight line, you should expect rain; when they scatter, expect fair weather? This is some old weather proverb. Go try it out and see if it works!If it does then we can start having a weather forecast segment in discovery channel or something instead of wasting network space where more dramas like Prison break can be seen.:D NO Lost please! After watching two seasons,on and off, i have given up on it as i have a feeling they are going to be permanently lost.They might as well change the title now right?

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Back to the confinements of our very fine classroom 07-13 at Fms. Lets see what did we do?We talked about dynamic action.Last week was dialogue and this week action. It made me feel as though as we are shredding a film and then trying to learn about the different elements of it. Like i said before i prefer action to dialogues.Its more visually stimulating.Like In transit that we watched in the previous lesson, we watched Terminal Bar this week.This film Is a short documentary. It takes place in NYC right across the street from central terminal. His father owned the bar and took pics of everyone who came into the bar. The purpose of watching this wad: To notice visual trigger. (Ah i knew there is always a motive for letting us watch films instead of pure entertainment) Anyway it was Done by Flash animation. The effects was awesome i must say. It kind of made me feel that i was in photography class instead of storytelling. Anyway back to the film, some pictures caught my eye more so than others. I also like the pictures of those taken over the years. I cant remember the exact name of one of the guy but there were three pictures taken of him in the movie that showed him ageing tremodoulsy over the years. It was an interesting movie overall i must say.

Check out this Video

It shows the pictures of a guy who took pictures of himself everyday for 6 years straight.Its a bit similar to Terminal Bar accept that it focus on one person. You can notice the changes if you have a keen eye.

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Gosh i am really running out of titles aren’t I? I mean i have been reduced to titling it as Week 7…. How pathetic can it get?
Oh well the title is not as important as the content….

Well we watched Two Short Films today. One titled In Transit and the other “Autograph book.”

I did not really get what the movie is about but the effects in it were awesome. I liked the gloomy,dark and eerie effect and those fast cuts were just keeping me on the edge.After ryan explained to us then only did i get enlightened.:D

Autograph book was not too bad… i mean it wasn’t as exciting as the other one but it made more sense. Maybe because i have watched it too many times in Arts central.

After which we talked about dialogue. I feel that dialogue is not really important in a movie at times. I mean a movie is mainly visual and i think dialogues are mainly used when those screenwriters/directors are just too lazy to figure out a way to show the information to us. Thus they throw in a dumb character who will ask thousand and one questions and let the other main characters explain things to that person. I think sadly in a way, we are the dumb fellow and those guys are explaining to us.

These “talking” movies are quite a new thing right? I mean the transition was not too long ago.Silent movies are not exactly my favourite thing… Watching those black and white Charlie Chaplin movies could be torturous at times. Modern day version would be Mr Bean. Watching them the first few times were alright but after a while it gets so predicatble and even annoying at times. He is bound to do something stupid and/or gross in there and he will end up muttering some inaudible and gibberish rubbish to his Teddy. What’s up with that? I wish channel 5 and some other channels in cable would stop showing them and start showing something useful or at the very least less annoying.

Anyway back to my arugment….

I mean i love dialogues.Don’t get me wrong. Its just like they say “too much of a good thing” …. i just hate it when they just put too much dialogues in some movie instead of showing it to us. I mean if i wanted that, i could read a book instead of wasting $9.50 +++ ( money on snack,fare to get there etc..) on that movie.

Though i would say it depends on the genre of the movies too. Dialogues are good for comedies. One example would be keeping mum. It was what i would say a rather intellectual black comedy as it had a lot of puns in it like the Title itself.

Dialogues in an action movie? Its a No,no… i mean imagine vin disel in XXX talking about what he’s going to do instead of doing the actual thing. It would bore us to death.

Thus i conclude that dialogues can be useless at times.. i would rather have more visuals but then again i really depends on the genre as well. hehe!

P.s For those who want more dialogues go read a book and for those who want depressing endings and gore watch the news and save your moohlah!!

Lastly ill end off with this quote:

On cable TV they have a weather channel – 24 hours of weather. We had something like that where I grew up. We called it a window.
– Dan Spencer

I thought this was rather funny and yet very true. Weather channels are really a waste of space in the network i mean maybe put a one liner somewhere or soemthing not have a whole channel devoted to it. Gosh .Ok im ending now i shall debate about the uselessness of weather Channels next week. Man the media have a lot of crap in them.

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Man! i am running out of titles to put for my reflections. Any suggestions?

Anyway let me reflect about class as usual. We had what i would call a rather intense and emotional lesson. We had to read our letters to the past where we had to write to someone who we no longer talk to any longer. We were broken up into groups and all us girls were split up. This was good for the first time as i think if there were more of us in the class, we might have actually cried. But i guess being surrounded by testerone-filled guys somehow their “thou shall not cry” commandment must have subconscious rubbed off onto us-well to me anyway.Oh that was a compliment by the way. haha.

Well to me it was like entering a therapy session as we each shared out stories. There we saw a different side of some of our classmates. It was a good insight I must say as they were the kind of things that we would not usually talk about.

After which Ryan read us his letter. It was a rather moving and emotional letter. I really admired him after that (No, I am not saying it for more marks,not that there will be anything wrong if he gave them to me:D) as I think it takes a lot of courage to pour all your emotions out onto a piece of paper and reading it out to a group of students-not once but three times.

Then something he told us hit me at that moment. I remember he said that as writers we must think how much of ourselves we want to share with people. I guess it is fine if you are sharing happy things like your first birthday and things like that. However delving into the more touchy stuff like how your parents divorced or you got abused when you were young takes a lot of courage to write. It depends on how much of yourself are you willing to share with your readers.

I realized that authors who write about their own experiences via a biography or when they use an event that happen in their life in their stories it somehow is much better than when not written through experience. I guess the key might have been that it was written with and through emotions so that as readers we can relate to it. An example would be Chicken Soup for the soul series.

However the same does not really go with screenwriting. The stories written about reality such as Election where nitty gritty details of life were shown and where not so happy endings are added as a bonus-they do not become a hit.

Maybe it is because we do not like to see our hunks and babes of Hollywood fail in a task or in life. Thus happy endings usually are better received.

Though like everything there are exceptions. I think Titanic would be a good example. Where the hunky (?) hero of the show Leonardo died at the end. I remembered the number of people cursing at the end of the movie as they watched him die.

The only times sad movies make it through, is when it is star-studded and/or have really good characters.

I still feel that movies should have happy endings and if you want the gore and depressing stuff just tune in to the news:D

Ohh heres a picture that i thought is funny. It was under political humor though so i am not sure if i can post it here.So if i am not supposed to erm… let me know.

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Yes yes another reflection.Its a weekly thing and i cant help it. You can blame Ryan for them if you want its his idea. I do have fun writing these , but i am not entirely sure why i am doing this though.Hmm.. anyway i shall resume this ranting of mine.

We did something interesting today. We had to write a story from the two characters that we got from people watch.Boy was i not prepared for that.First my two characters seem to be total opposites like one of them is a Hawker Uncle and the other a night dweller.However somehow i manged to pull it off.If you’re remotely intrested you can check out the story titled Gothic Hero Of Singapore.I really had to rack my brain to try and write this story but i just let my pen to let the words flow. I remember something from secondary school where my teacher told us not to really think but just to W.O.W= Write only Write.Yes that was a nostalgic moment…but it had worked for me in this case:D Even if there was no flow in the story various ideas would come pouring in what you get into the what i call zen-like writer’s mode.

After which 2 people were chosen to read their stories out loud and i happen to be one of the two lucky people.Oh joy! Not that i have a problem with sharing my story its just that i hate to talk/ read out loud to a group of people.I tend to stutter and stammer and cough a lot god knows why… stage fright perhaps…oh well.. moving on ….

Next we watched 2 short movies.Well one of them was just 15 minutes of the movie. The first one which we watched partly was titled Taxi Driver and the other called Les Mistons.From there we did character analysis where we learnt how to make the character more real more 3 dimensional.

To end it off we were given a rather personal and interesting assignment where we have to write a letter to someone.By writing what you know and so its ike pouring out your emotions onto the page and revealing about yourself. I remember ryan said that as a writer how much information are you willing to reveal about yourself and in a way by doing so you are putting yourself in a position where people could and most probably would judge you. That got me thinking…How much is too much? Where and when do we draw the line?

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Let me drift off from class now… oh yes i went to take photographs today and it happened to be a rather eventful day for me at the Botanical Gardens. Firstly i went to take pictures of the swans at the swan lake but they refused to come anywhere near the distance where my camera could capture their image -_- All my bird calls deemed to be useless there. On the way back only did i find out that all it took was to clap your hands have a piece of bread/ kangkong with you and they fly towards you. Well now we know oh so thats a tip for all those who wish to take pictures of those 2 darn swans. However i think the swans are not mentally right as one of them think its a dog it keeps wagging its tail whenever its happy. Despite being disturbed by that i was also rather amused.

Oh and there happened to be a duck there too. Sadly only one duck and i think it felt lonely like the ugly ducking not knowing where it belonged. It was sulking away at the corner as it watched the swans greedily eat them up. It was funny to look at the duck as it sulked away at the corner. I thought it was rather dumb of it to refuse so much food and sulk there. It could sulk later when nobody is aorund to give it food but nooo it had to sulk then. Poor duck i hope it comes to it senses soon and learn that there is a place and time for everything and that it doesnt starve to death by its stupidity.

Next i went to the lotus pond where i saw a beautiful blue bird i think it was the same family as the king fisher but slighty bigger. Boy did it test my patience as i had to sit there literally waitng for it to finish its meditation. It was in a zen like state as no amount of noise nor could the twigs and stone that were thrown near its direction disturb it from its intense gaze at the pond. It made me wonder what could that bird possibly think of? Usually if something was thrown near them birds tend to fly away but not this little fella it just stood on its branch oblivion to the word as it mediated there.I wasted 15 minutes as i waited for it to fly but that did not happen and i had to give up due to time constrain and walked away.

Lastly i saw a bunch of squirrels who were happily nibbling away at some fruits in the trees and i tried to capture that moment.whether i was sucessful in doing that is another story. However as i was about to walk off i heard a lot of noise coming from them and when i turned to look i saw that the largest of the squirrel had an indigant look on its face.Why? i had no clue though. I decided to ignore it and just walk off as the exit was near as i was doing so a nut like thing landed on my head. I was pretty sure it was that squirrel atttacking me as it seemed to have a rather smirk look on its face after that. It happened to me twice so yes i must warn all future visiotrs there to beware of those squirrels i think they have been watching too many cartoons like madagascar and over the hedge where they learn to defend themselves by attacking us , humans.

Pictures aka The Evidence…

THE EVIL SQUIRREL

Meditating bird

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