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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ok! week 4 lessons are over.Wow time sure flies. We watched a movie during lesson.How cool is that? haha.It was titled Election. It was a really different movie i must say. It wasnt your typically perfect live,gorgeous people sort of movie. It was just your regular life with almost regular looking people acting in it.The exception would be Resee Witherspoon who acted as Tracy in the movie.

This movie shows the nitty gritty details of life that usual Hollywood films tend to leave out.One example that i can still remember until today is when Mccalister went to Diane’s house to help her unclog her bathtub and took out a whole chunk of hair. This scene just left me disgusted. It wasn’t exactly the most visually pleasing scene I must say.

After watching the film I realized why Hollywood tend to portray a rather perfect life of a perfectly gorgeous perfect teens/people. Besides it being visually pleasing it provides us an escape from reality during the two hours or so.

I am one of those who would rather see the usual type of hollywood films.I mean i do not mind variety but at least give me something that is pleasing to the eyes.One or two awkward reality-type scenes are ok but the whole film is just a bit too much.

After watching the film i was speechless as i really had nothing to say about the film.I mean there werent exactly morals there since Tracy who did something bad still manged to wint he elections and moved on to be sucessful in life.I mean if you’re making this kind of show at least give us some morals to look for.Don’t let the bad guy win.

Ok call me old-fashioned or whatever but i still like happy endings most of the time.It gives me some sort of satisfifaction that good always still prevails even though we all know that it doesn’t really happen all the time in life.This is especially true now with the after effects of the war in iraq, the many many natural disasters etc…

Sorry i am not exactly a big fan of the news as i personally feel it is very depressing.Have you ever noticed that there is hardly anything good in the news? Anything happy? There is always deaths,violence ,natural disasters and what nots.The only good thing perhaps would be that they found a new solution for some problem and soon after a new probelm will arise and the cycle goes on.

Yes you may say that it is their job to keep us updated on what is happening around the world while the magazines do the job of entertaining us. They are doing a mighty fine job i must say.Too good a job with the constant updates during major events.

However i do read the news and no its not for contemporary issues or anything.Just a quick scan of updates but mostly its to check out the more happening and happier news thats covered under Lifestyle Section Of our Wonderful Newspaper.:D

I wonder if anyone else feels the same way?
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I am not sure if i drifted off too much though but i remember ryan said to talk about outside class and im just expressing my opinions:D Oh and i did reflect over class… ok maybe more on the movie…but it is still part of class:D

We are into week three of our storytelling lessons.I decided to write my entry quite early because i am not sure my memory will suffice till next week. As usual the lesson was engaging and i didnt stone or sleep. Usually i would have probably have slept in that freezing room as my brain shuts down to preserve itself.

We learnt quite a number of things today.

Ryan made some of us read out one of our stories and then the others had to comment on it in the following format:

Author:

Title:

What it’s about:

What’s great:

What’s not so great:

I happened to one of those lucky few. In fact i was the first to go. I thought this was really a good idea as sometimes you would not be able to realise your own mistakes or highlights or you story. Having someone else pointing it out to you helps you to improve yourself.

For myself, i chose the story titled ” Danger: Pole alert!” as the story to share as i had trouble writing that. Humour isn’t exactly my forte but i wanted to do away from sad and morbid stories and try something new. Moreover, the fact that it was inspired by a real life event made me want it to pen it down and turn it into a story.

After listening to the comments i realised that there was some redundancy in the story like the word “handphone”.It was obvious that one would sms on their handphone.However i think that it could also be a pda or something.Besides if i was to edit that i would be lacking in words and have to try and add extra words here and there just to fulfil the criteria.At the moment i cant think of any two words that might be able to change the story so i decided to stick with it.

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After this we did our presentation on the old man Aristotle.For those who have no idea who he was (I didn’t until i came to this class), he was actually a greek philosopher who came up with somewhat like a set of rules for storytelling .More information about him will be placed under the lecture notes that will follow below.

Lastly,we ended off the lesson with another new assignment called “People Watch” . Boy does the assignments get more and more interesting. And Yes! Its exactly like what the title states we have to go around and watch people. To summarise it ,it would be stalking people. I am very intrigued by this assignment as i have never in my life stalked anyone and i feel kind of sorry for the two people who i might have to go and stalk.Haha!

Luckily (?) Ryan had specify it as people of i would have probably gone after some cat in my neighbourhood.

Anyway when Ryan said this and i quote “YOU DO WHAT YOU HAVE TO DO TO GET YOUR ASSIGNMENT DONE” he sounded like he was out of the godfather movie.Ok random i am distracting you from my main point and Aristole would not have appreciated that.

Yes onward…oh i have come to the end of my reflections… well now its notes time… especially useful for those of us who did not pay attention during lessons or those who might probably forgot what was done today the minute the day is over….

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Oh hold it…its not the end yet.i thought i shall just let you know how my stalking assignment went since i managed to finish it.

I have to say trying to find the right people is very hard.Everyone here hardly seem to display any sort of weirdness that i could use. It was all really mundane that i almost gave up.Just when i was i was about to give up there i found Mr Popular.I realised sometimes you find what you’re looking for when you’re not looking for it.Thus there should be no deadlines,no rush.Let inspiration come naturally. Sadly though this excuse/proverb doesn’t seem to work with the lectures or the school boards.

Another week of lesson had gone by.Thus another reflection has to be up:D

Let me recall what we had done for the week. First of all there was no lectures but i think everyone can tell since there are no lecture notes up.

Anyway,Ryan decided to pair us up. We each had to read our partner’s openers and choose one that we liked best/could work with and come up with a story.

I had Jordan as my partner and from all of his openers i choose the following:

1) The photographer drops his camera and dashes into the building, towards the screams without giving a second thought about his job.

p.s i edited it a little,fine one word then, because it wasn’t in present tense.

This was the story that i could come up with in the stringent 15 mintues allocated to us.

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My Wonderful Story

The photographer drops his camera and dashes into the building, towards the screams without giving a second thought about his job.

Time is essence yet his mind and body is locked in mortal combat-his mind begging him to leave while his body gets ready for a possible fight. The screams are raising an octave with every step he takes. The agony in those screams lacerates his heart and affects him to the bottom of his very soul.

Stealthily he makes his way into the long corridor unaware, what to expect but knowing he has to help the person.

Adrenaline rushes through his veins as he reaches the corridor and sees a decomposing wooden door with thick green vines coiled around it. With pure determination he yanks the door open. A bright luminous light envelops him, searing his eyes.

A silhouette of a body shrieks and begs him to take it with him. Without any thought he carries the body and walks out of the door, never questioning one bit why everything seemed to posses a dream-like quality.

As he walks out of the door, his heart rate accelerates just for a moment and he takes a breath of fresh air and welcomes himself into the new world.

Randall finally wakes up from his coma of six years.
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I liked what i manged to come up with in that short amount of time.

Writing that story brought me back to my secondary school days where we have to rush and write a decent composition under an hour. I was actually happy writing it as i love descriptive writing. However i realised fromt he feedback that i got that this is slightly different from screenwriting.

In screenwriting visual imagery is more important.Thus words used to vivdly describe the actions/emotions would be preferred as after all it is meant to be acted out and filmed.

One example given to me was for the following sentence:

Time is essence yet his mind and body is locked in mortal combat-his mind begging him to leave while his body gets ready for a possible fight.– I was told to edit it to something like perhaps,

he stood at the doorway looking both sides wth sweat dripping down his forehead contemplating which way to go

This would show the hesitance and fear he had while trying to make a decision.

That example helped me understand it better. Another tip to add to the collection.

Next we moved on to talking about who would own the story.Would it be the person who wrote the opener or the person who completed it. It was quite a heated discussion i must say.I agree with Ryan, that the latter would be the real author who deserves the credit first. I mean anyway can start a story but finishing it is another thing.Besides the former had only sparked the idea. Like who ever came up with ” ONCE A UPON A TIME…”

After the “debate”, we were given homework to do.That would be the five 50 word stories.Not a word more.Not a word less. This is a tough and yet interesting assignment i must say.The word counting part especially.I keep forgetting where i left off.

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We ended off the lesson with talking about and preparing a presentation on a greek philosopher named “Aristotle”. This fellow is the one who had came up with somewhat like a set of official rules for storytelling. He also wrote a book called Poetics in which as scriptwriters and storytellers we can learn alot from.

Overall the lesson was pretty much interesting and entertaining as nobody slept.=X

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–REFLECTION–

Yes i have finally uploaded all my lecture notes.Now let me continue with my reflection.

Today we had our first storytelling in the freezing room. Luckily my mind was still able to function despite the cold gusts of wind the kept blowing against me. Location production class had trained me well.

I must say I was not exactly looking forward to storytelling. I had expected it to be like Written Communication. The module that I had abhorred very much. I was all prepared, ready to brace myself to go through another torturing semester of a similar module disguised under a different name.

However when Ryan told us that it’s not anything like written communication, maybe except for the fact that we do write, I was delighted. Furthermore there was no need for citations. The best two phrases I would love to hear at every class, “No citation”. Oh how glad I was to hear those two magical words. It made my day. Finally I can start writing descriptive/narrative stuff and almost anything I want. There would be no evil citations to limit my creativity anymore.

We started off the lesson rather interestingly. We formed a circle and had to play a game. That immediately brought back some nostalgic thoughts of primary school days where we formed a circle and played what I would consider very lame games now. We had to come up with adjectives that start with the same letter as the beginning of our name. We had a few interesting ones in our class such as sexy Sean, jolly Jueyi and even a Marilyn Monroe.

The game got me intrigued about wanting to know what else is there to come in this class. Almost everything seemed out of the norm. We even had to create a blog and that will be where we will submit all our assignments.

I liked the approach of the lessons. It was a relaxed and fun atmosphere and I did not feel unnerved one bit. It helped a lot when we were trying to write a story that he gave us to write in class. It started off with the following line:

“Jueyi puts on his can-can girl outfit and enters parliament”

While trying to write the story a thousand and one questions clouded my mind. Firstly how does a can-can outfit and parliament go together. It was absurd. However with a little help from my muse I was inspired to write a story that enabled me to connect them.

We also learnt that stories are part of our daily life, that almost anything can be a story; be it games or the usual novel. When I heard that games could actually be stories I felt that I had been given insight to some profound knowledge. I mean seriously who would have thought that games are actually stories. After delving into that, I realised that the very basis of developing a game is by starting out with a storyline.

A good example would be role-playing games where you are either some dragon-slayer or some hero off to save the world form some doomed destruction. Without a storyline the game might not have a structure and the player would be at lost what to do.

The fact that I was awed by this information made me realise that I probably haven’t finished playing much games as I usually jump right into it without really bothering to read the storyline and knowing what I was supposed to do or go. I was very enlightened.

The one thing that bothers me is the fact that we have to write in present tense. I am not exactly a big fan of writing in present tense. I prefer to write in past tense. However learning to write in present tense will be an interesting experience for me.

We were told to write in present tense, as it is more effective in evoking the audience’s emotions. This is especially true for screenplays. It made me realize that writing stories and scripts are not really that different as they both do only one thing-Tell a story.

Thus overall, the class was very much enjoyable and I look forward to it.