Random rants from a random rambling soul

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.