Well they came like a few weeks ago and forgot about this blog for a while…..if you are reading this please leave a comment, I have no idea if anyone still visits the storytelling blogs.
Anyway, I had a great trip to Phuket. Did a couple of scuba dives there, ate lots of food and took a lot of pictures. However, I brought four rolls of films and two of them were not loaded properly and they didn’t develop well. One of the films that was loaded properly was done in the dark as I wanted to take some sunrise shots.
Woke up 6am to take these pictures. It was worth it………..I WANT A DSLR!!!!!! ( Digital Single Lens Reflex, which is those type of cameras that has the lens outside of the body and its digital for those who not sure what I’m talking about) THEN I CAN TAKE A THOUSAND MORE SHOTS AND DO NOT HAVE TO PAY TO SEE MY PICTURES!!!!!! AND THERE SUCH THING AS LOADING THE FILM WRONGLY FOR A DSLR!!!!!!!!
I helped out a few shoots recently. One a film called Lucky 7 and I strongly advise you to watch it as I might get some cash if the film does well. Seriously the film is experimental and it seems good from what I seen so far. There 7 writers to the story and the first writer writes the first part of the story and the second writer sees the last minute of the story and continues. I won’t tell you what I know so far about the story but I know the flow of the movie will be funny due to the change of writer. So if your interested please watch the movie. I heard it be out in August. (6 months….) But watch the movie when its out!
I’m actually quiet surprise that there are quiet a few people having their blogs updated after all our assignments. Some of them are Marilyn and Kane (Vote for him for the best youth blog or I SHALL HUNT YOU DOWN AND DRAIN YOUR BLOOD OUT OF YOUR BODY!!!!) and its a pleasant surprise to find some of them doing so.
Here a quick update on what happening on our storytelling module:
Ryan has abandon the blogs(including his own at the point of writing this)
Now we have to write our own story as our final assignment. We don’t have any limits to write our stories so we can write anything we want!( But has to be confine into 3 pages…)
I wrote my story based on one of my openers and its quiet experimental. Its called Variable and the 2nd draft is under my pages and any comments is welcomed.(Comment or die!!!!)
Christmas and New Year were good but didn’t like having projects to be concern about during the festive period. Its like the holiday homework you get from Secondary school where you can just tell the teacher you forgot along to do it along with all your classmates. But there a freaking long Chinese New Year Holiday coming soon!!!
I would like to say that all those who have commented on my true-false story are wrong. I was locked in the toliet during my sec 3 mid year just before my A math paper. However, through shouting and banging on the door two girls managed to hear me and called help from the school office. I was soon released and I made it back to my A math paper in time.( I failed the paper though)
8 weeks ago, I was crying over that my holidays were over. 8 weeks after 8 weeks ago, I am still crying over it. This is suppose to be the last marked post in this blog……so that means I start using vulgar language from the next post onwards! I’ll try to keep this blog updated but not as often as before due to insane projects and work load.
We did an activity that was quiet similar to Whoes Line Is It Anyway? . We were broken down into groups and were given a slip of paper which told us what we were suppose to act out without any words at all. (Ryan didn’t cite Whoes Line Is It Anyway!!!) My group had to act out a scene that a woman is pregnant and the man is not the father. We kinda cheated cause I mouthed out the word baby. I think the whole idea of the activity is to find out the power of non-verbal actions. Knowing the full extent of each skill is extremely useful. Like knowing how much of dialogue can you put in before you have to put an action in it.
The use of actions is sort of a universal lanuage. Everyone understands a smile, cry or anger. If you go to a country that does not understand your language, people might not understand when you say, “I am about to lose my temper.” However if you go round punching people, they most probably understand what your saying. ( and call the police) I watched a documentary where some organization in africa get films of the 3 Stooges and screen them to african orphans. Even though the children don’t understand what they are saying, they understand their actions. Same goes for Charlie Chaplin, actions play an important part in story. They can also give a stronger meaning than dialogue.
Actions were the first way of communication. In the times of cave man, they most probably used their hands to point and make gestures instead of saying, ” Good day to you my good man.” The making of verbal communication must have been greatly helped by actions as cave man have to agree of what the meaning of the different sounds they make with their mouth.
Anyway, I posted my Visual Trigger assignment on my pages. CHRISTMAS IS COMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Tests are just satan in paper form. It gives you fear, pain and agony for both student and teacher and the only people who want it is just the people who are not involved in the test.
I had a test for Story Telling and I studied till 3am for it. However, it is an experience to study from blogs. Originally I had to beg some neat and smart person who made their notes very nice and neat to photocopy their notes for me. Now I can just go their blogs and vola!
Anyway, the test was okay but it was missing the answer sheet as usual. When I used to buy Ten Year Series books last time, answer sheets alway came with it.
The lesson was on dialogue. Its been something I been wanting to improve on as my dialogue is not that great in stories. I been using dialogue in minimum usage whenever I write stories. ( Go check on my stories, there barely any dialogue in them.) However, Ryan said that dialogue should be a balance between reality and fiction. If its too realistic, its too dull. If its too fiction, its too fake. And I can’t agree more. Anything fake has some authenticity in it and this goes the same for dialogue.
I feel that dialogue plays an important part in storytelling. It shows the character, gives a bit more life and is more interactive. However, I haven’t had any proper lessons on dialogues before. I do hope that Ryan focus more on teaching dialogue.
(Hey Ryan, I just downloaded that timetable which shows the weeks which have assignments and it says that we have a journal to hand up next week. Ermm….its a typo rite?)
First of all, I’m deeply sorry for putting this up so late. Tests and personal stuff been eating my motivation for a while…..I’ll add another story on my pages to lighten things up
This lesson is THE most emotional lesson I ever had in my life. We had to write a letter to someone who we stop talking to and most of us wrote to someone who had a strong connection to us. Be it a long lost friend, a relative who we no longer have contact with or someone we truely miss, we were pouring our hearts out to this assignment.
I wrote my letter to my aunty who died almost 5 years ago and I found it difficult to write the letter esspecially I know I have to share it to the class later. It was really personal to me and I held back in writing this assignment. Big mistake. Ryan later gave a few pointers which showed that my assignment isn’t up to standard. I love writing fictional stories cause I can easily go as far as I want to, personal stories just hits me in the heart and walls starts appearing. I start thinking of my relatives who might accidentally bump into this blog and read that letter and might open old wounds. The assignment was just too personal to me.
I know my classmates did the same assignment and managed to do a better job in it than me. But everyone has a weakness, this is mine.
(My apologies for this emotional post. I usually like to give humorous posts to at least try to get a chuckle or smile when you read my blog but I can’t think of anything to make you smile now. I’ll add a story or two to my pages if you want a change of mood)
WHEN IS CHRISTMAS COMING?????? Its already near to the end of November and I used to be enjoying my holidays and looking forward for the holy day during this time of the year for the past 10 years!!!
Anyway, week 5 lesson had an interesting lesson on characters. We were told by Ryan that you can’t have a story without characters. However, something in my head nudge me when he says this and its possible and I poundered on this for some times.
All nouns are not characters and I believe the differences between a noun and character is interaction and personality. It is assumed that all living things like people or animals interact so therefore they are immediatly assumed as characters. However, non-living things can be characters also if they interact with their enviroment. An example is Disney’s Beauty and The Beast cartoon which had the clock, tea cup and candle holder talking and dancing about which makes them characters. If the objects didn’t talk or move about, I don’t won’t be characters anymore because they do not interact with anything. Everything in this paragraph is from me and not from Ryan, do not study it for the coming test.
These are some of the pointers that Ryan pointed out about characters.
They experience conflict in achieving their dramatic need
They interact with other characters
They interact with their emotions
What if I only have a non-living subject that does not interact with anything and that is the only noun used? Is it considered a character then?
I’m gonna be nuts and impose a self-made challenge to myself. This challenge will be called No-Character Stories and see what I come up with. The stories will probably be boring because there is no interaction going on in the story. So here some of the rules I’m going to put for myself.
Rules
Rule 1: No living nouns like people or animals may be used.
(The very presence of a person or animal can be considered as interaction)
Rule 2: The nouns used must not interact with anything nor have any emotions.
Meathods I’m Gonna Try To Use
I’m going to try to use a descriptive essay style to write these stories while focusing on nouns. It could be a normal room and I talk about the objects in the room or an empty roller coaster….
I think I’m gonna fail this challenge. Technically its possible, but I can’t think of anything exciting or good to write under these conditions. There already one story in the page section.
Week 4 was cool. All we did was watch a movie and go back home! It would be cool if all lessons are like that (hint hint ).
The movie we saw was Election. Its about this teacher name Jim McAllister who was a very active teacher in his school. However, he has this student, Tracy Flick, who is running for president of the student coucil. Tracy is a hard working and obsessive person and she also had a sexual relationship with Jim’s best friend which got him fired as a teacher, and her mum also threaten to sue the school if this information is release to the school. Tracy is runnning for presidency uncontested and Jim felt it would be good for Tracy to have some competition. If Tracy were to become president, Jim and Tracy would be spending more time together as Jim was in charge of the student council and this frightens Jim as he was becoming sexually attracted to Tracy. Jim talked to Paul Metzler who was a star football player but stopped playing due to injury and felt he had no purpose in life after his injury. Jim convinced Paul that the presidency would give him a purpose in life. Also, Paul’s sister, Tammy, was in a relationship with a girl name Lisa who just dumped her and became Paul’s girlfriend. This angered Tammy who decided to contest for presidency as well who proclaims that the entire presidency is a sham and she disassemble it if she gets elected. Tracy was blazing mad when she found out about her two new contesters. And this is where I end my synopsis of the movie cause I don’t want to spoil the entire movie for you. (And I just realize that the synopsis which I just wrote is quiet long and probably Ryan’s 40th time reading a synopsis of this movie and I don’t want to bore him. Its the marks that matter!)
I read in Wikipedia that this movie is based on the 3-Way Presidential Election in America in 1992.( Don’t think it was as crazy in the one in the movie, otherwise the movie would be based on the actual presidents)
Oh ya, this movie follows a greek tragedy. There are the 3-act structure (which like 90% of all films which I seen contains it. But there is this thing called the 4-act Structure and not sure what it is, so probably 80% of the film i seen have the 3-act Structure if I mistaken 4-Act Structure as 3-Act Structure.) There are also characters! ( I think nearly all films I seen have characters). There are also stuff on greek tragedy which appeared in the film and I forgot about them. ( which I am damn sure that other films also contain this forgotten greek tragedy)
I also noticed that my course mates are blogging about their lives and I shall do the same. Today I woke up early to go to school. I got in the bus and went to school. Then I attended my lessons. When my lessons ended. I went home and eat my dinner. After I finish my dinner I decided to update this blog. I plan to sleep after updating my blog. Now you can see why I am a busy person who leads an exciting and fruitful life.
Btw, my mum just came back from America (land of the guns which com issues teaches us). She got a book called Too Soon To Say Goodbye by Art Buchwald as a present for my uncle and now I’m trying to finish the book before she meets my uncle. It was advertised in a newspaper in America and she decided to get it, when she went to buy the book she found out that it was the day of release and the shop haven’t even open up the boxes containing the book. Anyway, this book is written by a humourist who was suppose to die in March this year due to kidney failure but he still alive and the book is about his view of death and his supposetly last few days. I like his first chapter on how he was about to board a plane that was suppose to go to heaven but got delayed due to weather.
Seriously the film is experimental and it seems good from what I seen so far. There 7 writers to the story and the first writer writes the first part of the story and the second writer sees the last minute of the story and continues. I won’t tell you what I know so far about the story but I know the flow of the movie will be funny due to the change of writer. So if your interested please watch the movie. I heard it be out in August. (6 months….) But watch the movie when its out! 
