I’m a qualified Singaporean, are you?

I think I’m like Singaporean my age. To me, my definition of Singaporean is that they are ‘kiasu’ and they speak Singlish. Words like “lah, meh, hor, lor” just makes what a typical Singaporean. So therefore, I am a typical Singaporean.

I try to get the earliest seats in cinemas or even queuing up for Hello Kitty when I was young. I try to book as early as possible for any concerts or cinemas. I try to book it like 2 or even 3 months in advance. SMS as many as possible just to get the National Day tickets. And get as many particulars from people as possible and then write down as many as we can for lucky draw. I love free gifts. Any free gifts will do. People would line up for hours just to get the free stuff. Including me, of course.

I love saying “lah” behind every sentence although now I try to reduce it but unfortunately my attempts are unsuccessful. In primary school, common phrases and sentences like “Eh, don’t friend that boy la” or “I don’t friend you lah” are some examples that I can remember the day I started to use the word ‘lah’. Then there’s another phrase which people will try to ask in Singlish. Instead of “Is that true?” or “Are you serious”, they will say in very short simple singlish phrase. “Really meh?” I get influenced by all these “lah, hor, meh, leh, lor” as soon as I heard it. But list out all the singlish words that Singaporeans can end their sentence with and it gives you a nice piece of tune. So was your reaction, “Really meh?”. If it does, you are qualified as a typical Singaporean.

Storytelling notes – Week 7

Functions of a dialogue

- to express characters’ personalities
- communicates emotions
- tells of past or future events
- reveals new information (twists) to the audience
- express culture (how they speak)

Elements of dialogue

- Dialogue reveals character
o A character talks about himself or herself
o Other people talk about that character
- Dialogue establishes relationships between characters
o Character expresses attitudes and opinions that are in opposition to one another
- Good effective dialogue will have the story forward
o It conveys essential exposition
o Characters will talk about what happened, establishing the storyline

Exposition

– important details that the audience must know
– must know why it happens, how it happens
– Jurrassic Park – How dinosaurs were started?

*Dialogue ties the script together

Common mistakes

- dialogue should be used sparingly, never telling the audience what they can see for itself
o dialogue is no substitute
- dialogue should not match conventional speaker dialogue “real talking”

Reflections for storytelling week 8

I realise how actions can convey emotions. Just by banging the table can show some emotions and just by going to bed to sleep after a hard day’s work can even tell the audience how the character feels. Class was fun when we actually try to convey the message we suppose to tell the audience without dialogue just by doing actions.

I remember watching loads of Korean and Taiwan dramas when I was young. I love the way they make people cry or touch people’s heart. But now I realise that, these dramas are too “emo”. There’s loads of lovie dovie thingy going on and too mushy stuff in that dramas. I don’t mind that but sometimes it’s way too much.

I realise there’s two version of Gollilocks and the Three Bears. And also I didn’t know Three Bears killed Goldilocks in the adult version.

Storytelling notes – Week 8

Dynamic action

Story is ACTION
- Action is any kind of activity, movement, interaction of characters with their surroundings.
- Talking about feelings is not as powerful as illustrating why you feel this way through your actions

Film is BEHAVIOUR
- Actions are simply the manifestations of behaviour
- Human emotions are understood by watching the actions and reactions of the characters

DYNAMIC ACTION
- has the potential to enrich the experience of the audience by building an emotional relationship between the characters and the audience

Reflections on week 5

Connecting your stories and emotions to your audience. That’s the key.

How you do this and how you convey your stories to the audience?

I remember watching Star Wars Episode 4 when I was young. It was complicated for me at that time. There was so many things happening at once. And the story started at episode 4 and I don’t even understand anything. But soon after Episode 1 was released, the story gave me abit more details about the story and I have to keep watching to understand the story. Making stories not as complex makes audiences understand the story better. But I still like complex stories because it involves the audience to think.

Oberving, memory and experience are the tools for storytelling. I always wonder whether Peter Jackson uses that tools to tell a story about Lord of the rings.

Storytelling notes – Week 6

Writing for an audience

Screenwriter = storyteller
- the cinematic experience is not just made up of words you might put on paper, but the audience’s emotional reaction to that information

To connect
- themselves
- their unique vision
- the material
- the drama
- the emotions
- the hidden messages

- People want to be transported by a screenplay

Where do you look for a story?
- inside yourself
- everything to learn about other people is already in you

now you need to figure out how to connect it

Experience

- all people have fragments of stories
- these potential ideas prompt your desire to know more
- respond emotionally and intellectually to what you heard
- good stories are born in the heart, not the head

Put yourself in the role of the audience

3 storytelling tools
- observe
- memory
- experience

Reflections on storytelling week 3

Aristotle. Aristotle was a great man from my point of view. He created so many elements of a story. Like the 3 act structure. I agree that all story must have a introduction, middle, and the end.

What if a story has none of these? What if the story starts with an end? So many questions from the audiences will start to arise when no one understand how the story ends.

Maybe the middle? Well actually it does work, but it doesn’t reveal much detail about the characters or even the story itself.

Some story has tried starting with the end and then make a flashback of how it ends. Well it works. Like the movie 12 monkeys. It started off as a dream but actually thats the ending to the movie itself.

Cause and effect chain helps alot in storytelling. Imagine me provoking some Chinese gangsters down the street, they will bring in more of their gang to find me and kill me. In life, cause and effect are also seen around us.

Storytelling notes – Week 3

What is tragedy?
It is an imitation of an action (mimesis) that is serious, complete and of a certain magnitude; in language embelished with each kind of artistic ornament; in the form of action not narrative; with incidents arousing pity and fear, wherewith to accomplish its kartharsis of such emotions..

- shows rather than tells.
- Creates a cause and effect chain that clearly reveals what may happen
- Arouses not only pity but also fear, because members of the audience can imagine themselves within the cause and effect chain.

6 parts of tragedy:
- plot
-character
- diction
- thought
- spectacle
- song (melody)

Cause and effect chain
- cause = reaction
- effect = result
- chain = diminoeffect
eg. A kills B. B’s gang bring in. and there was a war.

Unity of actions.
- time
- place
- action

if everyone starts to tell their own story, it is better to have a main story that everyone can focus their attention to.
*PLOT is the most important of tragedy

What is plot?
- plot is the arrangement of incidents
- it is not the story itself, but the way the incidents are presented to the audience
- the structure of the play

BEGINNING
- the incitive moment
- it must start the cause and effect chain

MIDDLE
- climax
- it must be caused by earlier incidents and itself cause the incidents that follow it

END
- resolution
- must be caused by the preceding events but not lead to other incidents
- the end should resolve the problem created during the incitive moment

Episodic plot
- it is plot where lesser focus is placed on connection between scenes and its only bonded by common characters.
- it never connects to the main story
- like Poseidon – a lot of characters and they do their own stuff but in one sinking ship

Simple plot
– one and continuous
– simply has only ‘change of fortune’ – like the story have from good to bad

Complex plot
- has a reversal of intention ‘peripeteia” and recognition “anagnorisis” connected with the catastrophe

things goes from good to bad because the character

*Perepeteia – reversal of circumstances of turning point (sudden reversal dependant on intellect and logic)
*Anagnorisis – the point in the plot, particularly the tragedy when the reality of the situation downs upon the main character

A story can’t start suddenly and end suddenly without having a reason.

Reflections for storytelling week 7

So week 7 was more on dialogues. Dialogues are everywhere.

We watched a short film called ‘Autograph book’. I kinda like the way they made this film because of how it brings back primary school memories. But we don’t do autograph books that time. We did something like a ‘diary’. Not the usual diary where you write stuff about your day and the problems you are facing, it is more like a autobiography of the person whom you ask he/she to write about.

Example:

Name: Blah blah blah
Address: Blk….
Likes: Goreng Pisang…
Class: ….
..
..
..
..

and the list goes on. I find writing my own personal stuff in someone’s elses diary is just simply stupid. What if the person lost that diary and someone else finds it? What if they know my address? What if someone is planning to break my house and steal valuable items? Oh no. Ok lucky that was when I was in primary school. I did that too but I lost that diary of mine.

We learnt about dialogue on week 7. It is something useful in every story. Without it, we can know nothing. Story will be just plain bored. Imagine a movie without dialogue. How are they going to communicate? Besides the fact previous silent films even uses text to convey dialogue or messages.

Alrights. So that’s all for week 7. I tried asking Farhan and Atiqah to ‘act’ out as my parents for the audio dialogue thing. So check it out at the page call ‘Dialogue’.

Reflections for storytelling week 6

So I learnt something new again in week 6. I guess expressing youself in words is not easy as you think. When people say they are angry or they are sad, I think it doesn’t convey that emotion to audiences very well. How sad are you? How angry are you? I always had this problem of expressing myself in words. Although I experience alot of these feelings in life, but to write it down on words isn’t easy.

Details are another thing in order to make your essay understandable. My mistake in Letter to the Past was I didn’t have details there. I thought the assignment was just write down a letter to the person but I didn’t know that it was people to read it. So I didn’t think the audience, I was just focusing more on my feelings rather than the audience. So i think that was my mistake there.

We watched ‘Intransit’. It was very confusing at complicated at first. I started to drift away and not paying attention to the storyline. I was intrigued by their special effects and CG work. Actually I love films or videos which allows me to think deeper into it. But that day, my brain was totally shut down. So I didn’t really pay attention. But after discussing with the class about the story, I was more awake and finally was paying more attention to the topic about Intransit. I guess Intransit describes the story in an indirect way.

That’s all for week 6.