Wednesday, April 1, 2015

On release from the wheel

Good evening,

Fiction writing for novels is different from the script format in that a writer can return to the senses and wayward thoughts of the character.  

For adaptations to screen this is awesome because it gives you solid footing for shooting with subtext in your composition and gives your actors a great deal of insight into the motivations moving them through a given scene.  I feel like true adaptations are provided with a great deal of heavy lifting from the source narrative.  That's why I want to keep the craft growing alongside anything else.  It can double the work but if the original story is good, at least people can read it straight and find something in it.

I was thinking about this because it's only at the end of film school that I've finally begun to see how my mind visualizes information.  Through the early part of my college career where it was all about the creative writing courses, we were going deep into literature and the words themselves carried the ruling potency.  Sure they created images but the images were flashes, abstract, and usually combined with other types of stimuli like smells and touch.  Now I can see scenes when I want to and that's pretty cool.

As an example: I recently wrote a very 'stick-it-to-the-man' e-mail to a big group of students that were once part of my constituency as film society president.  In that I alerted them to a host of issues I'd recently dealt with prior to my resignation, including duplicitous faculty, obstruction, undermining language, just a slew of issues that distracted from getting the work done until eventually the loophole was uncovered that came with a threat ending my resignation.  I'm so happy to get that stuff off my chest.

While I'm writing of course all I can envision are all the people I'm pissing off. Before the work probably would have stuck pretty close to the flow of the keys but now there are visual associations like these people with real titles and shit...I'm in my room at my laptop but I'm very much with their faces closely observing the way they contort and grimace before my loose-lips syndrome. It's like getting up close to a JHS bully in slow-mo, able to really observe the humanity in the eyes of someone too much of a villain to recognize that they are one; both human and a villain.  It's all justified and what's most sad is that I probably could've easily crossed over to the dark side at many points in my life given the right circumstances.  The appearance of something like righteousness is just a weird occurrence.

I don't know what happens to people when they finally get a salary or benefits . . . I mean we all need them but we're so afraid to lose them too.  And then you become your salary and your benefits and you act as an agent in defense of the system that provides them.  Freedom is abandoned and I can't say if the alternative is necessarily worse.  But, for now, in the absence of money I've found a type of allowance to explore my potential and my voice.  Apparently I'm good at thinking and analyzing and using those thoughts to make people in "powerful" positions uncomfortable.  Well, school faculty isn't really a good test for that but relative to me as a recent student, it sure felt intense.

I'm glad to let go of that madness.  I'm glad to have a brief time, even if I'm joke-broke, to fool around in my imagination and see what's inside.  I can't wait to share something done - like really DONE.  Then I'm gonna get smashed!

- C
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Story inbound: Thirteen year-old Mary is aloof, antisocial and a bit morbid.  Her parents are patient, her 11 year-old brother oblivious.  Her imaginary friend Norn is however quite skillfull in tutoring young Mary how to push unsuspecting commuters before oncoming trains and getting away with it. When a chance witness takes off, Mary gives chase and unwittingly alerts a nearby patrolman to investigate with Norn silently in tow.

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