At this very moment, right here, right now, I'm (technically) not supposed to be writing about the set.
Not because of an NDA or anything, instead what I'm supposed to be doing is to throw my faculties on plot development and storyline.
But there are times that you do have some parts down pat whereas the others are drifting mists in the wind, and there are times when in some sort of irony, you find yourself looking at the very neighborhood that inspired your characters.
Very often we find ourselves having to visualize what the actual scene looks like; very often we find ourselves having to put our mind to the layout and everything and visualize them as they 'live' out their universe. Few are the times when we're actually in the midst of the neighborhood where they're meant to dwell in and you realize, with a stunner, that oh man, they're REAL people.
I mean they could be around me right now. They could be hovering over my shoulder watching what I bang out on my MS Word. They could be walking along the pavements in the hot sun, hurrying their way to their destinations. They could be in their cubbyholes right now, plugging through another day at work.
They could be this person I see strolling in front of me, clutching plastic bags from the supermarket.
They could be this person hunched over the table as he munches on a piece of toast.
They could be this person who is now dashing across the road with an umbrella over her head.
It could be anyone.
It could be the person standing at the front of the convenience store waiting for another.
It could be the one who is staring at the menu placed in front of the little diner.
There are two, if not more, worlds that exist in what we do, and frequently, depending on the medium and style that we choose, the two worlds don't merge.
But today, for the first time I realize that sometimes it doesn't necessarily have to be a particular style that plops you in the center of the action. You don't have to have a particular style in order to plop yourself in the center of the action. You just need to plop yourself there first, spin the camera around, and there, you have a theme that speaks not of your voice, but their voice. You cease to be a storyteller. You cease to provide an opinion or direct the flow of thought.
Instead, you become an observer who simply reverses the position of the camera, give them the mike and seek out the thread that binds them together. Is that also a storyteller? Does an observer become a storyteller? Or is the observer simply an editor?
We'll have to see.
But for now, the skies are getting grey. There's a curtain shade of sorts in front of me which makes the world before me look like it had vertical stripes dangling from something up above. The offices are there, the rows of shop houses and cafes are there and I'm seeing time and people stream comfortably, easily about and around me.
Not because of an NDA or anything, instead what I'm supposed to be doing is to throw my faculties on plot development and storyline.
But there are times that you do have some parts down pat whereas the others are drifting mists in the wind, and there are times when in some sort of irony, you find yourself looking at the very neighborhood that inspired your characters.
Very often we find ourselves having to visualize what the actual scene looks like; very often we find ourselves having to put our mind to the layout and everything and visualize them as they 'live' out their universe. Few are the times when we're actually in the midst of the neighborhood where they're meant to dwell in and you realize, with a stunner, that oh man, they're REAL people.
I mean they could be around me right now. They could be hovering over my shoulder watching what I bang out on my MS Word. They could be walking along the pavements in the hot sun, hurrying their way to their destinations. They could be in their cubbyholes right now, plugging through another day at work.
They could be this person I see strolling in front of me, clutching plastic bags from the supermarket.
They could be this person hunched over the table as he munches on a piece of toast.
They could be this person who is now dashing across the road with an umbrella over her head.
It could be anyone.
It could be the person standing at the front of the convenience store waiting for another.
It could be the one who is staring at the menu placed in front of the little diner.
There are two, if not more, worlds that exist in what we do, and frequently, depending on the medium and style that we choose, the two worlds don't merge.
But today, for the first time I realize that sometimes it doesn't necessarily have to be a particular style that plops you in the center of the action. You don't have to have a particular style in order to plop yourself in the center of the action. You just need to plop yourself there first, spin the camera around, and there, you have a theme that speaks not of your voice, but their voice. You cease to be a storyteller. You cease to provide an opinion or direct the flow of thought.
Instead, you become an observer who simply reverses the position of the camera, give them the mike and seek out the thread that binds them together. Is that also a storyteller? Does an observer become a storyteller? Or is the observer simply an editor?
We'll have to see.
But for now, the skies are getting grey. There's a curtain shade of sorts in front of me which makes the world before me look like it had vertical stripes dangling from something up above. The offices are there, the rows of shop houses and cafes are there and I'm seeing time and people stream comfortably, easily about and around me.