A Toxic Relationship

For the final assignment, I plan to collaborate with Claire to perform a scene between two characters who are in a toxic relationship:

Some basic character details:
1. Violet  (played by Claire) – INFP personality
She’s a problem solver and planner. Violet is a pacifist: Due to her family background, she hates starting fights or causing scenes and is usually the one doing the placating whenever the other party is upset. She’s been in a relationship with Serene for 2 years, but still doesn’t know if she’s happy or not (it swings back and forth between the two).

2. Serene (played by Lauren) – ENTJ personality
Serene has narcissistic tendencies cultivated from an extremely spoiled upbringing. She often manipulates and gaslights when she starts arguments with Violet, usually turning issues around so Violet sees that she’s in the wrong and apologises. On her bad days, she is impulsive and moody. Her good days show her charismatic, loving and witty side.

The scenario: After months of stagnancy in the relationship, Violet plans a date at a park to reignite the romance. Things reach a boiling point when Serene’s dark mood rears its head again.

Rough script: Domestic Violet_Acting

My Character

My Character, Diana, is a ditzy waitress in her 20’s who aims to open her own salon as a beautician. Due to her clumsy nature and lack of EQ skills, she has cycled through dozens of jobs after somehow screwing up in each one. One example of her lack of social skills is that she’s too honest, therefore she always manages to offend or amuse somehow due to her blunt tongue.

Waitressing at a famous hotel is her latest job. Diana desperately doesn’t want to get fired again because she’s in dire need of money to survive and she still wants to save for her dream salon. She grew up in a household with a pageant mum and two other sisters (all were forced into pageants since they were young till puberty when they learned to rebel). Diana and her sisters grew up with a skewed sense of self-image: they subconsciously hold their mum’s values, that “looks matter above all else in order to succeed in life”, which is why Diana feels being a beautician is the right choice since she gets to help people be beautiful while maintaining herself as well.

Dramatic Situation:

Diana’s on her first week at work as a waitress and she’s on her best behaviour. As she starts her shift, little by little, she annoys the patrons and her co-workers with her shenanigans. She seals her fate when she accidentally spills tea all over a well-known food critic’s lap.

Mother: New Story Updates (Script, Character Bio, Scene Analysis for Class)

Scratched the VR idea — This is draft two of Mother (new idea).

Script: Mother (妈的) Draft 2

Short synopsis:

Widowed Margaret loves her son to the point of spoiling him. With no husband and a fear of dying alone, she obsesses over prospective grandchildren. After walking in on her son and his male friend in a misleading situation, she sets her mind to secretly turn him to the straight path using dubious methods.


Character Bio:

Margaret Lai, late 40s – 50s

Serious, naive and slightly neurotic — a typical Singaporean auntie with kiasuism attached. She’s smothered her son all her life but does so more now that she is widowed. Her dream is to be able to see her grandchildren (via Raymond) and live out her last days being cared for like how she has always done so for Raymond.

Raymond Lai, late 20s

Raymond’s too used to being spoiled that he doesn’t know hard work. He spends his time locked in his room surfing the web and playing games. A socially awkward shut-in who prefers life in 2d over real people. Because of his upbringing, he’s lazy and unsociable.

Paul

Raymond’s close friend from his teenage years. They never really matured much. Usually, he goes over to Raymond’s to play games and hang out.

Prostitute, 20s-30s

Pastor Richard, 50s


Scene Analysis for Thursday’s class (22/09): 

In this scene, Raymond has suffered the brunt of his mother’s strange antics. He’s paranoid and wary of her, so when she enters the room, his full defenses are up because he doesn’t trust her anymore.

Margaret’s goal in this scene is get Raymond to understand her and try to calm him down from the previous events. The whole heart-to-heart talk on the bed is her goal to present her views on grandchildren and her love of her son to Raymond. And to justify the next big event… the prostitute’s entrance.

When the prostitute arrives, of course the soothed Raymond flares up again at his mother’s shenanigans and just leaves the room and house.

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Are You Happy?

This is my attempt to edit the vox pops conducted in school.

There were many interesting answers and reactions (i.e. those who gave a ‘no,’ and those who gave more personal answers rather than politically correct/safe ones), so I thought I’d group all their general answers together first before moving on to their reasoning to make it more digestible for viewers.

Here’s the link!

Documentary: Farmers in the Concrete Jungle

My team and I were very interested in Singapore’s farming culture — all we knew of it as millennials was that the ones in Singapore had a kind of tourism vibe to it. We initially considered if it was just unconventional farms that made us think of Agritourism – such as the crocodile and frog farms here – but upon further research, we found that Agritourism is actually a shared concept for almost all the farms in Singapore which have been relocated to one area due to land constraints.

This was how we landed on our documentary angle, on how farms in Singapore adjust to rising urbanization and demand for land, which results in them capitalizing on “Agritainment” to help with the high land costs. We will also explore the importance of and need for self-sufficiency in resource-lacking Singapore, which imports 90% of its produce overseas.

We have since visited 2 farms so far: The Jurong Frog Farm, and Bollywood Veggies, a vibrant jack-of-all-trades kind of farm.

Additional comments/reflection:

Team members: Alex, Clarinda, Lauren, Matthew

Our roles are pretty flexible throughout the whole process;  I am currently the main editor and will be writing the script/interview questions for the docu.

The is the test edit I did for our recent research visit to JFF: link.

You can also find our PPT slide with our initial ideas and brainstorming here: pdf link

We plan to visit again to shoot more cutaways and get a detailed tour of the farming process. Next on our list of farms to interview… in Malaysia!