Alter Ego Assignment 1


Script/Plan

“When you were younger…”

Themes:

  • You cannot go back to the past, so live in the present.
  • Treasure the ones around you while you can.

Characters: Me (Current) + Grandmother

Reason to meet: Granddaughter visits grandmother.

Place for them to meet: Grandmother’s living room.

Incident to set up/respond to: Granddaughter reminisces about her past. She recalled her grandmother used to comb her hair as she sat on that couch when she was little.

Scene set –up: After taking a bath, Yiling walks to the living room to get her comb. Yiling sees Grandma sitting on the couch resting and this reminded her of the old times.

Dialogue:

(To be confirmed because not certain if grandmother can remember the script. If not will just improvise on the spot to get a more realistic and documentary type of an actual dialogue between me and my grandmother.)

Y – Yi Ling; G – Grandmother

(The dialogue will be in dialect)

Y : Ah ma, comb my hair for me?

G : aiyo so big already still want ah ma to comb hair for you ah?

Y : *while G was combing Y hair* Ah ma do you still remember how was I like as a child?

G : Aiyo last time when you were a little girl………(talks in detail about my naughty incidents as a child for maybe 40 seconds)……….and now you’re so big girl already. Wah time passes so fast…

Y: Ah ma, you do know that even though I was so naughty to you last time, I love you a lot right? Even now so.

G: Aiyo, I know hahahaha.


Explanation

The above is the dialogue I had initially wanted to carry out between my Grandmother and me. I had the idea to have an intimate conversation with my grandmother by talking about my past, which her expressions and her memories of me would bring her character out better. Be that as it may, much improvisation had to be carried out to head in the direction that I wanted instead of following the script I had planned out word for word.

Through this dialogue, there is a tight relation between both characters: My Grandmother and Myself.

I felt deeply that this dialogued recorded cannot be replicated or reproduced by anyone except for the both of us. Stories may vary when asking a different person who shares the same memory, but this story only makes sense when told by my grandmother and questions imposed by me.


In Depth Character Profiling (Updated)

ah-maajpg

My grandmother’s whole life is dedicated to taking care of the house and providing a home for her children, as well as practically taking me under her wing ever since I was born because my parents had to go to work. Her love language is more of ‘Acts of Service’ rather than ‘Words of Affirmation’. Hence, towards the end she replies my expression of love towards her with a mild chiding tone and shy chuckle.

me

My character in this dialogue is more of a reminiscing and a questioning one. Unlike my grandmother who is always at home and hardly steps out of her house, I am constantly on the move with time. My childhood is something I cannot revisit, and it will only be a fragmented piece of memory. Hence, this conversation with my grandmother about my past, adds another perspective on the same memory I had. In addition, it feels heart-warming to hear from my grandmother’s perspective of her memory of my childhood self.


Methodology

I added some clips between the dialogue footage not only to spice up the stagnant one-frame-middle shot, but to set the scene of where the dialogue was set up.

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Such as my grandma’s HDB Flat scene, clock ticking (in my grandmother’s house), the swaying Bougainvillea flowers planted by my Granddad before he passed on (appears when Grandma and I were talking about him) and the ‘Block 321 Clementi Ave 5’, which is the neighborhood area of where my grandma stays at.

In addition, the clips are included to provide visual aid instead of having the viewers to just imagine something they might have never seen before.

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Such as the process of her preparing food for me and the food that I loved to eat as a kid, exactly as the way how she prepares them.

For this part, I was inspired by a certain scene in The Virgin Suicide, where Trip and Lux were in the auditorium:

I liked the idea of how the narration in the lecture are in sync with the actions between Lux and Trip. For instance, at the 0:13 mark when the narration in the lecture says, “One high pressure and one low, coming into contact with another.”; and that is when Lux and Trip’s elbows touched. Hence, I was inspired by that scene and I added to the food scenes when the food my grandma listed out appears onscreen simultaneously.

Something that I have observed when I was adding subtitles to the video, is that how the subtitling was done really sets the atmosphere of the dialogue and film as well. While editing, I was pondering between translating the conversation for what it means in formal English, or should I translate it for what it is: Informal and light hearted conversation between a grandchild and a grandmother. As you can see, I went for the latter.

I included ‘Using Motifs to express Themes’ a couple of times in this project.

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Clock Ticking footage and the Block Number 321 footage to express my theme:

  • You cannot go back to the past, so live in the present.
  • Treasure the ones around you while you can.

Both motif involves numbers. The clock showing that time is never stopping as much as we reminisce, and that ‘321’ is a form of counting down to the days we have left.


Difficulties faced

  1. Staging the dialogue according to the script was not easy at all because my grandmother character was MY ACTUAL GRANDMOTHER and directing her character to memorize the script was not plausible, so I tried to direct her in a way that our conversation is headed in that direction I wanted. Hence, the final product was more of a documentation of my daily conversation with her and I really liked it because: One, it was on a real account; Two, it was hardly staged because I just told my grandmother to talk to me as per normal and Three, I got to know some new things about how my grandmother sees me as a kid.
  2. I had a lot of extra footage, and cutting it down to grasp the main essence and the part about expressing my characters through the dialogue was not easy. Because I found that many parts were critical and I had to give up quite a handful of precious dialogue that would emphasize on my grandmother’s character. Thus, abrupt cuts were seen.
  3. I started to use Adobe Premier Pro for the first time to fully edit a video and it was quite stressful because I had a mental image of how I would want the video to look, but I was not able to achieve it because I wasn’t familiar with the software. But I believe with more practice and video tutorials online, I think I would be better than I was this time. 🙂

 

Theme

Theme = Emotion = Audience Connection

Theme is not a one-word explanation like ‘Happiness’, as it doesn’t tell much about the film.

For instance, the movie that captured our hearts and made me into a sobbing mess in the theaters: Inside Out

The overall theme for the movie is :

‘Sadness is required to make Joy better’

Having a good theme would not only make emotional connections with your audience better, but also the message stays rooted in the audience’s mind after the movie.

A Theme = The Controlling Idea = The Message

The controlling idea is that everything (Dialogue + Scene +Props tie down to 1 idea.)

It is also essential that the Theme of the movie/film CANNOT have Conflicting Themes! For instance, Riley in the movie Inside Out cannot talk about politics in the film because it has 0 relevance to the theme of the film and that it will confuse the viewers. Thus it is important that when setting the theme for a film, we ought to revise the circle above to ensure that our themes and subthemes in the film are not conflicting.


Another example is used to figure out the theme of the local film during lesson:

Singapore Dreaming (and yes… the entire film is available on YouTube YES~)

The themes the class has contributed for this film is :

  • Limbo of common folks to be the elites
  • The pursuit of wealth + success (Paper Chase)
  • Gender Roles in Asian context (specifically Singapore)
  • Negativity is transmittable
  • The need for upward social mobility
  • Ego is what breaks relationships.

What are other ways for us to present our themes for films?

  1. Through Characters, it embodies the theme.
  2. Motifs
  3. Dialogues
  4. Setting

Using Characters- Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Windows

Using characters, this film illustrates the urban relationship behind closed doors. The main character sees the real bitterness of his neighbors through his own window.

Theme?

You will not know how person feels or think on the inside, and the exterior image they show you may be just a façade to hide their true feelings and emotions.

Choice of music in this film also shows the theme of this film, which evokes fragility & loneliness exhibited by characters in this film.

Using Motifs – Saving Private Ryan

In the film, there is a scene where the colonel was directing his troop towards his map as to where Ryan can be found. In the midst of explaining, the compass in his hand was shaking. The soldiers looked at the colonel’s hand and gave him a warm smile before the proceeded to look for Ryan.

The motif in this film is the Compass.

The colonel was nervous about the search or was suffering from physical injury from the war, but still insisted to search for Ryan with his entire troop. In the process, there was this conflicting moral ambiguity he was battling. The shaking compass was a motif to show the moral compass of the colonel along with the troops.

Theme?

Is it worth giving up the entire forest for a single tree?


Yit Ling, Clara and I (Group mates for Final project in Sem 1 <3) went to watch The Silence of the Lambs afterwards to try to apply what we have learnt during lesson, and sieve out the themes involves in this movie.

Themes?

>Repression from misogynist in a “male job”
>Women can handle male dominated jobs as well
>Hard work pays off
> Good things goes to those who fight for it 

Hence, a Theme is consistent throughout a movie and it sets the overarching story of the entire movie; the lesson learnt at the end of the movie.

First week of Semester 2~ *Inhales Exhales* I can already smell the assignements piling in already… LETS GO~


Stories and Your Identity

For today’s class, Ru Yi taught us what makes a good story.

Finding your own voice.

  1. Stories you care about
  2. To boot:
  • The kind of stories you are best qualifies to tell
  • The kinds of character that particularly attracts you.
  • The situations you find especially intriguing
  • A journal to record them all ( Words, Dialogues that attracts you etc.)

And then Ru Yi showed us a video of novelist, Chimamanda Adichie‘s speech : The Danger of a single story.

After watching listening to her speech, I have learnt that as a child, she created stories based on what she was exposed to in American books; in which she has no first hand experience of as a Nigerian child. For instance, eating apples in winter and drinking ginger beer. As a child she was vulnerable and impressionable. Soon, she changed and started writing about things she recognizes on first hand. She then realized that many of us including herself then that media’s portrayal of people and their single story kind of forms what a specific group of a person ought to look like, this has resulted in what they have become to the rest.

So the overall point that I have extracted from this video is…

“Don’t make ‘One Story’ be the ‘Only Story’.”


In order for a good story to be created, we need to have characters that are impressionable. Hence there is a need to define the need of your characters.

  1. POV (What the character’s believes in)
  2. Attitude (Intellectual Decision)
  3. Behavior / Mentality (The way in which a person behaves in response to a particular situation)

Hence, I watched Kill Bill Volume I for the first time, and had a go at dissecting the main character: The Bride (and yes she wasn’t given a name, they bleeped her name when mentioned in the film by other characters)

Here is the trailer for the movie! 🙂

*Spoilers alert

scanThis is the dissection of ‘The Bride’ in Kill Bill Volume I I have attempted in. 🙂

I have learnt that character dissection is very important because it helps the character in the movie to connect with the audience in terms of familiarity and evoke a feeling to care for the character. This enhances the plot of the film.

 

“HELLO MY NAME IS____”

Semester 2 of Year 1 has finally started! Woo Hoo~ assignments~ *nervous chuckle*

For this week 1 Assessment, Joy told us to create nametags for ourselves in our sketchbook during lesson time. We are told to describe three aspects of ourselves, while portraying the qualities of our personality! 😀

scan1) The first name card I did, I was intrigued by the meaning of each Chinese character my dad picked out for my name. And I decided to search for the meaning of individual characters, to create a new definition of my name when the literal meaning of my name is put together as a whole.

And what did I get? : ” An abundant chestnut who lives in leisure while escaping. (perhaps from reality)”.

2) I broke down the individual Chinese characters into recognizable signs in the Chinese word and place them together as well. In addition, when people ask me,

“How do you write your Chinese name?”

I would reply in Mandarin,

” A Rabbit sits on a Boat for ‘Yi’, and then a Grass on the top and Soil in the middle for ‘Ling’…”

And that is how people would have known how to write my Chinese name. But, typing it out here looks rather ridiculous as compared to verbalizing it during conversations I’ve realized…

3) I see myself as a child like youth who is still extremely naïve for my age. Hence, I used the template kids used to write on to learn to write their names to illustrate the child in me.

4) I am a rather timid and introverted person. Hence I wrote my name really small in the corner of the card. This is to show that I my personality is rather shy and don’t really want to stand out in the crowd because I feel more comfortable in the corner. 🙂