The end?

They say all good things must come to an end. If so, does it mean that this blog is good?

Over the past eight weeks, I’ve touched on a number of issues that are close to my heart. Politics, religion, space, just to name a few. Well, actually that’s pretty much all of them. Unless you count my motivations. Anyway, perhaps I could have added my hatred of racists and sexists (and other negative things that end with -ists) to that list, if I had known earlier that reflections weren’t supposed to be about the class. But never mind, no point crying over spilt milk. We should always look to the future, so I guess it’s only fair to leave my last reflection to be about the passion I am chasing right now. Filmmaking.

Filmmaking isn’t exactly a profession that you would associate the word ’stable’ with. In fact, you would probably be called crazy to pursue a filmmaking career in Singapore. Thankfully, I didn’t receive much flak from friends or family, although I am pretty sure my mother would have preferred I undertake a more professional line of work such as a career in law.

I guess the stigma that surrounds filmmaking in Singapore is that not many people have succeeded in this line. Jack Neo today, stands as the only Singaporean to actually make money from his films. Pioneers like Eric Khoo and Royston Tan, as far as their successes have taken them to Cannes and Sundance, still have not managed to the break ice with the general public.

Comparing Jack Neo with Royston Tan is like comparing a durian with a truffle cake. The durian may look ugly on the outside, but on the inside, it’s everyone’s favorite fruit. The truffle on the other hand has the exquisite beauty of  all fine things, but requires an extremely acquired taste. Basically, if you didn’t get my point, I was trying to put across that the general public and film critics don’t usually agree with each other.

Take Spiderman 3 for instance, it garnered a lowly 2 stars from movie critics, yet made over $150 million during it’s opening weekend. Where’s the sanity?!

So finally, here comes the big hoo-hah that I’ve been drum rolling to, who does the filmmaker create the movie for? The public or the critic?

I think it’s an important point for future filmmakers to ponder, especially my classmates, since although we should make movies that are great, we should also worry how we’re going to feed ourselves.

Mister Ryan posted an intersting article on his blog a few weeks back from the LA times. It basically said that hollywood’s most potential directors are opting for the easy money in sequels and trilogies instead of sticking to creating memorable one shot movies such as Memento and The Usual Suspects.

Personally I don’t have anything against sequels or trilogies; I just don’t think they’ve been that successful so far. Although Pirates of the Caribbean started as a brilliant movie, the two sequels just plummeted into an endless abyss. The Matrix trilogy as artistic as it was, got drowned by it’s own story. And although most people would argue that the Lord Of The Rings is the best example of an exception. I simply slam back and say that Tolkien never meant for the Lord Of The Rings to be a trilogy. Some idiot in America screwed it up when he printed the damn book.

But anyway, back to my point, although trilogies aren’t that great, they do wonders at the box office. And you have to remember, it’s not just one movie that reaps in the rewards, it’s all three movies in the series.

On the other hand, you’ve got your directors like socrcese who loves making movies of different themes and genres. They don’t have so much fan appeal, but they add so much quality to the film archive.

So… Back to the question… Which one do you please? Do you please the critic? Or do you please the audience? By now, hopefully, most of you would know by now that I prefer taking the middle ground. Basically…. The politically correct answer. I think it is possible to create movies that have great storylines but still have that blockbuster approach. (That obviously rakes in the big bucks.)I’m looking for balance.

Back to Lord Of The Rings. I think it’s the perfect movie that shows this balance. It satisfies the critics. And it satisfies the audience. In fact, the word satisfy would be an understatement. It simply blew the critics away, and it blew up the box office.

I’ve always thought of the perfect film needs to follow 3 simple points.

1. The story has to be something new

We’ve watched many films. We want to see a story that has a great plot, great characters, great diction, great though, great spectacle and great melody. But at the same time we also want to see new stuff. Add a bit of variety to the movie cupboard.

2. The story has to have a moral to it.

Something I like to see in movies, is when they take a current issue and work it into their story. It makes you look at the film from a deeper perspective and it’s also a great feeling to figure that perspective out.

3. You got to make it beautiful.

Here’s the point that I think many filmmakers tend to forget. Film is an art. It is an artistic expression. It should look beautiful. Everything in your film should look artistic.

Look at those three points. And then look at Lord Of The Rings. It works.

To me, the real art of filmmaking is finding that balance. When you can create a film that can satisfy everyone. Or almost everyone. Then you’ve succeeded. I can’t wait for location production.

Religion, religion, where art thou my religion?

I had a tough time choosing a topic of interest for this week’s reflection. I had planned to write about the movie industry, but when I read Sabreena’s new post on religion and god. I just had to respond.

Now, this might come as a shock to quite a few of you, but I consider myself to be an atheist, a free thinker for the layman. Technically speaking, I’m what you would call an agnostic atheist. Basically, I am 99% convinced that god does not exist; but due to a lack of information, I am still open to the idea that god is out there. Basically, if Mister Ryan were to comment, he’d use his favorite phrase and say, “being an agnostic atheist is the politically correct answer.”

Being an atheist is hard, we make up only 2.7% of the world’s population, and where as other religions hate each other, ALL religions hate atheists. It wasn’t a rash decision when I decided to become an atheist. No one got hit by a car, and made me lose my faith because of that terrible accident. There wasn’t any hocus-pocus about it. I simply became an atheist because of the overwhelming evidence.

I’ve read the bible. Well, most of it. Okay, the interesting parts. I’ve gone to church. I’ve worn ties to chapel services. I’ve prayed next to bed. I’ve given 10% of my savings to the needy. I’ve sung all those slow, boring hymns. Generally, I was a good Christian.

But there comes a time where you ask yourself, why am I following this blindly? I don’t like to question people’s beliefs or faiths. It’s not a nice thing to do. But here’s something I ask a lot of people when the issue of religion comes up.

You can have blind faith about your religion. But say you’re bungee jumping, and it’s a really tall bridge, building or mountain cliff. You can have faith that you’re tethered to the bridge. But does it really hurt to turn around and check?

If people believe so much in their religion, then go out and prove your religion. Prove that it’s true. Prove that it’s not all coincidence, random occurrences, or the odd lucky person. Prove that someone out there is actually guiding us all.

Sabreena went out and actually did that. She argued for her faith. It wasn’t a very convincing argument. But an argument none-the-less.

I’ve heard many argument from theists over the years. The favorite one among them would be… everything is so perfect in the universe, so there must be an intelligent being behind it all.

If you’re as interested in the universe as I am, you would know the universe is far from perfect. Take the sun for instance. It’s really beautiful, if you recall, I posted something a few weeks back saying that I love the sun at 5 o’clock.

But here’s the real facts about the sun, it burns at roughly 6000 degrees Celsius on the surface. To give you an idea how hot that is, gold melts at around 1800 degrees Celsius. But that’s not even half of it. The sun’s core is estimated to be 15, 000, 000 degrees Celsius. Yes, that’s fifteen million degrees Celsius. A hot day in Singapore is a mere 37 degrees.

Want more scientific data? Apart from the sun’s hot nature, it also expands a lot of cosmic radiation. We call them solar flares; these erupt from time to time in varying levels. They mess with short-range radio equipment like mobile phones or pagers, and sometimes increase the drag on low orbiting satellites. This leads to orbital decay sending the satellite into a spiraling death till it meets the cold hard ground of the earth. But what’s even more worrying is for astronauts, these solar flares erupt a tremendous amount of protons, which can cause biochemical damage in humans and other life.

Still think the universe is perfect? Like the saying goes, perfect from far, far from perfect. Basically, there isn’t really any perfect design to the universe. It’s a mix of blobs, and rules that somehow manage to work together.

Something that Sabreena touched on in her reflection was the whole chicken and the egg paradox. Basically, she argued that a creator needed to create the big bang. To that I simply say, who created the creator?

We haven’t matured enough as a society yet to fully understand the universe. There are still many questions left unanswered, and many questions that haven’t even been discovered. But I find it’s very ignorant for people to assume that just because we don’t know how something works, there’s a supernatural force acting behind it.

Some of you might think that’s daft, that we can’t be that stupid. But let me remind you, a hundred years ago, we still thought the earth was flat, forty years ago, people were saying smoking and drinking coke was good for your health, five years ago, no one believed in global warming, and a year ago, we were worried about Brad pitt’s marriage.

But my most favorite “argument” has to be… “You just gotta have faith.”

I got faith, brother. But it’s not blind faith. I challenge people to go and discover your religion, other people’s religions, try not having a religion and do all this with an impartial mind. I’ve done it. And I’m proud of it. I’m happy with my enlightenment.

I nearly got killed by monkeys.

 NOT my reflection.

Singapore is a damn strange place. And I really mean that.

This 62 km island is populated by roughly 4 million people and is supposed to be 100% urbanised. Yet, amazingly enough, I nearly got killed by monkeys the other day. And I don’t mean hooligans from that school across the street.

Now it should come as no surprise to most of you that I adore photography, it’s extremely fun, so long as I’m not restricted to certain parameters, like lines, colour, dominance and all that hoo-hah. So being the adventurous soul I am, I decided to go down to bukit timah hill to take some photos. (Look at that oxymoron, going down to a hill.)

Obviously it’s not a great idea to go trekking by yourself, so I asked a few people if they wanted to follow me. Sudhir said no.Wen Hsin said no.Lyonn said no. Jacque said no. Vanessa said no. And I’m pretty sure if I asked anyone else, they would have also given me the same reply. What negative people.

So there I was climbing Bukit Timah hill, looking for classic photos, when suddenly, I see this monkey hanging from a tree in the jungle. I was on the rugged trail, and unfortunately, the monkey was on a tree far from it. I contemplated whether or not I should risk life and limb by stepping off the trail onto the impassable terrain. It was quite steep. I stood there for a few moments, observing the little bugger, before finally deciding it wasn’t worth it. I continued down the path, wondering if I had just wasted a great opportunity.

Like love-torn lovers, I looked back to see that monkey one last time, when I noticed an even better shot! There was this other monkey, hanging from another tree right alongside the trail. It was my lucky day! Or so I thought.

I took a step closer to it. The monkey stared at the camera glued to my eyes. It didn’t move. I took another step. He started to show anxiety. I tried my luck for one more step, when suddenly the small, cute, little, evil, cousin-of-our-spieces screamed at the top of it’s lungs.

The next thing I know, the whole jungle is screaming and monkeys are flying everywhere. I broke off into a frantic jog, and hurried down the trail. After a few minutes of running, and a few startled turns around my back, I finally decided I was safe.

I’ve basically re-learnt two things from this experiance. One. Don’t even go trekking yourself.

And Two. Don’t run with your mac.

So anyway, I’ve been chased by dogs in Ubin, almost killed by monkeys on Bukit Timah hill, and I hope i’ll be nearly mauled by Lions on the African safari next.

I’m running out of corny titles that have the word REFLECTION in them.

If there is one that thing that’s close to Singaporean’s hearts, it would definitely be something called money. Cash, dollars, rupees, pounds, the dough, whatever you like to call it. We worry about how much we’ll get paid, when we’ll get paid, and most importantly, will we get paid, every single day. As a nation, we’re very money minded. Thus it comes as no surprise to me that politics and wages have finally clashed head to head.

Politics has historically been about power. If you look at countries like Britain or the United States, these are places where you can see politics in full force, with power struggles, and power plays, it becomes so exciting to watch and track. Here in Singapore, if you want to see power struggles, you’re better off watching Energizer and Duracell battle on television.

However, for some reason, ministerial pay has become quite a large issue over the last few months. It hit the news like a wild fire, and quickly became a talking issue for people over kopi-o.

The issue that had everyone going crazy was that our beloved prime-minister, Lee Hsien Loong, was getting a hefty pay rise which would take his annual salary to a whopping, S$3,091,200, a 25% increase from his 2006 pay check. On top of that, his pay increment would end up dwarfing the US President’s annual pay by five times.

Looking at the situation from an impartial mind, I can obviously tell you the most positive outcome that has arisen so far is the renewed interest in politics. The number of blogs, newspaper articles, forum letters, and coffees drunk during vivid discussion has almost tripled since this time last year.

Perhaps it is a good thing that ministers are getting another pay rise. We need fresh blood in politics, in both the ruling party and the opposition. Money is a huge incentive to those who want a relatively stable and interesting career. Like I said, politics has always been about power, but let’s face it, you don’t really garner that much power when you rule a country of only four million. When it comes to international summits, you’re motioned towards the door while the big boys make their entrance, other country’s newspapers call you “small and insignificant” and most of the time, your neighbor’s hate you.

And lastly, let us not forget corruption. Singapore prides itself as being a country with an extremely low level of corruption. Our policemen are just, our judges are fair, and our ministers rule with the country in mind. We don’t want these important people to lose sleep because they’re worried about how to put food on their family’s table. Just look at our neighbor across the causeway. How many times have we seen people leave the police force, or the parliament because they were accused of taking bribes from evil souls?

Now, we look at it from another angle. Why is our prime minister of a country of 4 million who’s annual GDP is $121.5 billion getting 5 times the salary of that from the President of The United States’s who’s country spans nearly 300 millions people and has an annual GDP of $13.3 Trillion? The proportion is very wrong. We’ve benchmarked everything in Singapore against the United States. Our standard of living, the price of coke, our fashion sense, we practically adore Americans, so, why aren’t we doing the same for ministerial pay? I smell a conspiracy.

It’s no secret that we’re an authoritarian state and it’s no secret that PAP can pretty much do whatever they want to do, whenever they want to do it. The people barely have any right to say anything against the government. Most of the people who have said something against the PAP have come under a number of lawsuits, which have rendered them bankrupts. Perhaps the most famous of these people is former worker’s party chief, JB Jeyaretnam, who was made a bankrupt in 2001 after a series of lawsuits. It is fitting for this assignment that yesterday, he made an announcement of his return to politics after wrangling himself out of bankruptcy.

I’m not implying anything here, but perhaps the pay rise is for one simple task. To pay more to PAP members, and to secure PAP’s role as the dominant political party for the next ten years. Drown the opposition in debts, while the dominant party has all the cash. Sounds like a great way to market a product. We got more money than the opposition.

REFLECT, recycle, reuse

Oh my god! I’m on Ryan’s blog.

Alright, back to work. Like I promised last week, I’m going to write a deep and meaningful reflection about the great vastness of space.

If I had to be brutally honest, I would unfortunately have to say that film is not my only number one passion.

I love film. Really, I do. To me, it is the greatest and most beautiful form of art. Films can make you cry, laugh, adore, hate, arouse and overall, experience a multitude of emotions in a single hour. (Alright, so most films are 2 hours now.) They are a way of expressing a message to the masses. And I have messages I want to express. That’s why I took this path.

But like I said, being brutally honest, film shares the number one spot with another, far greater object. Space. (Obviously, that’s if you count space as an object, technically speaking, space is nothing.)

Don’t get the wrong idea; I never was the type, which grew up wanting to be an astronaut. I never had a wild dream like that. My dreams are wilder.

Think about it, humans are explorers. We’re curious, inquisitive, sometimes perhaps, busy-bodied animals. We love to dissect frogs, pry open watches, break into the old school storeroom. It’s what we do. We explore to better understand places and things.

We have satellites that map every square inch of the planet. We’ve scaled the highest mountain, (almost) reached the deepest trench, examined the smallest atom, catalogued most of the world’s animals, we know quite a lot about the planet. Quite a lot.

It would seem that there aren’t many things left to explore on our planet. And that could be the cause of the degradation of society. We simply have nothing that can arouse our curiosity anymore.

Nothing causes us to stop and go: “Hey! That’s pretty cool.” So we had to make up new objects to entice us. We get so caught up in our lives of fancy, revolving around money, power, and fame. We draw imaginary boundaries around land, proclaiming the other side to be evil and worthless. We don’t seem to care for our neighbors anymore. As a species, we are so disunited.

But to me, space is something that unites us all. Individual countries can’t proclaim an area of space as theirs. No matter how rich, or powerful, or famous you are in space, nobody can hear you scream out there. There is so much to explore and those things out there, can entice all of us. Picturesque starscapes. New mountains to climb. Possibly even new life. You never know what’s out there.

And that’s something that entices me a lot. An escape from this hellhole. (It’s obviously not the only reason why I love space. But it’s one of the biggest.)

I have been marked with the cursed dot

My goodness! It’s thursday already! No visual trigger or reflections yet! Hah! I feel that stress coming on. Oh boy, it feels good. Well, maybe not. I think I need to stop procrastinating. (Thanks to Dhuha and Vanessa, I have finally discovered the meaning of that word.) I need new motivation to do my work. So sad, Ryan hasn’t replied to any of my latest works. I feel so dejected.

I’m worried about some of our classmates. One may end up dead by the end of the semester. One may burn his/herself out. One needs to watch out if he keeps beating me on tests. (:p Just joking Ian.)

This isn’t my reflections. I just need to rant for awhile. Get some stuff of my chest.

Did you know I’m being marked in NP? Like seriously, I am. Me and my kind. The people with “funny” names. Let me explain…

Okay. Most of you know we have to write a post for the discussion board in for Contempoary issues. Well, if any of you actually bother to stalk me online, you would notice that I have full stop after my name whenever I post anything.

Basically it looks like this:

Michael Burchell-Davies .

So anyway, I thought it was some clerical error that made this occur. But to my horrific horror! I realised that anyone with a funny name gets marked with this mysterious and scary dot.

.

Grundy Warr Florence R C F .

Paul Christopher Sherwood Twohill .

Rezel Shannon Gerard .

Scary man. Seriously, I mean, they’re not marking Eurasians or Caucasians, if not, a few more people would have dots in their name, but they’re simply marking people with “funny” names. (Or names you don’t usually see in sunny Singapore.)

Points to ponder, people. No pun intended.

Pondero – That’s latin for REFLECTION

Urgh. Reflections again. I don’t have that many things to reflect about. Obviously, I could reflect about why I was late. But honestly, how interesting would that be? I was late for class. End of story.

I missed half the class. So I promise, this reflection will be twice as long as it should be. And I just found something out. Reflections don’t need to be about the class. They can be anything! My goodness, I didn’t know that. I need to pay attention more. Not that, I’m not paying attention, it’s just that I sometimes misunderstand people. Especially teachers and homework assignments. Coincidence? Maybe.

I need motivation to do my assignments. I can’t study a week ahead of a test, or do a piece of homework a few days before the class starts. I need to do it at the last possible minute. I’m a last minute kind of guy. I need to have that feeling that if I don’t pass something up the next day, I’m going to get slaughtered so badly I wouldn’t be able to grow my skin back till I’m 65. I need that stress!

That’s why I don’t do my homework till the last minute. Even writing this reflection on Tuesday feels so hard to do.

If I did it on Thursday night, I guarantee I could finish a good piece in 5 minutes flat. Alright, maybe 15 minutes. But I’ve stared at this word document for the better half of Tuesday already, and I’m so close to killing myself.

Whoa. Half the page is filled up already. Alright man! Let’s fill up the other half.

I lost my motivation again. I need to go find it again. Where did I leave it… Arrrgh. God. Oh, there it is.

I’m not saying that my assignment deadlines should be brought forward, but that’s who I am. I thrive under pressure…. Most of the time.

I still have 2 people to spy upon, and I’m pretty tempted to put my imagination to good use. If you catch my drift…

But no, I’m a good boy. And I’ll do it properly. I will stay back after school in Canteen one tomorrow, and put my heart and mind into observing two people. Hell, I’ll follow them all the way home if I have to. That’s how passionate I am about my work.

*Cough*

Talking about work. I need to find a job. I find it so annoying when people immediately think McDonalds when you put sixteen year old plus job together. We’re not that idiotic. We may sometimes do stupid things and act immature. But I honestly think that my generation is going to be one of the strongest we’ve ever had.

Just look at the nonsense we have to deal with. Global warming, world war three, that big chunk of rock that’s going to hit us in 2036. You’re not leaving us with a very good inheritance, dad.

I’m worried about that big chunk of rock that’s going to hit us in 2035. I don’t want to die when I’m 45. I’m going to be in the middle of my mid-life crisis for Christ sake! Don’t give me something else to fret about.

Space. That’s something I like. Very big. Very spacious. Lots of legroom. I’m talking the big vast emptiness of space here, by the way.

And what I really love about it is that there’s tons of money to be made from it. TONS.

How does thirteen trillion dollars sound? American dollars, mind you.

And that’s just from mining one small asteroid in low orbit. I don’t even know how many zeroes there are in a trillion.

So. That’s about it for my reflection this week. Unfortunetly this week, I think I just moved from subject to subject, with no real aim in life. I’ll do one proper subject next time! Tune in next week to find out why I like space so much. (Apart from just the money.) It’s going to be real deep.

Photography

I love the 5 o’clock sun, it makes everything look so… beautfiul. And that’s hard to do in a world that’s grown so ugly. Anyway, you can click below for the photos I took in photography class. WordPress doesn’t like it when I upload photos to them. So deviantart it is!

Here’s a preview. I like the cat. Miguel’s Deviantart.

 

Everything REFLECTS light

I will rush this reflection because I’m stretched for time and I’ve pretty much forgotten what we did during the last lesson. So let’s see, what did we do during the last lesson? Oh yes, conflicts. You see! I didn’t forget. I was making a conflict with my opening sentence. There’s my masterpiece for the week.

When Mr Ryan told us about the guy who tried to write all his stories with absoloutely no conflict in them at all, I truly believe that challenge was calling my name out. But even I’m not that crazy. Stories need conflict. Conflict is the most important part of our lives. If not, they’ll be boring, slow and dull. Much like the 7th season of CSI. (Just joking, Vanessa.)

Interesting points of the lecture? Adrian’s openers. 24 openers. Wow. Thanks. Seriously-ish.

Hey look, I can see my REFLECTION in the mirror.

Honestly, I have no idea what to write for a reflection. In fact, I’ve never really written a reflection at all. I’ve never had to reflect on any of my actions, so congratulations Mr Ryan; you’ve made me write my first reflection.

I suppose I should start off by saying that I hope the lateness of my posting, does not spur Mr Ryan on to bring forward the deadlines of our assignments. These things cannot be rushed, as geniuses take time to perfect their work. It’s quality posting that matters, not how fast we can type nonsense into wordpress.

And talking about nonsense, T1B1 loves to do exactly that. We are one crazy class, and we just crazier in Storytelling Techniques. Jumping Jacques, and Dead Diana’s doing no help at all to relieve our illness. It was one fun class.

The lesson wasn’t that bad either. No offense, Mr Ryan. I’m just joking. The lesson was great! In fact, I was actually quite happy that we were going to have Storytelling Techniques. I like stories, and the only thing I like more, is telling stories.

In fact, for the first lesson, I learnt a whole load more about writing stories. For me, I’ve been writing in the active voice predominantly, telling the audience what the character is thinking or pondering. But the visual, or the “courier new, 12 point”, voice, is a whole lot harder to master. It stimulates the mind more, and gives a better picture to the audience.

It’s strange not to actually read what you wrote properly, and for Mr Ryan’s assignment in class, to continue the opener “Jonathan puts on his Hula girl outfit and steps into the temple.” There were points that even I wondered what I was writing.

“Half-clad exotic beauties adorn the entrance, welcoming him with shrouds of flowers. Some throw themselves at his feet; he merely brushes them aside, continuing on his journey. Stepping into the grand hallway, it erupts in cheers, loud enough to send the walls crashing. His fellow tribes men, clear a path for him through the temple. His adopted father stands patiently for him at the end of the magnificent room. He holds a tribal staff in one hand and in the other a sharp, but beautiful sacred knife. Jonathan is to be a sacrifice to the god of war, Lyonn.

Motioning Jonathan to stand beside him, the tribe’s leader thrusts Jonathan’s arms into the air, proclaiming in an odd tongue, that he is truly a brave soul. Jonathan instinctively proceeds to lie on the altar, awaiting his demise. In a short, quick movement, the tribe’s leader buries the knife into Jonathan skull, ending his pathetic life.”

How on earth would the audience be able to tell that the person standing at the end of the room was his adopted father?! I really did not notice that till Mr Ryan pointed that out. And I’m sure, you can find fault with a few of my openers in the next page. But, I’ll talk about that another day.

And as the clock ticks past midnight, I think it’s time to reveal my final card. Or post. Or whatever you want to call it.