Not sure about the significance of week eight but for some reason I’ve come to the realisation that I am now, in fact, well and truly, in a routine. A routine that will continue for the rest of this year, and the next one…and the NEXT one. It’s freaking me out a little. I’ve strangely been going through old journal entries, reading stories I had already completely forgotten about. Stories about bribing some corrupt border police in Myanmar or fixing my broken down motorbike on the side of the road in Northern Laos or tending to my blisters whilst trekking in the Himalayas or trying to cure a vodka hangover on the Trans-Siberian Railway… It is weird looking back on the last few years as they were of such intensity and when I look forward its just the same sort of life I’m living now. Its going to take some getting used to, as by this time I’m usually searching for the eject button.
On the topic of stories and journeys I’m going to mention a bit about yesterdays lecture.
Everything is a story – a story is everything
There isn’t a single set of rules that you can learn to become a good storytelling filmmaker but there are many guidelines and tricks that have been used and refined over the centuries that you can learn and call upon as you weave your storytelling magic. For instance, if we see a tumbleweed go by followed by the sound of a rattlesnake, we’re expecting some kind of cowboy shootout to begin. These kind of expectations we have can be cleverly used to lure viewers into a story and are joined together in a pattern which is called causality- one thing leads to another which leads to another. Our lecturer explained it as ‘you can’t fly from Perth to Broome without being in Perth first…Sounds strange but he’s was trying to explain how important it is to follow a logical progression of events. As you watch any film, you should be able to plot the pattern of causality throughout it, watching a structure develop of events providing the seeds for other events throughout the film…Character development – plot – resolution. Have a look at our graph we made in class showing the emotional intensity seen in the film The Matrix
