steadfastfilms

Writing the proposal: January 23rd- February 6th

I did not expect this phase to be quite as excruciating as it turned out to be. I wrote all the potential scenes on index cards and then sequenced them. In the first draft I was rather set on the idea of a pure observational film and learnt the hard way that compared to watching observational scenes, reading observational scenes in a treatment script requires a clearer exposition of meaning.*

{*Detour: the following is my attempt to understand why. A hypothesis, not a theory.

Narrative, whether in the print or visual medium, works by creating a running dialogue between what is presented on screen/paper, and the reader/viewer’s involvement in visualising and/or connecting the dots. The difference seems to be that the written word builds a scene from a black space, so each detail has to be drawn and highlighted in sequence before the reader can create meaning from the jumble of detail (except that it is not a jumble but a systematic arrangement pretending to be artlessly chaotic). The film montage method probably comes closest to a written scene in micromanaging the attention of the viewer; still the reader does more work than the viewer because he has to create the scene from his imagination while the viewer has it handed to him on a platter. If the reader works harder, the writer does too. In addition, he has to make a clear connection between action and the character’s motivation/inner state because there can be so many readings of an action, that the intended meaning needs to be explicated. In film, we have access (most times) to the character’s face/eyes when we watch actions or conversations unfold.

My mistake in writing the treatment was to combine a promise (that framed my reader’s expectations) without delivering (in the absence of clear explication within each scene) so the poor reader combs each scene, trying to see how each one fits into and develops coherently around the “about” of the film. Terrible description. Let’s try again. At the beginning of each film, you have to provide the viewer with a key with which to orient himself. You may want to save the twists and turns for later, but the viewer has to have a vague inkling of where the story could go because he wants to be able to start trying to figure the puzzle out. So I provided the key, the compass for my reader in the treatment script, but left too much space for interpretation in the scenes, and trampled the fine balance between mystery and clarity. END Detour}

I sent the treatment to my former boss and mentor back in Singapore (a news editor and executive producer) and she less than kindly remarked that she knew what I was going for, but it did not happen for her. Gasp! She found herself wondering too much about my main character, trying to connect the dots, and at the end of the treatment questioned why she was even reading so deeply into a 9-year old’s mind! Alas. It also didn’t help that I was still trying to clarify the themes of the film in my mind.

Not quite the trauma that a plate of Brussel sprouts, celery, Chinese leaf cabbage and bok choy would induce…but close.

A final thought: while it sometimes helps to wait until synthesis is achieved wrt. finding the themes of the film before committing anything to paper (the perfectionist’s curse), it tends to be (and I do hate to admit this) far more productive to start writing even if you feel like a gormless fool who hasn’t quite worked out whether his left foot is indeed larger than his right. The alchemy is that writing in complete sentences has the strange effect of shattering the deluded state of mind which had you believing that those abstract ideas you were so proud of could fit together at all. And since the mindmap you drew (at least three times) in your notebook only has space for four words, of course you didn’t really have to prove that the link worked.

Now to the mix. It’s a two-step process. Writing the sentence first forces you to give the idea a form, and make it concrete. As for the next, I’m sure a linguist would more articulately describe why joining two ideas, each now expressed in a coherent sentence, creates new valuable associations- regardless of whether the original union of thoughts was felicitous.

What is created is a platform which floats in the void, and whether you decide to push against it (because it reeks) or lean into it (because of the brilliance of your idea), you now have someplace to stand.

I sometimes wonder whether I could have made this work. This thought comes after the fact. I must have spent at least 70 hours in laundromats from October through end November.

From the journal:

Potential angles:
- new owner (of Little Hollywood Laundrette) and attendants (from Honduras, Philippines)
- customers across 4 neighbourhoods (Duboce Triangle, Mission, Castro, Market)

Questions:
- scope: stay in laundromat (more elegant) or follow customers to homes?
- synch interviews or voice-over only?
- black & white film or High Definition video?
- possible to abstract?
- play on dirty laundry concept?

Spent day trekking over and across San Francisco by foot and MUNI looking for a coin laundry. I Yelped at home before heading out. Tons of Bubbles and Get the Funk Out in Western Addition/NOPA, Little Hollywood on Market and Octavia, Fiesta and The Wash Quarters in the Mission, Star Wash in the Castro… The irony was that I had decided to make a film… about laundromats.

I wanted to hit Parkside and Potrero Hill as well because I’d been told that these two neighbourhoods were more ethnically and socio-economically diverse, but without a car I had to start at the more central areas.

Get the Funk Out! had the better sofa, keyboard and Dr Seuss children’s area. Little Hollywood Laundrette had an Art Deco entrance and a wrap-around floor-to ceiling “Golden Age of Cinema”-themed mural. Guess which one I picked?

The entries in this series are either taken verbatim or reconstructed from vague scribbles in the journals (three actually) that I’ve blitzed through since October working on my thesis film. Some are more personal than others. Some refer to thoughts refracted from production/theory/design/art history classes. Some are reflections on my faith and its intersection with my work. I am not a particularly public person but this exercise serves a few functions:

1. reclaims my journal entries from the quicksand of illegible handwriting and a porous memory.

2. constitues a “better late than never” gesture to friends who have heard little from me since September.

3. provides some circular answers to questions of process in making documentary films.

4. forces me to write- one can only hope that this is habit-forming.

I apologise for the dearth of posts on this blog. Good intentions took a bleary-eyed peek at the sun streaming into the windows and decided to go back to bed. I am now entering the final term of my two-year graduate program in doc film + video at stanford and it is incredible that I have been as busy in the last 6 months putting together a 20 minute doc short which is now about half-way done, as I was while working in a TV station producing one half hour show every three and a half weeks. Am now eating humble pie. In any case, I have to turn in a production journal for my professor which was due last week. The next few posts will be retrospective journal entries, which may make for interesting reading. I promise that good intentions will at the very least, see this though before retiring!