Science and Art – An Idea for a Film/Novel

It is a stated fact that there are certain things that you cannot merge. No matter how many times you try, you cannot mix oil with water. Oil will always be above water. This is the story of how two teenagers defied such natural laws, and how they made their world a somehow better place to live in.

Film Making – Just Thoughts

In 2013, I joined a Film Making Competition. Here were some of my thoughts. Just going to dump them here.

The theme of the film that we have to make is “Ang Kabataan ay ang simula ng pagbabago”. The first thing that we have to look at here is… what kind? What kind of change can we make? Can we change the people around us by changing ourselves? Are we ourselves going to change when we change the people around us? Are we going to change people’s perspectives – on life, on a certain topic, on us? Are we going to change the system of the society? The world? What are we supposed to start changing?

The next is how? Of course, the people who have to start that change is the youth. But what can we do? Are we going to start with something small – showing someone doing simple acts of gratitude? Or are we going to have a character boldly doing what no man has done before?

But what we really have to strive for here is truth. In most forms of media (Avatar by James Cameron, The Host, Hunger Games, Lord of the Flies), the harshest truth that they as storytellers are trying to convey is that humans are terrible creatures. We colonize, we abuse power, we are territorial, we are savages. We kill, we murder, for the sake of – or in the case of the Hunger Games and Lord of the Flies, because of – power. You can put fiction, magical creatures, aliens, in a story. Just as long as they’re just a pathway to the story’s true statement.

There are some beautiful truths, of course. Love conquers all, anyone can love and can be loved (Beauty and the Beast, Shrek, a lot of movies),  that there are no boundaries when it comes to friendship (Lilo and Stitch, How to Train your Dragon, War Horse)… That the world may be a horrible place, that we may be horrible people, but there are times like these that make us as a whole specie still worth fighting for (Armageddon, The Host).

If we have to start a change, first of all, the thing that we have to change has to be a realistic issue. It has to be something that’s been going on for generations, and only now will we be able to change it. The underlying message in the theme “The youth is the start of change” is that “There is something that the past generations have never done before, but something the youth can start doing now”. It has to be true.

With regards to the solution, like what Ms. Valdez (am i right?) has said, you can leave it as open-ended. You don’t need a happy ending, but if you want one, go ahead. But consider this symbolism – you can make a solution feel so unrealistic, make it look so impossible to do in real life, to show the audience that… in reality, there really is no other solution for this issue. Because it contradicts our natural way of life.