One more ...
From the chapter on Finding Your Stories, sub-heading Finding Your Stories Through Photogrpahs
Begin excerpt ....
Let’s look now at just one photo.
Iranian Actress Hasti Mahdavi
I don’t know what it is about this photo that screams character-driven story. Her expression - or lack of one - is somewhat unrevealing. Just shy of black and white, with its warmth in the cheeks and lips, both associated with the fem mystique. It’s one of those photos that draws you into the eyes, and makes you want to understand her.
I see some commonality with Johannes Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, (Het meisje met de parel), painted in 1665. It is also known as the Mona Lisa of the North.
The film Girl with a Pearl Earring, 2003, with Scarlett Johanson and Colin Firth, was adapted from the book of the same name, written by Tracy Chevalir. There are very few facts known about Vermeer let alone the painting, yet they were able to weave a solid and wholly believable story together.
From Wikipedia …
Tracy Chevalier's inspiration for Girl with a Pearl Earring was a poster of Johannes Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’. She bought the poster as a nineteen-year-old, and it hung wherever she lived for sixteen years. Chevalier notes that the "ambiguous look" on the girl's face left the "most lasting impression" on her. She describes the girl's expression "to be a mass of contradictions: innocent yet experienced, joyous yet tearful, full of longing and yet full of loss." She began to think that the girl had directed all these emotions at the painter, and began to think of the "story behind that look".
A shared mysterious melancholy
Is there not also a story here? What about the time it took to capture these images? Months or years as compared to split seconds, yet there they are, staring right back at us, capturing us with the same ambiguous look.
What about the word capture?
Capture
Capture, in its transitive verb form, can have a few meanings, as in to trap or catch. Apprehend. Or it can mean to represent or describe something illusive in images or words. A bird can be difficult to capture. And a person’s likeness or thoughts difficult to put into words. While the painting can be said to capture the girl’s likeness – as in it looks like her, it can also be said to capture much more. A mood. A deeper self.
Capture the moment, capture the essence, capture the true meaning. Capture data. Or, just capture the damn mouse.
What has the camera captured? Mysterious melancholy? Has her gaze in turn captured the viewer? It is not polite to stare, they say, and photographs and tronies offer us this guilt-free indulgence. But sometimes the image stares back.
One word that can be associated with capture is obsession.
Obsession
We capture butterflies, collect big and small things, be it autographs or strands of hair. We become fixated on one thing or one idea, and it takes over our lives. We amass collections of baseball cards, collectible toys, or fragments of ancient pottery and papyrus. Some collect Lingerie. Or we become fixated over just one idea, one object, or one image.
We now have two words, capture and obsession, and one photograph to work with. To find a story, witing on-the-fly backstories can give you some substance to expore the potentil of ideas. Sometimes they grab, sometimes they don't.
What about something like this …
A man, Carl, is waiting for a bus. Near this bus stop is a poster with Ms. Mahdavi’s image. We’ll call her Firuzeh. It could be an advertisement for a fragrance, promoting her new book, or any number of scenarios. Carl may not even really pay attention to what is written, but rather is mesmerized by the photo. The eyes. He takes the poster, and we next see him putting it up in his apartment. He can’t take his eyes off her.
He must find her.
Your story – your film – can follow any number of paths from here. Conflicts with work, family, or even a love interest that will hamper his search for this muse. It can get creepy, it can get emotional, and it can get beautifully strange.
What will happen if and when he finally finds her? Will seeing her in the flesh diminish his obsession, as so cleverly explored in James Branch Cabell’s ‘Domnie, A Comedy of Woman-worship’?
What will the Muse’ impression of him be? Will she find him irritating, or might there be a mutual attraction? Might she be flattered, or ask a few friends to beat the crap out of him?
Obviously it is not so one-dimensional as this. You would need to develop, among other things, a reason he is so quickly infatuated with the image. What about his life and his personal makeup would cause this? What skeletons might be in his closet? Did he just see the image and drop everything to find her? Your story needs conflict beyond the usual suspects of disapproving associates and family, and beyond the predictable scenarios of obsession. Does she remind him of someone, or does she trigger a memory? Or perhaps he may have dreamed her, and he is having some kind of dèjà vu. They have met before in another life. In short, he isn’t just going to see the image – the poster – and think ‘Oh, cute chick. I think I’ll ask her out.’ You want your character to make your audience believe he has seen a most perfect and beautiful face, and you want this character to convince your audience – or reader – that this most perfect and beautiful face is worth risking everything.
You must also decide if the audience will root for this character, or whether they will find him just creepy enough to root for the woman instead. Or, any combination of the two.
And what about the human being behind this perfect and beautiful face? Will her voice match her beauty? Will the way she carries herself, the way she makes eye contact – or avoids it – reinforce the expectations the audience has developed along with Carl? Does her voice and grace and the decisions she makes fit her looks? Does it matter?
Obsession is a very powerful emotion that can command our every breath. This is not by default a bad thing, and I would argue it can push us to start something, finish something, win something and create something. It can drive a baseball card collector to find that one missing gem of his or her collection, no matter how long it takes. It can command a treasure hunter to find the one fragment missing from the clay urn they unearthed years ago, thus completing a rare and beautiful artefact.
I would also argue that we have so much of our collective human history preserved because of the obsessions of collectors and pickers, whether a dash of greed plays a part or not. They plan and measure and even forget to eat to ensure even the smallest scrap of paper is preserved for posterity. If you plan to explore obsession, learn all you can about it. See what experts are saying about it, and on what points they may agree or disagree. Is obsession really an emotion at all? Is your main character the type that gets obsessed about big or small things, or will these feelings – emotions - surprise even him? Will the spell he is under somehow be broken, if not shattered?
Where will you start this story?
This brings up the story technique In medias res, or In the middle of things, first introduced by Roman lyric poet and satirist Horace, in his "Poetic Arts", in 13 BC. Off the cuff, this feels like a story we might start in the middle – as opposed to ab ovo (from the egg, from the beginning), and then later fill in some back story elements, such as whether he has a family or love interest, what his profession might be, and why he is at the bust stop - or just passing it - in the first place.
Where is he headed at the very moment he first sees the poster, and why is he headed there? Does seeing the poster immediately disrupt his routine, or will this slowly or quickly build? We can employ flashbacks, or a foil character, through whom we can deliver the needed exposition of what came before the moment you introduce Carl to your audience. This before now can start the same morning, a week ago, a month ago, or even years. Don’t just toss in some flippant filler here. It needs to reinforce why Carl will leave his comfort zones to pursue a vast unknown based solely on an image.
Hasti links ...
https://www.facebook.com/Hasti.Mahdavi.Far
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-ZkPxTOKZ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM0TLByyiCg
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5689610/?ref_=nm_knf_t1
aw
From the chapter on Finding Your Stories, sub-heading Finding Your Stories Through Photogrpahs
Begin excerpt ....
Let’s look now at just one photo.
Iranian Actress Hasti Mahdavi
I don’t know what it is about this photo that screams character-driven story. Her expression - or lack of one - is somewhat unrevealing. Just shy of black and white, with its warmth in the cheeks and lips, both associated with the fem mystique. It’s one of those photos that draws you into the eyes, and makes you want to understand her.
I see some commonality with Johannes Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’, (Het meisje met de parel), painted in 1665. It is also known as the Mona Lisa of the North.
The film Girl with a Pearl Earring, 2003, with Scarlett Johanson and Colin Firth, was adapted from the book of the same name, written by Tracy Chevalir. There are very few facts known about Vermeer let alone the painting, yet they were able to weave a solid and wholly believable story together.
From Wikipedia …
Tracy Chevalier's inspiration for Girl with a Pearl Earring was a poster of Johannes Vermeer’s ‘Girl with a Pearl Earring’. She bought the poster as a nineteen-year-old, and it hung wherever she lived for sixteen years. Chevalier notes that the "ambiguous look" on the girl's face left the "most lasting impression" on her. She describes the girl's expression "to be a mass of contradictions: innocent yet experienced, joyous yet tearful, full of longing and yet full of loss." She began to think that the girl had directed all these emotions at the painter, and began to think of the "story behind that look".
A shared mysterious melancholy
Is there not also a story here? What about the time it took to capture these images? Months or years as compared to split seconds, yet there they are, staring right back at us, capturing us with the same ambiguous look.
What about the word capture?
Capture
Capture, in its transitive verb form, can have a few meanings, as in to trap or catch. Apprehend. Or it can mean to represent or describe something illusive in images or words. A bird can be difficult to capture. And a person’s likeness or thoughts difficult to put into words. While the painting can be said to capture the girl’s likeness – as in it looks like her, it can also be said to capture much more. A mood. A deeper self.
Capture the moment, capture the essence, capture the true meaning. Capture data. Or, just capture the damn mouse.
What has the camera captured? Mysterious melancholy? Has her gaze in turn captured the viewer? It is not polite to stare, they say, and photographs and tronies offer us this guilt-free indulgence. But sometimes the image stares back.
One word that can be associated with capture is obsession.
Obsession
We capture butterflies, collect big and small things, be it autographs or strands of hair. We become fixated on one thing or one idea, and it takes over our lives. We amass collections of baseball cards, collectible toys, or fragments of ancient pottery and papyrus. Some collect Lingerie. Or we become fixated over just one idea, one object, or one image.
We now have two words, capture and obsession, and one photograph to work with. To find a story, witing on-the-fly backstories can give you some substance to expore the potentil of ideas. Sometimes they grab, sometimes they don't.
What about something like this …
A man, Carl, is waiting for a bus. Near this bus stop is a poster with Ms. Mahdavi’s image. We’ll call her Firuzeh. It could be an advertisement for a fragrance, promoting her new book, or any number of scenarios. Carl may not even really pay attention to what is written, but rather is mesmerized by the photo. The eyes. He takes the poster, and we next see him putting it up in his apartment. He can’t take his eyes off her.
He must find her.
Your story – your film – can follow any number of paths from here. Conflicts with work, family, or even a love interest that will hamper his search for this muse. It can get creepy, it can get emotional, and it can get beautifully strange.
What will happen if and when he finally finds her? Will seeing her in the flesh diminish his obsession, as so cleverly explored in James Branch Cabell’s ‘Domnie, A Comedy of Woman-worship’?
What will the Muse’ impression of him be? Will she find him irritating, or might there be a mutual attraction? Might she be flattered, or ask a few friends to beat the crap out of him?
Obviously it is not so one-dimensional as this. You would need to develop, among other things, a reason he is so quickly infatuated with the image. What about his life and his personal makeup would cause this? What skeletons might be in his closet? Did he just see the image and drop everything to find her? Your story needs conflict beyond the usual suspects of disapproving associates and family, and beyond the predictable scenarios of obsession. Does she remind him of someone, or does she trigger a memory? Or perhaps he may have dreamed her, and he is having some kind of dèjà vu. They have met before in another life. In short, he isn’t just going to see the image – the poster – and think ‘Oh, cute chick. I think I’ll ask her out.’ You want your character to make your audience believe he has seen a most perfect and beautiful face, and you want this character to convince your audience – or reader – that this most perfect and beautiful face is worth risking everything.
You must also decide if the audience will root for this character, or whether they will find him just creepy enough to root for the woman instead. Or, any combination of the two.
And what about the human being behind this perfect and beautiful face? Will her voice match her beauty? Will the way she carries herself, the way she makes eye contact – or avoids it – reinforce the expectations the audience has developed along with Carl? Does her voice and grace and the decisions she makes fit her looks? Does it matter?
Obsession is a very powerful emotion that can command our every breath. This is not by default a bad thing, and I would argue it can push us to start something, finish something, win something and create something. It can drive a baseball card collector to find that one missing gem of his or her collection, no matter how long it takes. It can command a treasure hunter to find the one fragment missing from the clay urn they unearthed years ago, thus completing a rare and beautiful artefact.
I would also argue that we have so much of our collective human history preserved because of the obsessions of collectors and pickers, whether a dash of greed plays a part or not. They plan and measure and even forget to eat to ensure even the smallest scrap of paper is preserved for posterity. If you plan to explore obsession, learn all you can about it. See what experts are saying about it, and on what points they may agree or disagree. Is obsession really an emotion at all? Is your main character the type that gets obsessed about big or small things, or will these feelings – emotions - surprise even him? Will the spell he is under somehow be broken, if not shattered?
Where will you start this story?
This brings up the story technique In medias res, or In the middle of things, first introduced by Roman lyric poet and satirist Horace, in his "Poetic Arts", in 13 BC. Off the cuff, this feels like a story we might start in the middle – as opposed to ab ovo (from the egg, from the beginning), and then later fill in some back story elements, such as whether he has a family or love interest, what his profession might be, and why he is at the bust stop - or just passing it - in the first place.
Where is he headed at the very moment he first sees the poster, and why is he headed there? Does seeing the poster immediately disrupt his routine, or will this slowly or quickly build? We can employ flashbacks, or a foil character, through whom we can deliver the needed exposition of what came before the moment you introduce Carl to your audience. This before now can start the same morning, a week ago, a month ago, or even years. Don’t just toss in some flippant filler here. It needs to reinforce why Carl will leave his comfort zones to pursue a vast unknown based solely on an image.
Hasti links ...
https://www.facebook.com/Hasti.Mahdavi.Far
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K-ZkPxTOKZ4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BM0TLByyiCg
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt5689610/?ref_=nm_knf_t1
aw
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