We Nailed It!

Oh! We nailed it!

This morning I was so positive about things. I sent my thesis mates a message that says, "This is our day!" Indeed, it is our day! Geeez. I thought it wouldn't turn out well that's why I'm preparing myself not to feel frustrated...but oh, it turned so damned good! There's absolutely nothing to be afraid of.

Weee! The members of the panel was very kind. They gave us their honest assessments of our film and suggested for possible improvements. It was a surreal feeling.

I was so glad when Sir Tito Valiente (a member of Manunuri ng Pelikulang Pilipino-- MMP) pointed out how he loved the ending. It amazed me because I was at first hesitating to pursue that kind of ending. I thought they wouldn't like it. I thought they would accused me for badly copying a nicely done scene of Citizen Kane. I thought wrong. That was, for me, the most rewarding part of the public thesis defense. For one moment, I felt that I know something about artistic expression and film style. It was a magical moment to hear an expert praising how brilliant that scene was.

I also love to brag that he even asked us to do some revisions of the film for him to send it to the MMP and give it a chance to bag an Urian! Deym! That is a hell of an award giving body, that I realized just now.

Things are falling into their rightful places. All the hard works totally paid off. We are very proud and happy to make such a masterpiece. There will be loads of revisions to be done but we are still enthusiastic to improve it.

Maybe for our grades...for an experience of a lifetime...or maybe for ART'S SAKE. Thank you everyone! :*

Thesis Defense and All its Blues.

It's like having your last judgement.

Everything you learned from four years of trying to figure things out will be criticized, humiliated, and shuttered, or maybe complimented if you're lucky enough. You can't undo anything, or wish you paid attention more to that particular lesson, or hope that you exerted so much enthusiasm to that puzzling theory. You just can't. The time has gone with the wind and with your luxurious leisure moments. You have to be resourceful from this time on. You can befriend the library, use the Internet to your advantage and rummage the deepest part of your brain with any useful stuff. You may also add relying with your buddies for any kind of help.

Now it all boils down to you and your beloved thesis mates. Your reason and creativity must be insanely in good shape to finish your paper and your hopefully jaw-dropping film. Every word of your paper must mean something significant. You don't have an opportunity to mess up your subject-verb agreement and pretend it was a typographical error. Pity yourself if you're like me who sometimes have a hard time articulating your thoughts in the best possible way. And don't be self-absorbed because you'll be needing a lot of related topics from different sources. Your sources must have the reliability of a highly anticipated evidence in court and it must not show any shadow of doubt. And for humanity's sake, plagiarism must not be in your vocabulary, you blithering idiot! You have all the necessary information for your paper written in a standard research/thesis structure, now how in the earth will you be able to transform this into a beautiful critical essay? To start with, the words "critical" and "essay" scare you out. You feel like entering a whole different galaxy or maybe traveling to the future with your time machine. It is a different world. A world so unknown you don't know where to begin with or how.

And yes, you're already estranged to that world when you scribble a blog post in the middle of writing the critical essay. You're going to realize that it's not that bad. It's even a good experience trying to do new things, trying to outrun yourself, trying to outgrow your intellectual fear. Distracted with what you just realized, you will simply toss this blog post aside. It's either you're too lazy to finish this off or you're too diligent that you'd rather get the critical essay done.

screenplay blues.

yeah. i'm troubling myself on how to write a film-able script. one that is comprehensive for any director and is based in a high quality narrative. challenge, genuine challenge. at the moment, i'm in a dilemma whether to put camera angles on the script or let simple camera directions lurk the whole paper. i've read a couple of articles about it and came with similar answers.

CAMERA DIRECTIONS are good, CAMERA ANGLES are not.

hmm, maybe i misunderstood what our adviser said. maybe he really meant, CAMERA DIRECTIONS not CAMERA ANGLES. my bad. but i have to verify it first. i'm quite serious about this film thesis. last project in my college life so i'd give my best shot. ^________^

Wish us luck!
Oh, I think we need more than good luck.

Wish us MORE CREATIVITY, CLARITY of MIND and KINDNESS of HEART!
We WILL PULL THIS OFF BEAUTIFULLY! ^______^