Live Life With No Regrets!« April 2007 | Main | June 2007 »
Arrived in Cannes yesterday after a 24-hour flight delay!
I just hope my insurance covers it.
Anyway, first day was at a networking session organized by the Singapore Film Commission at the Hilton in Cannes.
Met a few people from the local Singapore scene, Jack Neo was nowhere to be seen though. Oh well.
Will be working on meeting up with production houses tomorrow.
No pictures as yet as I can't upload it from an Internet Cafe.
You should read this website http://gettingreal.37signals.com/. I suggest everyone who is doing any software product to read this and think carefully what he/she wants to create.
A shoutout goes to Wee Shen for suggesting this website a couple of years back. I come back to it once in a while to think over my business ideas.
Your first screenplay is always crap.
That's what rewrites are for.
Dont' be worried about your first screenplay. Just do it. Finish everything as best as you can within a week. Don't be paralysed by fear of failure. As long as you do it, you can work on it.
Someone once said, it is better to edit bad copy than to try to edit nothing.
By finishing something as least you have accomplished something and gained the experience of doing it. No matter how bad you (think) it is, it is a learning experience in itself.
Writing is work. It is not just feeling like you want to do something. Even if you don't feel like it you still have to do it.
You can't wait for the muse.
One way to get out of a rut is to set a time limit of say in the next 10-15 minutes write down 10 ideas no matter how stupid you think and choose one of them to further your story.
The act of writing is an effort. No matter how gifted you are, you still have to work. You still face things which you don't know immediately and have to think through the plot and how it all works together.
What if you had 7 days left to live, what would you do?
Now that you have written that down. Don't you wish you had more time? So then ask yourself...
What if you had 1 month left to live, what would you do?
Now you have an extra 3 weeks. Add more goals to your list. And so continue on...
What if you had 3 months left to live, what would you do?
What if you had 1 year left to live, what would you do?
What if you had 5 years left to live, what would you do?
What if you had 10 years left to live, what would you do?
What if you had 20 years left to live, what would you do?
What if you had 30 years left to live, what would you do?
What if you had 50 years left to live, what would you do?
The thing about life is that whether you have 7 days or 50 years to live, we must realize that we all have finite amount of time on this earth.
We cannot do everything that we want. We have to prioritize and think about what are the important things in life.
Don't wait until "Omigod, I'm 55 years old and there's still so many things in life left for me to do." Days turn into months and months into years very quickly.
I thought I understood that until I read this example:
Sophie has been sexually abused by her father, a well respected leader in the community and her mother never believed her.
(Weak) She enters the funeral parlour alone, breaks down in tears, beats on his dead carcass, and, sure that no one else can hear her, spits out her pitiful accusation at the corpse.
— Only reacts.
(Better) Walks up to coffin but her mother is with her. Opens her purse. Takes out a large set of scissors, and, to her mother's horror, slowly unzips his trousers, performs a post-mortem amputation, and hands the member to her mother.
— Makes conscious decision to take dramatic action, with deep consequences.
— Visceral, visual, and personal
— Stronger cinematically
Which leads me to think. When we take action, REAL action, do our actions have consequences? The word consequences has more of a negative connotation but if we are to be a source of good in this world, both for us and the people around us, we must take action that have good consequences that change our world.
It was the most pathetic display of football from Man. U. that I've ever seen.
No all-English final.
But it will be interesting to have another AC-Liverpool final. Will we see Liverpool triumph again? Or will AC exact its revenge?
