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sunkisserI can't believe that it's been 9 months since I last posted anything on here… and it's been probably the most life changing 9 months of my life, I don't even know where to start or how to begin processing everything that's happened in such a both short and long time
my last few posts happened right before I entered my second to last year of university. the way the masscom program at my uni works is that we do three years of basic classes and then you have the opportunity to choose 2 out of 5 specializations that the program offers and then do a year each for a total of 5 years.
when I first applied for masscom I did it because I wanted to write. I love writing and I have loved it since I was little and despite the ups and downs of life I've always been sure that it's something I will never fail to come back to no matter in what capacity. four years ago I was convinced that journalism was the way for me to fulfill that need and feed that part of me that always yearns to do what I love. but then during my last year of basic studies, exactly at the same time as I was taking a journalism class, came scriptwriting.
now, my family are all cinephiles. I've always been more of a book girlie and my attention span makes it hard for me to sit still while watching something, especially if I'm alone, so at first I obviously never thought of myself as a scriptwriter. but during this intro to scriptwriting class I was having so much fun. it was hands down one of the most interesting classes I had to take and the deep dives into what makes a story, what makes a character, what makes all the disjointed thoughts in your head one single whole that you can call a story were undeniably what I had always wanted. I've been writing original stories and fanfiction since I was 7 years old. it's always been what I consider my pillar and calling. I love writing but in the form of storytelling and although journalism could still give me that it could not give me it in the capacity that scriptwriting could.
I thought long and hard about my decision to make my first specialty in scriptwriting and not journalism, because I knew in my heart I couldn't do both (but that's a story for later). I thought not taking journalism would be a hit to my childhood self and my childhood dream, because little me always loved playing journalist and prying into other people's business. I thought it would be a disservice to present me, who still loves journalism but just not as much as scriptwriting after that one wonderful class I took exactly one year ago. when I finally decided it was after much insistence from my parents, whose reasons weren't exactly the same as mine, because journalism isn't exactly ethically practicable in my country and they knew I wouldn't be able to properly pursue it as long as I live here anyway, but their heart was in the right place and upon further inspection they truly steered me the right way.
as a little girl I always loved journalism but I loved storytelling too. I loved fiction and I loved putting my crazy thoughts and ideas to paper and setting all my little mind boogers free. it wasn't really a disservice or even that big of a stretch from what I always wanted to do, I've just wanted to do a lot of things at different times. besides, I haven't completely given up on my journalism journey yet.
another thing stunting me was that I felt like an imposter. like I said, I've always been more of a book girlie. how could I write cinema if I don't watch enough of it myself? I tried watching many classics leading up to that first semester of scriptwriting to make sure I was on the right page, but it didn't fully work out and I didn't fully need it anyway
I had the privilege of working with some of the best professors I've ever had. I've always struggled to connect with figures of authority, especially in academic settings, but these professors felt like friends and confidantes throughout my admittedly very personal and vulnerable journey while writing my thesis and various other scripts that still laid my heart out bare. they taught me everything I needed to know and more and sparked a joy, love and appreciation for cinema that lay dormant in me before. I think I'm still a tiny little bit more of a book girlie but the way they made me love and appreciate cinema and audiovisual arts is something that I will treasure and continue to carry with me, because where I once steered away from movies because I thought I wouldn't be able to appreciate them enough, now I always seek one out and it’s a favorite thing to do after a long day, not to mention the hours and hours and hours of analysis that comes after.
I was so nervous when I first started scriptwriting and now my gut twists at the thought of having to let it go, because I can't imagine my life without this year of unhinged creativity and insane ideation. I feel like my brain has been bloated with so much renewed knowledge and vigor to keep writing and creating and I've been imbued with so much self confidence over my writing skills and trust in my own capabilities, all this in just less than a year.
and then my thesis… was something else. I wrote at least ten scripts while I took my specialization, but obviously my thesis was the longest and hardest yet. it's a full fledged movie script and it's both the hardest and most rewarding thing I've ever done so far.
I struggled to find something to write about. I have many, many ideas from years and years of writing that are simply locked in my notes app or a stray google doc, all lovely and perfect for me and my style, but none of them felt good as a start, they were either too complicated or too detached from my emotional capacity at the time, and as a first time scriptwriter it was a lot. I needed something relatively simple that could still make me feel fulfilled and keep me interested enough to make me want to write it for a full year.
my tutor suggested I look into real stories and real people within my own family to draw inspiration from them and have readily available “source material” to help me throughout this journey. and I landed on my great grandfather on my dad's side, who everyone always loved and talked high praises about. in my mind he was a sort of forrest gump character that always found himself in the right place at the right time and ingrained himself deeply in the family history. now, my relationship with my dad is skewed at best and irreparable at worst. he's a piece of work, but it was a day away from when I needed to turn my initial idea in and that was the best I had, so obviously I had to complicate everything for myself and twist my original idea into the most convoluted story ever: a father (based on my grandfather) and his son (my dad) attempt to fix their broken relationship as they create a documentary about the dead grandfather (my great grandfather). easy, no?
I knew what I wanted to tell, sort of, and I knew how I wanted to tell it. but most importantly I knew I wanted it to have a sad ending. this was very, very important to me for reasons that at the time I couldn't explain, but now I know had to do with my own journey of healing.
it was the in between that really created a headache for me. in the first five months all we had to do was draft our scripts with all the knowledge we were gathering throughout our semester, and so I tried but I wasn't very clear on how I wanted things to go so of course I had to start making stuff up to make it to deadlines and it all got complicated and mediocre from one arc to the other. it wasn't bad but it wasn't very good, either. I had to rewrite over half of my draft during the summer and I feel like that's when I could finally see the light. I had a decent story and a better way of telling it, now came the writing part.
my first act came along nicely and I was extremely proud of it. it was a masterpiece to me and with my new rough draft this was coming along as well as I could expect it to, but then life got complicated as it tends to get for me and my second and third act were definitely something… mostly a race against time and a fight against my own brain and impostor syndrome to keep writing and writing and writing no matter how badly I felt it was all coming along.
somehow it happened and I did it and I managed to turn everything in on time, although not with the same surety and satisfaction with which I turned in my first act.
after all that one would think it's all over, but actually there was still the hardest and tallest hurdle to overcome: the defense. since it's a bit of a non-traditional thesis, our defense was just a three minute pitch to sell our story. and I'm deathly afraid of public speaking. and I was also tired and burnt out and still finishing a second script for another class and it was all piling on and I was just so tired I ended up writing it last minute the day before I was supposed to pitch.
but it worked out. somehow I did it and the panel loved my story so much I was most certainly floored. I had absolutely no faith in myself or my story or my skills but one of the panelists even cried at my story and how much she could connect with it and how it made her feel. my tutor, who is a very dry woman whom I learned to love and appreciate more than I can put into words, sung me praises I wouldn’t even dare to dream of before. and that's what really got me thinking.
I had been working and studying and taking responsibility around my house because my mom took a new job and now I had to take care of my sibling and my grandparents and I had been so focused on just getting everything done and everything right that I had ended up approaching my thesis with a certain level of emotional detachment. not completely, obviously, because then the story would be robotic and stiff, but I ended up projecting and pouring so much of me and my traumas and my unresolved emotional journey regarding my family and my dad and just not processing it because I always had that feeling of pressure to keep going pushing down on my neck.
but during my pitch journey, which was equal parts gratifying as it was awful, I finally had time to sit with myself and THINK about what makes this story so special and personal to me and of course I finally bawled like a little baby. there's so much of me in here that I wove into each word even subconsciously, it was shocking to finally see it for what it really was instead of through the film of survival and the need to check 100 things off a to-do list every single day.
I needed the ending to be sad because I need the catharsis. in a story about accepting certain things as they are and learning to find peace within yourself instead of depending on others changing or understanding you for you to finally be able to find it, the ending needed to be sad and hard because that's what it feels like to come to terms with the fact that only you can create your own peace, but that doesn't make it any less liberating. that was my ending. and it's something that I'm still learning, but I think I definitely did some therapy while I wrote this and I could see so much of my own journey reflected back at me in 140 fucking pages of script… I feel like i've definitely matured a lot emotionally.
even now I feel choked up thinking about how much this story, which I initially feared and dreaded not only because of the amount of work it represented but also because of how unnecessarily complicated and personal I had made it, means to me now. it's something I can never stop treasuring. it's something that I've come to find beautiful despite the shortcomings that I can still see in it but that I can still love so deeply for how much it changed and healed me.
it's been a deeply emotional journey.
and it's been extremely companionable, too. the friends that I made and the friendships that became deeper and more meaningful throughout this journey are invaluable to me. nothing does more for a friendship than some good trauma dumping at 7 a.m. so your friends can help you straighten out the kinks of your story two hours before turn in. I've felt so genuinely loved and supported it's enough to send high school me into a coma. despite a few trip ups I think this is the most secure and comfortable I've ever felt with any irl friend group ever, all thanks to the power of trauma bonding and storytelling.
after years and years of writing my own stories out of pure instinct and flying by the seat of my pants, I've been feeling all my knowledge coming to play while just thinking up new ideas. it's not only fic, but original stuff too. I can feel the gears turning subconsciously to really pull together more structured and meaningful stories without me really trying. I haven't written anything (yet) but I'm excited to put my kpop boys through it with my newly acquired skills. bet my profs didn't think I'd be taking all their teachings and applying them to more meaningful and fucked up gay sex and mind games but I hope they'll forgive my primitive yaoi mind. I'm just a girl.
closing this chapter almost physically hurts, because now I'm leaving the whimsy of cinema and starting my second specialty in corporate communications, which is also something I love, but it's very very different to scriptwriting. they won't make me watch movies as homework in corporate, that's for fucking sure, but I'll be glad to let my mind rest a little and get used to something more structured and objective rather than relying on my own creativity 100% of the time for every single project and turn in. I've been fighting at least three little guys I made up in my mind every single day for the past nine months.
I close this chapter with indescribable happiness, preemptive nostalgia, reinvigorated self-confidence, a slightly abated imposter syndrome and as much love as I can fit inside my heart. I have and will never, for a second, regret taking on scriptwriting and embarking on probably my most magical and beautiful year of school ever. I'm excited and scared for challenges ahead, but I don't think any of them will ever top this.
my last few posts happened right before I entered my second to last year of university. the way the masscom program at my uni works is that we do three years of basic classes and then you have the opportunity to choose 2 out of 5 specializations that the program offers and then do a year each for a total of 5 years.
when I first applied for masscom I did it because I wanted to write. I love writing and I have loved it since I was little and despite the ups and downs of life I've always been sure that it's something I will never fail to come back to no matter in what capacity. four years ago I was convinced that journalism was the way for me to fulfill that need and feed that part of me that always yearns to do what I love. but then during my last year of basic studies, exactly at the same time as I was taking a journalism class, came scriptwriting.
now, my family are all cinephiles. I've always been more of a book girlie and my attention span makes it hard for me to sit still while watching something, especially if I'm alone, so at first I obviously never thought of myself as a scriptwriter. but during this intro to scriptwriting class I was having so much fun. it was hands down one of the most interesting classes I had to take and the deep dives into what makes a story, what makes a character, what makes all the disjointed thoughts in your head one single whole that you can call a story were undeniably what I had always wanted. I've been writing original stories and fanfiction since I was 7 years old. it's always been what I consider my pillar and calling. I love writing but in the form of storytelling and although journalism could still give me that it could not give me it in the capacity that scriptwriting could.
I thought long and hard about my decision to make my first specialty in scriptwriting and not journalism, because I knew in my heart I couldn't do both (but that's a story for later). I thought not taking journalism would be a hit to my childhood self and my childhood dream, because little me always loved playing journalist and prying into other people's business. I thought it would be a disservice to present me, who still loves journalism but just not as much as scriptwriting after that one wonderful class I took exactly one year ago. when I finally decided it was after much insistence from my parents, whose reasons weren't exactly the same as mine, because journalism isn't exactly ethically practicable in my country and they knew I wouldn't be able to properly pursue it as long as I live here anyway, but their heart was in the right place and upon further inspection they truly steered me the right way.
as a little girl I always loved journalism but I loved storytelling too. I loved fiction and I loved putting my crazy thoughts and ideas to paper and setting all my little mind boogers free. it wasn't really a disservice or even that big of a stretch from what I always wanted to do, I've just wanted to do a lot of things at different times. besides, I haven't completely given up on my journalism journey yet.
another thing stunting me was that I felt like an imposter. like I said, I've always been more of a book girlie. how could I write cinema if I don't watch enough of it myself? I tried watching many classics leading up to that first semester of scriptwriting to make sure I was on the right page, but it didn't fully work out and I didn't fully need it anyway
I had the privilege of working with some of the best professors I've ever had. I've always struggled to connect with figures of authority, especially in academic settings, but these professors felt like friends and confidantes throughout my admittedly very personal and vulnerable journey while writing my thesis and various other scripts that still laid my heart out bare. they taught me everything I needed to know and more and sparked a joy, love and appreciation for cinema that lay dormant in me before. I think I'm still a tiny little bit more of a book girlie but the way they made me love and appreciate cinema and audiovisual arts is something that I will treasure and continue to carry with me, because where I once steered away from movies because I thought I wouldn't be able to appreciate them enough, now I always seek one out and it’s a favorite thing to do after a long day, not to mention the hours and hours and hours of analysis that comes after.
I was so nervous when I first started scriptwriting and now my gut twists at the thought of having to let it go, because I can't imagine my life without this year of unhinged creativity and insane ideation. I feel like my brain has been bloated with so much renewed knowledge and vigor to keep writing and creating and I've been imbued with so much self confidence over my writing skills and trust in my own capabilities, all this in just less than a year.
and then my thesis… was something else. I wrote at least ten scripts while I took my specialization, but obviously my thesis was the longest and hardest yet. it's a full fledged movie script and it's both the hardest and most rewarding thing I've ever done so far.
I struggled to find something to write about. I have many, many ideas from years and years of writing that are simply locked in my notes app or a stray google doc, all lovely and perfect for me and my style, but none of them felt good as a start, they were either too complicated or too detached from my emotional capacity at the time, and as a first time scriptwriter it was a lot. I needed something relatively simple that could still make me feel fulfilled and keep me interested enough to make me want to write it for a full year.
my tutor suggested I look into real stories and real people within my own family to draw inspiration from them and have readily available “source material” to help me throughout this journey. and I landed on my great grandfather on my dad's side, who everyone always loved and talked high praises about. in my mind he was a sort of forrest gump character that always found himself in the right place at the right time and ingrained himself deeply in the family history. now, my relationship with my dad is skewed at best and irreparable at worst. he's a piece of work, but it was a day away from when I needed to turn my initial idea in and that was the best I had, so obviously I had to complicate everything for myself and twist my original idea into the most convoluted story ever: a father (based on my grandfather) and his son (my dad) attempt to fix their broken relationship as they create a documentary about the dead grandfather (my great grandfather). easy, no?
I knew what I wanted to tell, sort of, and I knew how I wanted to tell it. but most importantly I knew I wanted it to have a sad ending. this was very, very important to me for reasons that at the time I couldn't explain, but now I know had to do with my own journey of healing.
it was the in between that really created a headache for me. in the first five months all we had to do was draft our scripts with all the knowledge we were gathering throughout our semester, and so I tried but I wasn't very clear on how I wanted things to go so of course I had to start making stuff up to make it to deadlines and it all got complicated and mediocre from one arc to the other. it wasn't bad but it wasn't very good, either. I had to rewrite over half of my draft during the summer and I feel like that's when I could finally see the light. I had a decent story and a better way of telling it, now came the writing part.
my first act came along nicely and I was extremely proud of it. it was a masterpiece to me and with my new rough draft this was coming along as well as I could expect it to, but then life got complicated as it tends to get for me and my second and third act were definitely something… mostly a race against time and a fight against my own brain and impostor syndrome to keep writing and writing and writing no matter how badly I felt it was all coming along.
somehow it happened and I did it and I managed to turn everything in on time, although not with the same surety and satisfaction with which I turned in my first act.
after all that one would think it's all over, but actually there was still the hardest and tallest hurdle to overcome: the defense. since it's a bit of a non-traditional thesis, our defense was just a three minute pitch to sell our story. and I'm deathly afraid of public speaking. and I was also tired and burnt out and still finishing a second script for another class and it was all piling on and I was just so tired I ended up writing it last minute the day before I was supposed to pitch.
but it worked out. somehow I did it and the panel loved my story so much I was most certainly floored. I had absolutely no faith in myself or my story or my skills but one of the panelists even cried at my story and how much she could connect with it and how it made her feel. my tutor, who is a very dry woman whom I learned to love and appreciate more than I can put into words, sung me praises I wouldn’t even dare to dream of before. and that's what really got me thinking.
I had been working and studying and taking responsibility around my house because my mom took a new job and now I had to take care of my sibling and my grandparents and I had been so focused on just getting everything done and everything right that I had ended up approaching my thesis with a certain level of emotional detachment. not completely, obviously, because then the story would be robotic and stiff, but I ended up projecting and pouring so much of me and my traumas and my unresolved emotional journey regarding my family and my dad and just not processing it because I always had that feeling of pressure to keep going pushing down on my neck.
but during my pitch journey, which was equal parts gratifying as it was awful, I finally had time to sit with myself and THINK about what makes this story so special and personal to me and of course I finally bawled like a little baby. there's so much of me in here that I wove into each word even subconsciously, it was shocking to finally see it for what it really was instead of through the film of survival and the need to check 100 things off a to-do list every single day.
I needed the ending to be sad because I need the catharsis. in a story about accepting certain things as they are and learning to find peace within yourself instead of depending on others changing or understanding you for you to finally be able to find it, the ending needed to be sad and hard because that's what it feels like to come to terms with the fact that only you can create your own peace, but that doesn't make it any less liberating. that was my ending. and it's something that I'm still learning, but I think I definitely did some therapy while I wrote this and I could see so much of my own journey reflected back at me in 140 fucking pages of script… I feel like i've definitely matured a lot emotionally.
even now I feel choked up thinking about how much this story, which I initially feared and dreaded not only because of the amount of work it represented but also because of how unnecessarily complicated and personal I had made it, means to me now. it's something I can never stop treasuring. it's something that I've come to find beautiful despite the shortcomings that I can still see in it but that I can still love so deeply for how much it changed and healed me.
it's been a deeply emotional journey.
and it's been extremely companionable, too. the friends that I made and the friendships that became deeper and more meaningful throughout this journey are invaluable to me. nothing does more for a friendship than some good trauma dumping at 7 a.m. so your friends can help you straighten out the kinks of your story two hours before turn in. I've felt so genuinely loved and supported it's enough to send high school me into a coma. despite a few trip ups I think this is the most secure and comfortable I've ever felt with any irl friend group ever, all thanks to the power of trauma bonding and storytelling.
after years and years of writing my own stories out of pure instinct and flying by the seat of my pants, I've been feeling all my knowledge coming to play while just thinking up new ideas. it's not only fic, but original stuff too. I can feel the gears turning subconsciously to really pull together more structured and meaningful stories without me really trying. I haven't written anything (yet) but I'm excited to put my kpop boys through it with my newly acquired skills. bet my profs didn't think I'd be taking all their teachings and applying them to more meaningful and fucked up gay sex and mind games but I hope they'll forgive my primitive yaoi mind. I'm just a girl.
closing this chapter almost physically hurts, because now I'm leaving the whimsy of cinema and starting my second specialty in corporate communications, which is also something I love, but it's very very different to scriptwriting. they won't make me watch movies as homework in corporate, that's for fucking sure, but I'll be glad to let my mind rest a little and get used to something more structured and objective rather than relying on my own creativity 100% of the time for every single project and turn in. I've been fighting at least three little guys I made up in my mind every single day for the past nine months.
I close this chapter with indescribable happiness, preemptive nostalgia, reinvigorated self-confidence, a slightly abated imposter syndrome and as much love as I can fit inside my heart. I have and will never, for a second, regret taking on scriptwriting and embarking on probably my most magical and beautiful year of school ever. I'm excited and scared for challenges ahead, but I don't think any of them will ever top this.
