How I turned Siti's world upside down, again.

The way her head twisted up at me when she said “WHAT?” was as if I told I was not really Muslim. Or that I was going to leave and join a Buddhist monastery and had asked her if she wanted to come. 

It was like: 

“what? What? WHAT? WHAAAT?” 

Of course she tells it differently.   




 

 
But after she said yes and we started talking about the project she immediately threw me questions that I had not thought about and which were critical to the film.

I won’t pretend that I am not a newbie. I’ve only done two films before this and they were works of fiction. This one was going to be a true story. Even though I hadn’t done any documentaries, I have wide experience doing articles on intricate social issues.

The principle is the same if you’re approaching a story in print or in video form.  

Why should this story be told? And why should anyone bother reading/viewing it? I had answered these two questions but there was a third question that I hadn’t thought about but which she did. 

“What kind of impression do you want to leave on the audience?”

When I’m writing for print its in 2-D. Now that the story is in 3-D there is an extra emotional dimension that you as the storyteller has to consider.

With print, you can influence how your reader feels because they have no other choice but to take what you say as the accurate representation of the story you are telling.

If you say the “man looked remorseful” then they have to take your word for it. They have no other way of independently checking it out.

With film, your subjects can be seen by the viewers themselves. They don’t need you to tell them whether someone is sad, happy or honest. They will see it for themselves.  If you try to hide or manipulate your subjects, the viewer can see that too.

So the challenge is how to tell a story and leave your reader/viewer with an
impression that is true to the story. As opposed to them getting an impression that they think you conned them into.

Mencari jodoh filem

It ain’t really that hard to decide on what story I want to tell. What is hard is actually how to tell it. But i have a good story for this year’s festival and there is this burning in my gut that tells me to pitch it to KOMAS. 
 
The story’s been going around in my head for some time. I know exactly what kind of angle it should be. Probably because I wrote about it when I was in the NST sometime in September 2009. Due to space constraints I wasn’t able to really explore it in depth. I wrote about one aspect of the story and how it tied into the rise of the Malay supremacist movement. But the article concentrated on whether this small but world-infamous protest was a sign that the movement was gaining traction.
 
There was another side of the story that needed telling and I decided that film would be the medium.

I thought about going at it alone. I had asked my good friend Halim, who i've done two films with and he was like:

“Awww dude, why don’t we do another adaptation. I have this great book man about what it feels like to be the “other woman” in a relationship. I mean this is the story of the “other side man”.
 
“Dude let’s do that man. Let’s do that. It’d be awesome”.
 
‘Awesome’ in the same way that eating a whole bunch of strange mushrooms would feel ‘awesome’. But I wasn’t in the mood for shrooms.  
 
Halim was also in Kelantan so that made it difficult to do it together. 

But I felt that I didn’t want to go at it alone. Not because I wouldn’t be able to hack it alone but because I wanted a fresh perspective on the subject. Someone who could see the dimensions of the story that I didn’t see.

And so began the great quest of “Mencari jodoh filem”.