The Power of Giving

Thai commercial is always one of my favorite video to watch at during my free time. It is commonly very funny and creative. When you feel bored and need some entertainment, then searching YouTube for Thai commercial do really help to spend your time with laughter. However, this commercial is not funny but do touches people's heart and let the tear drop from the eye. I've been experience that after finish the video.

Happiness comes with not what you have but what you can give. By practicing giving, fortunate event will come along surprisingly whether how bad your current situation are. Giving is the form of love, the power is great for bringing you self achievement, satisfaction and happiness.

"Unsung Hero" is the title of this Thai commercial. It tells a guy everyday life had help many people in his journey. Deeper understanding of what his action meant is what the commercial want to convey about. What is in your life desire the most which money can't buy? The emotion of happiness. This what is the goal of the insurance company.

Along his journey, he readjust the dying plant to place that can get water; helping a lady to carry her stall; giving chicken to the dog; give donation to beggar's daughter for her education fund and hang a comb of banana at his neighbor's door. All of these examples has bring good outcome, which is the plant has grown; the lady can work happily; the dog has become his best companion; daughter manage to go to school and appreciation from his neighbor.

The tempo, music and the story has melt my heart, following his journey with a wonderful outcome for him. Since it is touching, the commercial also went viral sharing to people on this lovely film and share the power of love.

For the next video to share is an inspirational short film from Singapore. The title of the short film is Gift. It is about a son confronts the resentment towards his father only to realize his true intentions. His dad had given him a priceless gift with a virtue value of life. The gift is the main element for this short film to tell us the meaning of practicing giving is it mean to be rich in life. Quoted from the father, "Being rich is not about how much you have, but how much you can give" tells no matter how poor you currently are but still a rich man when you still can give.

The son is frustrated with his father of being so hardworking to work but still very poor. Not much enjoyment in the family and still live in the life of low financial income status. He promises himself to be more well success in the future and not to look back at his difficult past with his father. After his father died, he found out many thank you letter using his name for the donation, then he realize what his father had been doing all the while.

In the likelihood with the commercial, both tells the purpose of giving. A man can give anything and in any form, regardless you are poor or in bad situation. The value of giving is the power of spreading love and make the world to be more delightful. Rich or poor is not count by how much money you have, but the values you have.

Execution of Multiple Personality Disorder

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) also known as Multiple Personality Disorder is a severe condition for the patient which there will be two or more distinct identities, or personality states that are present in and alternately take control of an individual. The person may experiences memory loss from the alternate changes from each personality.

Movies can be relate to this disorder are Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Sybil, Fight Club, Psycho and Identity. These movies projected the transition of a harmless person into wild and dangerous. Any execution of the movie portraying DID is fascinating, because any way had use can add on the feel of intense and mystery to the movie, bringing the audience to a different experience.

One of the execution is that actor need to act different significant character themselves to show the drastic change of the person. This is going to test the acting skill of the actor. It is a really psychopathic way for the actor to not focus on 1 character but many within the same time. The audience can easily identify the person with DID and excited to react with the sudden change of the character bringing the twist to the plot.

However, another way bring more mystery to the audience, they will not know the protagonist suffer DID until the end of the movie. Fight Club and Identity is the good example for this kind of execution. We thought the protagonist communicate with various characters in the movie, but in fact they are the same person. Very good twist and surprising for us to watch. The writer need to be carefully write the plot as some hints need to slowly expose out to not lead much confusion in the end of the movie.

Following kind of execution in the short film has inspired few directors to do the similar way at their film. The title of the short film is Inside, directed by Trevor Sands and had won 2 film festivals in 2002. It is about a man with DID on his way to meet a doctor for evaluation. Throughout the short film, we have seen him accompany by many people with different characteristic to meet doctor for evaluation. They are unstable, everyone wanted to speak up until they are confronted by the doctor. In the end of the short film, we realize the doctor is also one of his split personality. This twist captivates us by bringing many characters alive and let the audience to identify each split personality he have, then the hook is at the doctor calming the others also one of his split character.

This execution shows up many characters with different sizes, gender and personalities coming alive accompany the person where ever the person is at. Audience will have a clear image on the person has how many personality and what kind of characteristic. It looks like a group of people stick together and voice up in any different situation.

Wilber Pan's music video is one of the replica example by using the story of Billy with 24 personalities. Splitting aside from the dancing part, the story content is quite similar with the short film shown above. Wilber is heading to meet the doctor bringing along with many characters beside him, later the doctor herself also part of Wilber. Although the content is similar, but overall the MV has brought up a better quality with fast pace of editing and smooth story telling.

Mad Detective directed by Johnie To and Wai Ka-Fai in year 2007, had execute in a way the detective has the supernatural gift seeing a person's "inner personalities," or hidden ghosts. He uses this ability to help the rookie detective to solve a murder case. Throughout the investigation, the detective suspected an officer which has suffer from multiple personality disorder. From the suspected officer, we can see he has a total of 7 personalities which 7 different character surround him to commit crime.

Multiple personality disorder is an interesting theme, it excite our mind to start thinking and follow the story of the movie closely. We hardly predict when the characters will appear and might shock us with any action. It's unpredictable, the thrill and mystery feel of the movie is one of the pleasure for a good movie viewing experience.

Travel to Another Dimension

If we have the ability to travel to another dimension, then we can travel through different spaces to somewhere we wanted to go. However, most people get excited for this ability are the people who wanted to escape their current living situation. People live miserably and hope they can get out from the current situation to a new place. The new place will bring them joy and freedom. Unfortunately, the new place will never meet to their expectation.
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Recently found a short film been shared around, which tells the story of a prisoner found a way to travel to another dimension then he can escape from the prison. Without listening to the advice of the old man, very excited of him just run off from the prison and then get caught again from the current dimension.

This short film is the winner of the BAFTA for short film 2014, entitled Room 8.

The tone of the short film is dark and steady pace. It tells story of the protagonist found hope to escape the prison, but having an unfortunate ending. Giving the feel of goosebumps when you follow the story until the end. Questions are popping out: is this is the way to prison? how was the dimension or space of the room works? will the human size become even smaller after escaping from the original room?

Since, it is a short film, many details can't be told, whereas Room 8 just wanted to tell the consequence of the protagonist life. The matches box shown from the early of the short film had told the answer. We might get curios about the meaning of the shacking matches box, but when the story start to escalate to the end, we realist the hope of the many prisoner had trapped into the matches box.
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The following short film brings another tone to the theme of travelling to another dimension. Although, it is set similar to the Room 8 about the consequence of the prisoner, but this short film is more to action and sci-fi genre. This short film is Portal: No Escape.

A woman wakes up in a room with no memory, found lock in the room like prison until she found a weapon can help her travel around with the portal that had made. It is a good opportunity for her to escape from the prison. In the end, after fighting with the guards, she realize she had already in another prison all the while. There is no way out for her.

A never ending prison for her life was miserable, though she got a little hope for the weapon she found to escape. The short film tells more action genre where machinery and combat are available. The excitement was there when we follow her to escape from the prison, then come a twist that no one able to leave form the prison.
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For the 3rd short film to recommend is entitled Black Hole. The earliest short film watched compared to last 2 short films. Just less than 3 minutes of the film had made me feel pity for the guy. Greed leads to ignorant, and lead him to a sad ending.

An ordinary guy feeling miserably working lately at the office, and suddenly a photocopy machine print out a copy of black hole. He then found out this black hole able him to pass through a wall and get things he wanted. When his greedy thought started to kick in, he went to the safe box and try carry out all the money in it. Desperately of taking out all the money in it, without thinking, all of his body had went in the safe box, then the paper just unattached and left him inside the safe box.

A strong moral value can be learn from the short film, telling about the consequences of being greedy. Without using music but just natural sound has resonate out the daily life of a lot of white collar workers. A great escape for people want to escape their mundane life, and get smack back again to be realistic. This guy was so happy after finding the ability of the black hole, from frustrating emotion to curios and greedy to get away from his original life. Well written for this short film, simple yet it can bring dramatic effect on us.

Gravity: Cinematic Experience

One of the best movie for year 2013. It definitely need to watch at cinema, better if you had a chance to watch at IMAX. Although this movie had past several months ago, I still feel very excited and wanted to share my experience of watching it.

Gravity tells a medical engineer and an astronaut work together to survive after a catastrophe destroys their shuttle and leaves them adrift in orbit. A simple story, but it brings an unique ride of experience at the cinema. The visual effect and the sound of this movie can let you experience of floating at outer space. That is the reason why Gravity can win 5 awards from this year 86th Academic Awards (Oscars), which are the visual effect, sound mixing, sound editing, music and director.

Poster/Trailer

The poster was designed in total blackness with only 1 astronaut floating at space and the tagline tells "Don't let go". Huge impact to me where I start to have deep thought about the movie because the poster give much thinking space for me to wonder how will the story goes.

As we all know, space is vacuum, thus the poster tells nothing can be done by the astronaut and the time is ticking where the oxygen level is getting down when you let go from the shuttle. The struggle of the astronaut is drastic, and it is a hype for me to find out how the director will tell the story.

After viewed the trailer, the feeling of anxious and curios appeared. The anxiousness feel where the shuttle had destroyed by the debris and Sandra struggle to detached in order to be alive, but then she end up floating at the space without any support for her to reach to other shutter. And now the "what next" feeling of mine had pop up after the end of the trailer, which brought me to feel this movie definitely need to watch at cinema.

Review

Gravity definitely need to watch at cinema, if you had not watch, then you need to find a very good sound system room to watch. The content itself was not much dramatic as there are mp involvement with many human conflict. The movie only tells the struggle of Dr Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) find her way to return to the earth when her shuttle had been destroyed by the debris at the space. Hence, it's only 1 man show for Sandra Bullock to support and it is her challenge of her acting skill.

I got amaze on her performance in the film because my first impression of Sandra is from the comedy film, but Gravity had change my perception towards her. She manage to brings out the character of Dr Ryan Stone. She shows the struggle, bravery, independent and weakness of the character. Hence, she is fortunate to be nominate as leading actress for the 86th Academic Awards.

Audio is a very important role for a movie, most of the nature sound tells the impact of a particular incident like a collision with explosive sound. However, at the space is vacuum, then there will be no sound can be heard, so Gravity manage to brought up the movie experience to the next level of eliminate many nature sound from the environment. While you watching the movie, the collision and explosion of the shuttle were heard nearly nothing and replace to very intense music for the critical and intense feel.

Throughout the movie, beside music we can hear the communication and monologue of Dr Ryan in her suits. 

Not a silent film, we still have lots of sound to hear from the movie. The execution of it is take care carefully from not being totally silent, the movie had find ways like breathing, communication with Houston (mission control center), anything contact with her suits will able to hear some sound coming from.

The nice part for me is after finish the movie, my ear start to have buzz sound or little uncomfortable when I step out from the cinema. I had use to the environment create in the movie, and make me need to rearrange the environment with many nature sounds around me.

Visual, the cinematography and camera movement of movie also do amaze me, which it can shot to be like handling the camera without any gravity force. The shots can move so freely, we can see the camera turns 360 degree and move around in any direction. After all, the beauty of looking at the earth from the space is so beautiful and you can feel that we are so tiny compare to the world.

A whole journey for Dr Ryan had portray the purpose of a life, which had problem or dilemma form the past and it need to face it. No one can escape from any problem, we need to face it no matter how hard the process. Along the journey, we might got people to help but they won't be together with you till the end, you still need to face it all the way alone. Once we had conquer our fear and problem from the past, we will have a feeling of new live. A wonderful feel to rejoice about the air and ground we breathing and stepping at.

Overall, it is an unforgettable experience to watch at cinema to have the feel of being at the outer space. Besides, audio and visual that had brought the new experience, Gravity also tells a reflective story of life. A good movie to share with and to have deep thought of the content itself.

Sunflower: Transition of Life

Qing Ming Festival, also known as Tomb Sweeping Day is a Chinese traditional festival that celebrate either April 4th or 5th in a given year. In this period of time (it can be celebrate early or later 2 weeks from the exact date), Chinese will gather with the family to visit the graves or burial grounds of their ancestors. It is a festival to give opportunity to the celebrants to remember and give homage to their ancestor. A very unique way to teach the younger generations about the Chinese Value.

In conjunction with Qing Ming, a short film based on death is produced by the Reservoir Production and directed by Quek Shio Chuan. The short film is called: Sunflowers short film.

Summary

A struggling makeup artist, Ping who has the ambitious dream to be famous amongst the fashion industry and wanted to go to overseas to be the famous celebrities makeup artist. Despite living in the highly competitive environment, she finally lands a job that is not makeup for the living. With the dilemma she has within, she soon had been enlightened and understand more about the meaning of this new job, funeral make up artist.

Review

Sunflowers short film had successfully tells a story that touches lots of peoples' heart. The simplicity of the story telling, but deeply the meaning that going to be convey. By watching the short film in the Qing Ming season, everyone get more related to the story with it.

Chinese proverbs had said "one generation plants the trees; another gets the shade". Our ancestor had done their very best job to ensure we are now live in peace and steady life. Hence, Qing Ming is all about it, remembrance the contribution from our ancestor.

In the short film, the grandmother wanted Ping to live less struggle, so she asked the veteran to give a job opportunity to Ping. A valuable virtue found in the Chinese was diligently shown in the short film.


Furthermore, the appearance of some props used in the short film had symbolic meaning that make the film more concrete and meaningful.

1. Sunflowers: 
     Meaning of the sunflower is faith and hope. Grandmother's life is like sunflowers, it bloom and shine to give hope and cherish to Ping, but still had to wither when the time had come. Nothing is permanent.

2. Makeup Box:
     Makeup box is an identity of a profession. The veteran advise Ping not to use her own makeup box when she is helping the deceased make up. The reason of it is to tell Ping still had the choice of living to continue pursue her dream using her own makeup box but not for the deceased.

In the end, Ping wanted to use her own makeup box to help beautify her grandmother because it is the time she had made her decision to has a transition to settle down and continue the job together with the veteran.


Producing short film is a good way to experiment new technique of story telling. We can easily identify a sudden change of camera angle and shots. All these methods were made had their own meaning to be told.

1. Tilt screen and divided evenly

The screenshot shown above, Ping is lying on the bed and suddenly her phone rang. The time the camera starts to tilt from horizontal line of the bed towards vertical. The screenshot we saw now had split into left and right evenly from the line of the bed. It is a 50/50 decision for Ping to decide on accepting the job or not. Moreover, it was also the time Ping's career life will going to be a turnover.

2. Bird's eye view

These scene are well shot because it brings us a feeling that Pings is stepping to the new environment where we follow her footstep to the place without knowing what ahead of her. Both shots, Ping is nervous and frighten to step in, though it is the same place, but different occasion.

3. Stop motion

This scene was adapted from the time where Ping received a call about her grandmother's death. The cinematography had well express her feeling during that time. Everything come too sudden, she was shocked and started to loose the focus on her environment. The surrounding of Ping are all blurry and fast moving, only herself was still and very emotional.

Overall comment

Quek's film tells a good story with the good combination of music and down to earth storyline. You can see his awards winning 'Guang' and several Petronas TVC are good example of his director style.

The screening premiere I went is on the 3rd April 2014 at E@Curve, Mutiara Damansara. Many media and supporter are welcomed to have their first glimpse before the video went viral at the internet.

I was very touch and relate very much in this short film, because I was in the same Chinese culture and I do have a similar scenario of helping to clean my grandmother's body. The emotion starts to get deepens, when we see our loved one had departed. Our last role at that time is to make their body to look as natural as possible.

To sum up the Sunflowers short films, it is short film about the transition of life: from alive to death; from ambitious to steadiness; from attachment to relieve. All these are the value of life, where everyone gonna have their own transition for their life. This short film is based on death as the main transition.

Please do view it and share among your friend about this short film from our Malaysia's local director, Quek Shio Chuan. His been very passionate about film making and also hope there will be a transition of his life to film a featured film after this.

Filmtoallogy: A New Beginning

It’s been few years for this blog to remain frozen and it is time to let it go. However, there will be a transition for the content of Filmtoallogy and it is stepping into a new beginning.

The origin for this blog is for university assignment. The assignment needed us to write articles about film movement. Soviet montage is one of the film movement we pick to discuss with.

Now, this blog will turn over a new leave and is themed to appreciate film in any aspects. Any related featured films, short films, TVC and music videos will be the victim for this blog.

Please look forward to this blog, as you can see many movie reviews and interested video to be shared. Of course, the reviews are based on my own opinion, research and understanding about the film itself. Any ideas to share and recommendation, please write down your comments!

“Film” = Movies?

One of the definitions for ‘film’ is a sequence of images of moving objects photographed by a camera and providing the optical illusion of continuous movement when projected onto a screen. Where this mean not only movie is meant to be called film, other videos that capture images of moving objects can be called as film. Thus, the origin for all the video capturing gadgets or contents are from film. 

In the 21st century, people commonly use social media to just click and share the videos they found it is entertaining and also video that just satisfy their leisure needs. Clicks, views, shares and sales are the measurement to their popularity but appreciation is yet to be known. It brings out the meaning and the purpose of the work itself is less appreciated.

At filmtoallogy, films are not just share out that are nice and entertaining, but it will also provide some review, comment and research of the film to show the respect for the film itself. The production of every film is made from blood and tears, so spare some time to discuss and analyse the film is a good favour return to show we are appreciating their piece of work.