Umquhile

It started as a side-project to capture a video like a short film or short clip in order to be shown to the Malaysian students attending the Malaysian Midwest Games Night 2010, and now I feel so tied to it just because. Most of the scenes were shot with my new Nikon D300s with the few lenses that I have and thanks to the screenplay written by a graduating senior along with other crews and casts, I would say that I am proud of it even though it is far from perfect.

What am I talking about? I am talking about the video that I have now uploaded to my Facebook account, my Facebook page and also on Youtube for anybody who wants to view it.

Umquhile

... and in it there is an implicit message, a lesson if you please, one that kinda strikes true to me and also, I think, most of the students studying far from home, whether it be overseas, regional or just local. Umquhile, or as defined in some websites as 'some time ago', in my personal perspective seems like a story about a teenager who undergoes the rebellious transformation from childhood to adulthood and after being rebellious for years, finally goes back to his roots where he left it some time ago. That is only my thinking of it, so don't take my word for it.

During its initial stages, when I read the screenplay for it, it has this sense of striking true to what I myself experienced, if not fully but partly. More than that, it has been quite a while that I have been thinking of doing some short clips, experimenting with the play of words, song and visual styles to strike a balance in delivering the message, as what I aim to do also in my photography. After the project was done a couple of days ago, I definitely feel that I can do it one day, if not for going big, then just for an experiment in curiosity.

Thanks to my graduating senior, Hanif, who entrusted me with task of being the cinematographer for the video and hopefully one day, he'll be someone who can be in the likes of the late Yasmin Ahmad.

Contradictions

We, humans, usually contradict ourselves.

It's not that we intentionally lie to ourselves, but more to it being a subconscious event going on at the back of our temple without us realizing it. We want to act one way, but we do the other. And when we do the other, we tell ourselves that it was better to do the way of the first after all. It does not make sense, but we ask ourselves this question: does it have to make sense at all?

I don't know where this thought comes from as of late, but it has been bugging me quite so often. I tell to myself, why am I learning to become an engineer, when sometimes it would have been more interesting if I were something else, say like an artist, a poet or a musician? Other than that, I also feel that I am having a conflict of identity where one wants no more than to be docile, and the other to be let free and crazy. Sometimes I feel like just staying away from everything and everyone for the fear of being tied down to the fabrics of society's judgmental law. But at the same time too, I want to be the one who can control the flow of the society in order to benefit all.

I guess, the world is full of contradictions. Best of all, I know I am not alone. Somewhere and sometime, there are also people like me. We are the contradictions in the society, but also a conformer since it might also have been this way from the start and our purpose is as such.

I don't know..it kinda makes sense then, but now it doesn't.