All I want to do is tell a good story. At a party, with a post, with a film. It should come naturally you'd think, but sometimes we miss the mark and lose our audience. Somewhere along the way our storytelling skills get muddied. My mom can tell a good story- sometimes she'll get lost in the detail of someone or something and it sends her down another road, but usually, somewhat magically she gets back on track and sums it all up. Molly, at 6, tells wonderful stories- with conviction and expression and unbridled enthusiasm. She's chomping at the bit just to get it out and you can't help but get swept up in it.
I think it's best to start out and not know how it will come out in the end but have a clear understanding of the heart of the matter- the moment- or the one single picture in your mind that sums up the piece for you. I found my heart or image today in my film. A scene we shot late in the game- a big wide of the two characters standing in the midst of a green filled park, face to face, a path running by them on one side and a field on the right. It's just the shot I thought we'd use to get into the scene and never out. But then, there it was in the midst of all this other stuff we were looking at and it just revealed itself as a slice, a center, a thread of what the whole business of this story I'm trying to tell is. And it got me thinking about the center and all of the other details and sequences of events being important but certainly not as important as the core- the reason you want to tell the story in the first place. Starting here- with that one singular thing somehow gets the rest of it back to it's place and the order of things is restored. And once that's done we can just take a breath and begin again.
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