A Note on Developing Characters

It's always easy, when watching a movie or reading a book, to say "yea, so and so and their friend's relationship needed to be developed more,". Hell, I say that all the time. However, at least with myself, I would say it but not be able to pinpoint how exactly that needed to be done.

Developing relationships in between two separate characters can be tricky if you don't have a good grasp on each character's personality as well as the general relationship between the two characters, i.e. "how do they feel about each other?" That's generally a good question to start off with in discovering and building a relationship between your fictional works.

Going back to my previous post about Street Fighter, the relationship between Chung Li and her master is just that, a girl that goes to some guy to learn things, the relationship is, in that respect, too materialistic and way too one-sided for me to feel anything for him when we're lead to believe that he's dead.

Relationship development is tricky because you must know and have developed all your characters so that when they interact with each other, we see a bit of emotion from them, be it joy or sorrow or indifference (yes, indifference is an emotion, or, at least in this case it is because that character should be indifferent for a reason). Your main character should not be the only one that gets something out of a relationship, that's generally not how relationships work... unless they're just that kind of relationship, but even then there's a reason why it exists (and is usually a point of conflict.)

Apologies

I feel like I must apologize for my harsh criticisms of Street Fighter and Dragonball, that's not the purpose that I started watching these films. Actually, I think the real reason I wanted to watch these films was for laughs, but in respect to my "Bad Movie Series," that I've been doing, the movies are precisely that, bad movies, the logic behind that being I might learn what not to do.

So I feel I must apologize because I spent the previous posts ranting about how bad the movies were and not discussing the educational experience that I've had from both, so here's what I learned.

Street Fighter: The Legend of Chun Li

1.) Develop Relationships -- There were scenes where a character died and I just didn't care because, even though the character was significant to the main character, I didn't know them and I didn't care about them.

2.) Montages show us progress but not struggle -- The montage that I have particularly in mind is when Chun Li is learning and finally mastering this technique, but since I didn't see a huge struggle in the first place or, for that matter, a lack of dedication/determination to get this technique done in the first place, I only see a series of images telling me she's got it and that it seemed easy. Nothing should be gained easily by the main character.

3.) Establish why the main character is uniquely important -- There is a specific scene when Chun Li is told by her master that "only you can save your father" but nothing else is elaborated in terms if that. Does she posses something that no one else does? An ability, a connection with a charm, etc... that would allow her to do what no one else can?

4.) Similarly to #3, don't make a character seem special and then negate it -- As mentioned before, her master tells her "only you can save your father," and then, ==Spoiler Alert== her father dies, so guess what? Not even she could save her father, which takes away any sort of unique labeling that she may have been given by that one line.

5.) Spend more time on the character's situation and how they got there -- When Chun Li moves to Thailand she lives on the streets and begs for food. How did she get to that situation? Did she choose to live like that? I would think so since just moments ago she lived a rather wealthy life in Hong Kong.

6.) Get good actors -- While Kristen Kreuk wasn't bad, everyone else was. Enough said on that. Also, it was very clear in fight scenes that Kristen Kreuk is not an extremely athletic person. Her Chinese also sucks... which takes me to my next point.

7.) When you have people speaking in languages they don't know, get a language coach for them. -- This holds especially true for when people speak a tonal language like Chinese.

That's all for that. I'll do Dragonball another time. I don't think I have enough energy for it right now.

Ramblings

So I just watched Street Fighter the Legend of Chun Li, you know, for laughs, and wow is it hilariously bad, which is good because I watched it with the intention of viewing something hilariously bad because I didn't feel like thinking and just wanted to have a little fun. Besides, its not like I paid to see it.


On another, completely different note, on Tuesday I was at my internship and it started raining, seemingly out of nowhere. My response to this is, and well, the past month or so of almost constant rain was: "What's up with this weather?" The response I get to my question is "What are you? Jerry Seinfeld?"

Now, this isn't the first time this parallel has been drawn, the former having been made by none other than Nicholas Feitel some months back. I believe his comment being somewhere along the lines of "Matt, just because you live in New York doesn't mean you have to be like Seinfeld. You're Jew-ing it up almost worst than me,". Of course he gets away with this comment for the mere fact that he is actually Jewish.

Naturally, of course, as I sit here and begin to plan my long rant about how unjust it is that the term "What's with" or "what's up with" is relegated to a 55 year-old Hungarian-Jewish- Brooklynite comedian and how I should be able to complain about things without being compared to said sitcom character/comedian whom I never really watched or cared about, I realize that this course of action can only backfire because it, in and of itself, is feeding the parallel, so I guess I'm just stuck.


Additionally, today I actually managed to go to Nick's writing group. It was fun and productive in that it has succeeded in encouraging me to work on my script more; I know I definitely want to finish my script because I want to, 1, get it made and 2, go and start writing and developing other ideas that have been floating around this head of mine.

However, at this meeting I learned that two people whom were in charge of looking for additional crew members for this shoot I wanted to be involved with were desperately seeking crew members. Upon hearing this Nick, who was already involved with the shoot, approached these two people and suggested me. Their response was somewhere along the lines of "oh yea, Matt Chao... we'll call him if we run out of PA's." (This was a professional shoot and they were looking for PA's)

I don't know how to react to that information. Provided, it is Nick telling the story so facts are bound to be exaggerated, but, I mean, I expect this kind of reaction/treatment from one of the two people there, but not really from both. I also wonder why their reactions are like that. Have I wronged them somehow? I only really worked on set with one of them and I'd like to believe that we had a fun time together the two times we worked together. Am I doing something wrong that there would be a cause for hesitance when it comes to having me on set? Mike Sweeny told me he got more or less the same response from one of them when he approached them, the "I'll call you," which, of course, meant that he never got a call, and these are supposed to be people we are at least friendly with. Is there a reason for the trepidation?

I think that my reaction to this should be and remain the reaction I expressed at the cafe where we hold our weekly writing sessions: "Oh well, fuck 'em,".


Additionally, I finally got to see and hang out with my good high school friend Yong Choi, whom I haven't seen in two years and has recently graduated from UVA for Architecture. However, this story, if deemed worth telling, may be better suited for the Xanga.