The Director
When there is no cable, grab a book and direct your own movie
Tv, that box we all stare to see how other people live their lives. We watch it from the comfort of our homes, we watch it together with other people in the cinema. It’s what we do to escape our lives, unplug disconnect and live with the characters on screen even if it is only for a couple of hours. Drama, action, horror, romance. For every one emotion, for every one thing, we can find a movie that will get us our artificial fix.
Some of the most interesting Tv shows out there are those about times we haven’t lived ourselves. Shows like Mad Men, Masters of Sex and The Hour give us something a movie can’t: attachment. In a full length cinema movie you are quickly rushed through it. The good old box in your house gives you just a tiny bit every other week. The question now is, what do you do when there is no Tv and when there are no movies you can get your hands on?
The solution is: You make your own. All you need is just a good book and a lot of imagination. The plot is there, but everything else is up to you. I’m lying actually, because sometimes you read a book and feel like the plot should have gone a different way. At that point you pick up the pencil/typewriter/notebook and start writing your own endings. When the Harry Potter craze was on, I couldn’t find it anywhere so I downloaded a version I found on a file sharing website. I didn’t know anybody who got a chance to read it and I did not want to read any reviews. It turns out it was a fan-made version. Everything was different about it. The characters, the turn of events. For the first few chapters I didn’t really figure it out. There was an obsessive level of detail and the plot took my by storm. After I read the original, I was disappointed. The fan made one was so much better.
As much as I enjoyed that book, I couldn’t have produced anything similar to it. The thing that made it so great was in part the plot but my mind rolling everything like a movie. You get to make a character from scratch and with each word that you read you find yourself right back into the cinema seat only this time, you’re not a passive viewer, you are driving everything. You can see through the characters eyes, like an outside passive viewer. Once you do this the book itself becomes a movie and you’re the director of it all. The only other thing missing from your movie is a soundtrack. Thankfully, with an iPod filled of music, you can drop any music that you want.
It’s a bit of hard work, you’re not just there along for the ride, you get involved, you make it your own. Once you try to read a book and think about it like directing a movie you’ll want to get more plots, hire some actors and ‘make’ more movies. When it comes to your heroes, you can have anybody. You can get you favourite pair, replace them halfway through, break from the story and create a moment that makes sense only for you and then get back into it.
So, next time you find yourself with a great book take a second and get a cast together and dive into the book together. You might forget it’s time to go to bed, or you could end up missing your stop. Who cares? You’ll be in a world of your own making. Nothing beats that.
