TIKI MODERN: Apologies, Comments, Critique and ...questions - General Tiki

B bigbrotiki Tiki Socialite Tiki Island, above the Silverlake Joined: Mar 25, 2002 Posts: 11621	B bigbrotiki Posted posted on Sun, Oct 7, 2007 6:06 AM On 2007-10-07 00:14, Thomas wrote: I really like your writing. It must be a challenge to be so concise -- I can imagine myself with a very wordy manuscript and having to reduce it to 1/10th of its original length and finding it a hellish process, with potentially hellish results. Your text is highly informative yet lets the nonverbal content (the pictures!) have center stage as it should. A tough balance to strike I'll bet. Thank you. The trick is that I "write" from the experience of a being a cinematographer. To me, literally every picture tells a story. First I find and collect images that I find curious, seductive, and in which I see meaning in, and then I put them into context to each other, stringing them up in a visual narrative, much like different shots being edited in a movie. During collecting and assembling, a basic text narrative begins to take shape in my mind. But only after laying the images out on a page do I see how much space I have left, and then I write pretty much to match the word count. That prohibits me from becoming too wordy: Most of the time I would have more to say, but have to hone it down to the essentials to press it into the space I have left, ... only a few times I had to make up extra stuff where I had little info to share. That's why I was initially bummed about the tri-lingual captions (already in the BOT), because they take away space, but that is a small price to pay for worldwide distribution, which helps to afford me as the creative, and you as the the recipient the luxury of nearly unlimited page count, in full color, for an affordable price. But just like me "writing" the books that way does the reader get engaged in them and "reads" them by following the visual narrative first, then reading the captions, and then the text, to confirm his impressions. A filmmaker is most successful in his medium when he can tell his story without relying on dialog, by creating whole scenes where things and people DO and ARE without having to explain themselves. The challenge is to find a visual language that the viewer grasps intuitively, or at least finds engaging, even without understanding it. This form of communication leaves some room for subjective interpretation, but we are talking about art, not science here (though it pretends to be :) ), and that extra space is actually what allows the viewer the room for his own imagination to ad on to what he sees, the images being the fuel for each individual's personal fantasy of his own Shangri-La. PS: The above should NOT be used as an excuse now by you lazy bums to never read the text because you are oh so intuitive! :) Thomas is right, the writing is the most painful part of the whole endeavor, it is actual WORK (yuk!), and you better make use of it! :D

On 2007-10-07 00:14, Thomas wrote:
I really like your writing. It must be a challenge to be so concise -- I can imagine myself with a very wordy manuscript and having to reduce it to 1/10th of its original length and finding it a hellish process, with potentially hellish results. Your text is highly informative yet lets the nonverbal content (the pictures!) have center stage as it should. A tough balance to strike I'll bet.

Thank you. The trick is that I "write" from the experience of a being a cinematographer. To me, literally every picture tells a story. First I find and collect images that I find curious, seductive, and in which I see meaning in, and then I put them into context to each other, stringing them up in a visual narrative, much like different shots being edited in a movie. During collecting and assembling, a basic text narrative begins to take shape in my mind. But only after laying the images out on a page do I see how much space I have left, and then I write pretty much to match the word count. That prohibits me from becoming too wordy: Most of the time I would have more to say, but have to hone it down to the essentials to press it into the space I have left, ... only a few times I had to make up extra stuff where I had little info to share.

That's why I was initially bummed about the tri-lingual captions (already in the BOT), because they take away space, but that is a small price to pay for worldwide distribution, which helps to afford me as the creative, and you as the the recipient the luxury of nearly unlimited page count, in full color, for an affordable price.

But just like me "writing" the books that way does the reader get engaged in them and "reads" them by following the visual narrative first, then reading the captions, and then the text, to confirm his impressions. A filmmaker is most successful in his medium when he can tell his story without relying on dialog, by creating whole scenes where things and people DO and ARE without having to explain themselves. The challenge is to find a visual language that the viewer grasps intuitively, or at least finds engaging, even without understanding it.

This form of communication leaves some room for subjective interpretation, but we are talking about art, not science here (though it pretends to be :) ), and that extra space is actually what allows the viewer the room for his own imagination to ad on to what he sees, the images being the fuel for each individual's personal fantasy of his own Shangri-La.

PS: The above should NOT be used as an excuse now by you lazy bums to never read the text because you are oh so intuitive! :) Thomas is right, the writing is the most painful part of the whole endeavor, it is actual WORK (yuk!), and you better make use of it! :D

Post #336895 by bigbrotiki on Sun, Oct 7, 2007 6:06 AM