Getting the message across...

Selamat Pagi Dunia!!

Well, I haven't finished my cup of morning coffee so I'll just continue writing (correction: typing) here. This morning, inside the 153 bus (Toa Payoh-Queensway) I continued reading "Story and Characters", a compilation of interviews with British screenwriters done by Alistair Owen. There was something that refresh my mind about one game session in last year's retreat (Mudika KKIS Retreat 2004). Nothing to do with scriptwriting, though...

What we had on one session during retreat (conducted by Father William Chang OFM Cap) was meant to know how well does a message get across. Each group leader was given one LONG sentence and we had to read it to our fellow teammates. They had to memorize it and then re-tell the message. From that, we would be able to know how normally a message stays in one's mind.

So the sentences were (I don't know whether I still remember or not. Ga ada contekan):
Seorang gadis desa yang muda dan cantik dengan mata biru dan pipi jingga serta berambut pirang membawa seember susu sapi di atas kepalanya. Tangan kanannya menjinjing sebuah ember merah.

What happened on that night was, most of the people managed to get the message and re-tell a similar message though not in an exact sentence. Some of them changed a bit, e.g. jadi ember biru, gadis desa yang manis dan cantik and one even changed the red bucket to a red bag (ngebayangin cewek di orchard kali bukan di desa hehehehe =P).

So our conclusion was: when people receive a message, they tend to visualize it at the back of their mind. With our limitation in memory space, I think it is good enough. And most of the time we indeed do not need to remember exactly words by words, comma by comma, full stop by full stop.

What reminded me of this was: In the "Story and Characters" book, Richard Curtis (Scriptwriter for The Four Wedding and A Funeral, Notting Hill, Bridget Jones Diary and Love Actually to name a few) shared with us that few years after he wrote the script for "The Tall Guy", he endlessly answered to the questions about "The Tall Man" and "The Big Guy"....


Two more tiring and mind-boggling working days before weekend,
Rhea.