In the beginning of my VET media course I knew that I
enjoyed telling stories but in the in the beginning I was more inclined in
pursuing animation as I’m creative and a fairly good drawer but I felt I
couldn’t, with animation, tell a deep and meaningful story so after producing
two short animation I move on to film. And I had pretty ambitious idea though
it seem unreasonable, I choose to follow through as I felt I had to challenge
myself and the limitation of film as a way to tell a story. And immediately
found it a much more enjoyable process though difficult and as tedious, in a
good way, felt I could explore my ideas deeper. I began early on before
actually getting the task of writing a script. I did some minor character
studies looking at different cultures, religions and even conflicts that would
relate to my story. Initially it was a completely different idea, crime,
justice, politics and superheroes was the elements of my original iteration of
my idea. But then I felt there were more relevant themes that I felt more
passionate about and could be easier to relate to on a wider audience. I also
wanted to ground my story a little, keep a little simple. As I was writing my
script I notice it was getting a bit long so I decided to remove some story
elements but essentially keep the story and characters the same. I grew up
living in a flat and going to school right next to the showgrounds, later on in
life I move to the western suburbs. My earliest memory of school I remembered
that I made friends with two other kids whom also came from a Spanish speaking
background and remembered one saying “we should stick together …we are the
same” after that I made other friends and this thought never really came back
to me. I became really good friends with two other kids who did not have
similar upbringings then me, I remember one was a typical white Australian the
other was American from what I can remember he move back there soon after. When
I was young I didn’t grasp the idea of different countries, we had a lot of new
children arrive every year, one who I met became my best friend who still is to
this day, we are basically family. Him and his family taught me a lot about
other cultures I was only exposed to my own Spanish upbringing and Australian
culture. My friend was from Saudi Arabia and he was Muslim this really open my
eyes at a really young age to except people doesn’t about anything else. On my
sixth year of primary school I moved and one of the first Questions I was asked
was “What ‘natio’(nationality) are you” at the time I thought I was quite
smart, but I didn’t understand the importance of my nationality I never really
to this point felt I was different. I believe this question forever changed how
I viewed others. As I began high school this question kept coming up. At the
beginning it was like primary school again I had friends of all nationalities
but it was clearer how we were all different from each other. In the middle of
high school the whole race thing took a funny turn I used to hang out with a
lot of Asian and it was funny how, maybe not purposely, racist they were. They kept
things very much only between themselves. Maybe from too much television but
there was also a lot of jokes that were kind of out of range of the
nationalities that were at my school, a lot of Jew and Mexican jokes to which
point some even referred to me as Mexican Raph just because I came from a Spanish
speaking background, when some would ask me about where my parents came from I
would try to explain but some couldn’t even tell the difference between Mexico
and Spain. For this reason of ignorance and stupidity I didn’t get too mad.
Jewish jokes were also thrown around like these people have been living with Jewish
people their whole lives when in fact most have never met a ‘Jew’. Nationality,
culture religion were all strong themes that could be easily implemented to an
Australian Story, A very Multi-cultural country, with racism and made into a
thriller with elements the would interest me and my target audience. Thus race,
culture and religion became strong influences in both my theme of story and
characters.
