Wednesday, April 09, 2014

Combine all your life's little slices of perfect moments and you may have a personal on-screen classic

We all want a perfect life. We often compare our lives to what we see in the movies or on the TV screen. Wouldn't it be nice to be that TV family that all get along with their lives filled with family vacations, valuable life lessons and constant love and humour. Not to mention their perfect home. Or the perfect romantic dinner in the movie set in New York or the stroll through the city streets of Paris. What about the exotic sail or the the calm swim in the crystal clear Caribbean Sea. 

Unfortunately no one's life is really like that all the time. But some of us have been lucky to experience some of those moments in our lives. Some of us enjoy the love of family moments and laughter with friends quite often. Our days may not be full of these moments and we may often feel our lives are quite boring. But if you were able to assemble all those perfect moments into a film of your life, it would be pretty awesome. 

And of course, don't forget your soundtrack (as Jason Mraz and Colbie Caillat currently sing "lucky I'm love with my best friend" in the background !)  I, for one, fill my life with music and take tracks I hear from TV and movies all the time. I can't say a have a definitive playlist down to a 2 hour movie soundtrack, but it wouldn't be too challenging - actually a lot of fun.

We can all assemble a life movie in our heads, but is there a more creative project opportunity here ? I have photographs of many, many parts of my great life and some video. Actually, I created a short movie for my parent's 50th wedding anniversary. Maybe I should do the same for me (coincidently as I'm in my 50th year of being). Do you need narration or do the photos and videos tell enough of the story ?

And the film themed life doesn't have to stop at the romantic comedy.  Of course, we want to avoid drama if we can, except for perhaps the sports drama.  I remember that rainy Saturday in Calgary playing ultimate trying to get into the top ten bracket...

So we have moments of our lives that can be fair substitutes for scenes from When Harry Met Sally, Modern Family and perhaps even Chariots of Fire.  But I hope you don't have horror or war stories that you want to bring back to memory.  Which leaves a whole pile of movie genres for which we have no parallel in our own lives and that's what makes sci-fi, historical fiction, some of the AMC series and spy action movies worth the price of admission.

So work with me here, picture the opening scene from your personal film - do we start chronologically at your birth with your youthful parents or do you start with a image of your face today in the mirror and tell the story of how you got here or maybe go Tarantino and start in the the middle with a scene from a hospital bed and a story that will be your classic.


No comments: