Tots from another ess

Angus, our first born wrote this as part of his application to NTU.

Coming from a home-schooling background, two principles were greatly stressed upon me. The first, being that of thinking independently, has always gotten me into trouble with my questioning of various opinion leaders. However, my curiosity has always driven me to find the answers. The second principle is the development of my personal creativities.

When young, I had time to entertain all my imaginations. I wrote my ideas on notebooks and ran in the rain with my sisters, spending hours talking about ideas and concepts.

Due to my curiosities and willingness to discover, I have been able to study chess and music without guidance. Hence, I have been approached to perform at professional concerts and even hold my own workshops on each art.

During my polytechnic life, I was fascinated by the process of executing a conceptualised plan. Installations, theatrical works, musical collaborations, short films and even just plain story writing - my interest ranged wide. I fell in love with opportunities from the arts field allowing me to ‘connect’ ideas, but more importantly, to ‘communicate’ them to others. Yes, the biggest lesson I learnt in poly: you can conceptualize the most brilliant idea and find it terribly creative, but it is only worth the people who understand it. Selling your idea is what counts.

I want to enter the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Digital Filmmaking under the school of Art, Design & Media in NTU. And the relevance of my personal experience in creative expression!? If nothing else, film provides a great medium to document works in a very appealing manner, and with my creative background I can both contribute to and learn from this experience.

However, my interest runs deeper than that. The lack of a viewer’s physical interaction with a film means that the film makers’ imagination is delivered exactly into its visual perspective, and forced wholly upon the audience. This, (as opposed to an installation where the concept might be compromised based on viewer walking movements, etc), allows film makers more fluidity in content expression. One of my deepest passions is music, and when I compose musically I enjoy visualising movie scenes that fit. Connecting both music and film is the best way I have discovered to express ideas.

Beyond interest, I have the discipline to learn and follow through with tasks. Most importantly - I have the flair to create the musical-film audio-visual relationship.