A Critique Essay on the Film Script Election, not Fiction

• Main Authors: Chung-Feng HSIAO, 蕭宗鋒
• Other Authors: Chih-Yen YEE
• Format: Others
• Language: zh-TW
• Published: 2010
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/gpmmtd

碩士 === 國立臺北藝術大學 === 電影創作研究所 === 98 === I studied in the history department when I was in college, and I am also interested in the social issues in Taiwan. For the past eight years, Taiwan had been swept by political mania due to the frequent elections. The emotion-based voters in Taiwan caused the emergence of sympathy campaign strategy and the phenomenon of dramatized election. Election itself became the solution to all the problems in Taiwan. The candidates’ policies, ideals, and promises vanished in the elections, and nobody cared about it. I, therefore, use the election campaign in Taiwan as the topic of my graduate project, Election, not Fiction. The story is about a young college student, studying abroad, is forced to come back to Taiwan to run an election campaign as a candidate for his brother, who is put into jail for bribery change. At first, the young man wants to run the election fairly, but changes to adopt a sympathy strategy due to the attack of his opponent. The sympathy strategy helps him win the campaign. He then becomes addicted to the sweetness of victory; he falls into the dirty elections that deceive his supporters and family, which leads to his self-destruction in the end. With Prof. Chih-Yen YEE’s advice, I consult the characterization of Michael Coleone in The God Father, making my protagonist a dramatic character with external behavior as the text and internal emotion as the subtext. In so doing, I hope to maximize the dramatic effect and human struggle. I also revise the script by creating suspicion and accumulating pressure in the story. Then, I offer my views about Western and Eastern films. The three-act linear structure in the western films uses mistakes-making and redemption as the themes, whereas the one in the eastern films adopts tolerance and reconciliation. The understanding of the two filmic structures helps me with my future creation. Finally, after finishing my graduate project, Election, not fiction, I hope to create films with commercial potential, such as romantic comedies, gangster films and elderly films.