Alvin Zachariah

Co-Curricular Plan

1. Lyric Opera Lecture: Lessons in Love and Violence- Elmhurst Public Library on September
20, 2020 via Zoom

• I want to take notes on what the speakers have to say about this topic because it has to do with a
political thriller, and I want to know what they have to say about what a political thriller
Reflection:
Before coming into this lecture, I wanted to get a better understanding of what a political thriller was
because I enjoy reading about darker topics. I thought that a political thriller seemed like an interesting
combination and I wanted to hear about what the speaker had to say about the topic. The speaker was
named David Bleeker and he talked about the opera Lessons in Love and Violence that was written by
Martin Crimp and composed by George Benjamin. Bleeker was very in-depth and described important
aspects about each scene of the opera.
I didn’t really have any expectations going into the lecture. I was mainly there just to get an
understanding of what he meant by a political thriller. Essentially, the opera is about King Edward II and
his plight into prison. He wasn’t a very good king because he was extremely neglectful of his people. He
was also in a relationship with this man named Galveston which his wife was very mad about. She started
plotting a plan with a military officer named Mortimer to kill him and have the queen’s son take over.
From my understanding, this play is a political thriller because it has to do with the murder of people in
power. I was a little surprised by that because the idea of a political thriller seemed more complex to me,
and I was a little disappointed in that aspect, but I was also surprised by many of the choices that were
made that highlight the fact that it is a thriller.
One thing that he talked about was the use of the singers’ voices to create an ominous tone throughout
the play. The singers would drag out certain words that were of importance to show the audience that
these parts are important. There were also many reoccurring themes and symbols throughout the play
such as a little boy and girl watching from a distance whenever there were evil things going on. They
represented innocence and how we grow up to lose that innocence. I was surprised because those are
techniques that writers often use in books, and it was interesting to see this being played out in a different
art form. It also made me realize that writing an opera is extremely similar to writing a story. An opera is
essentially writing a story, so that makes sense, but they’re both have slightly different ways of conveying
the same message.
I am hoping that after watching this lecture and learning about the ways this play was able to convey
its message will allow me to apply those same techniques into my own writing to make it more
sophisticated and richer. I was able to learn a lot about the importance of repetition to get a point across
and that is something I believe I could implement into my own writing. I also learned about how an opera
is able to change its tone by using dynamics in both the singers’ voices and in the orchestra. This is
important because it allows the listener to determine which parts are important to listen to. Although I
can’t change the dynamics of a story through music, I can instead change the dynamics throughout a piece
of writing by emphasizing certain phrases or repeating words and sentences.
While listening to the lecture, I started thinking about how other forms of art could help to convey the
same message as a piece of writing. I would like to explore and find other types of art such as other
theatre productions or going to an art museum to see what the similarities and differences are between
that form of art and writing.

2. Page to Screen: The Devil All the Time with Donald Ray Pollock, Antonio Campos,
Paulo Campos, and Wiley Cash Thursday October 8, 2020 7:30 PM
 • I want to learn more about how filmmakers take messages from writing and converts it
into a film.
• I also want to learn more about the process of creating a film and how they use the books
to create those stories

Reflection:
The Devil All The Time is a book written by Donald Ray Pollock and was converted into
film by Antonio Campos. The screenplay was co-written by him and his brother, Paulo Campos
and is currently streaming on Netflix. Going into the event, I wanted to learn more about the
process of bringing a book to film. These mediums are very different and there are a lot of
different techniques that both an author and director used to capture the same feelings.
Throughout the talk, the moderator would ask questions about each person’s process when
writing a book versus creating a film, and I thought that it was extremely interesting to hear the
differences between the two processes. For example, Pollock used music and would channel
certain memories that he knew represented the tone that he was going for when he was writing,
and I was surprised because Campos also said that he used music to help channel certain
emotions that he was going for in screenwriting. I was surprised by that because filmmaking and
story writing seem like two very different things when in reality, they are both just forms of
writing.
I was very curious to hear why Campos decided to write screenplays for books, and he
talked about how using a book as a reference for screenplays gives him a lot of motivation to
keep going, especially for when it is a book that he really enjoys. He expressed how much he
loved reading the book and found it very fun to try and capture the same feelings he experienced
while reading the book and transfer it to film. I thought that was interesting because I never
considered using a book to write a screenplay as being a motivating factor, but it now makes
sense after he talked about it. It was also fascinating to hear him explain how he tried to capture
the feelings present in the book. He spent a lot of time analyzing different aspects of the writing
such as the word choice and themes such as faith and violence and used film techniques to mirror
those ideas into the film.
Campos talked a lot about the importance of giving each character a chance on screen to
properly establish each of their stories, and I really liked that because I think that that could be
applicable to writing as well. It is important that the story of each character is properly told
whether it is in film or in writing. He also talked about how one of the main differences in film
and writing is that, the reader gets a lot of time to build the story in writing while in a film, they
only get a couple hours. This means that there has to be a lot of intensity in order to capture the
same feeling that they would get in the book. Since we have been writing short stories in class, I
thought that this was helpful to know because a short story also doesn’t get as much time to build
up emotions; therefore, it is important to make whatever feeling you are trying to convey much
more intense in order to properly convey that feeling within a shorter span of time.
After listening to Pollock and Campos speak about the process of transforming a book to
a film, one question that I still have is what type of film techniques are used to convey certain
types of feelings? This is one thing that they didn’t really address in the conversation which I
think would’ve been helpful to know because it would allow me to get a better understanding of
the filmmaking process. I could also use that knowledge and try to apply it to my own writing
because writing a short story is similar to making a film because there is a lot a writer has to pack
into a few pages, similar to how a filmmaker has to pack a lot of information within a couple of
hours. For now, I would say that I still need to understand what writers look at for their
inspiration and how they use their resources to convey the message that they are trying to
achieve.