Stream began around the end of 2004, as I was reflecting back on a lot of things in high school. The original motive for me was to convey all the really universal elements of teenage struggle - acceptance, identity, rejection, fear, insecurity, impulsivity, fragility... It is hard to find movies that talk specifically about the teenager, that talk specifically to teenagers and are also made by teenagers. Sure, we get a lot of teen comedies around, which to their credit contain rare moments of genuine honesty, but on the whole are still packaged within very 'sheltered' fictional narratives.

Throughout the summer holidays, I wrote several drafts for short films hinting at this subject matter, but none of them really 'stuck'. Eventually, Stream turned into a 2-3 month 'brainstorming session'. During that time I scribbled in notepads, listened to various music and went on living life as usual.

Although I had shot footage in late January with Fung Lam based on a script I had written in early January, the extended editing time (about 2 months) meant I was constantly changing and revising the script. In the end, I realised that the script revisions were really the cinematic equivalent of a diary. At that point, I stopped revising the script and decided to splice the available footage together first, then provide the interior monologue of the central character in the form of subtitles. Thus, the script was almost completely improvised, with occasional shadows of the original script here and there.

In the end, the film became a story of transition and transformation --> a mix of two incarnations of myself; one from late 2004 and one from early 2005.

Originally, I had imagined multiple 'Donovans' conversing and chatting as narration for the film, representing his continuous streams of consciousness. However, there was no way of recording one voice (which would ultimately be mine) in separate takes and naturalising the interaction. After all, I had never really conversed with myself. Furthermore, anything more than two voices talking at once would immediately became inaudible unless one voice was deliberately mixed to be more prominent - which would defeat the entire purpose of the representation.

Thus, I eventually decided to use subtitles. What began as ten separate streams of thought on the screen was cut back to 4-and-under. In the first scene, the main stream of thought is in green text, while the sub plots and miscellaneous thoughts are in white. However, as the film progressed, these two intertwined to contribute to one central 'subtitle character'.

Because of the multiple streams, it means viewers will only be able to read one stream in a viewing. With each viewing, the previously un-read streams become read and the story is slowly pieced together. With this in mind, every audience member walks away from the film with a different perception of who Donovan is, based on their interpretation of the subtitled streams.

Ajita and I started working on the music in early March and we developed about 7-10 themes. The basic chord progressions were worked out over several composing sessions, but the melody and 'drift patterns' were freely improvised on the day of the recording. For this short, we again decided on a solo piano score, with Ajita composing and playing every theme. The jazzed-up vibe of the music is what defines Donovan's emotional core.

Similar to the first film, the thoughts of Donovan were matched to the music unlike conventional methods of spotting the score to the film. In this sense, Stream was really a film that was constructed rather than made, with each part of the process intertwining with one another. The improvisational nature of Fung Lam's performance, the music and the script/streams meant that pre-production was really happening after post production. Once again, an organic cycle.

However, the scope of Donovan's emotional range and character arc meant that we could play with much more diverse themes and musical styles. There are a total of six motifs, with all six in the Editor's Cut and five in the Director's Cut. They are: (in the order played in the short)

Angry: encapsulates the entire transition in a pressure cooker.
Main Theme: lonliness and yearning.
Childhood Analogy: freedom and pure abandon.
Toilet Paper (aka Development): volatile transformation (with an oriental flavour).
Metamorphosis: peace and serenity.
End Credits: futuristic and fantastical.

Perhaps the mystery of Mischaberg will never be explained, but really, when Fung and I were discussing the film in its first incarnation, we were inspired by the concepts of mirrorism by Mischaberg. However, as the project progressed, the elements of mirrorism escaped the film. On the day of the shoot, Fung's performance was based on two different versions of himself - one on the powerless side of the mirror and one on the controlling side. The challenge of Donovan was to uncover whether his free will was fabricated or whether it was real.

In the final film however, none of this came out, but the development of the first 'Donovan' character helped him evolve into the final teenager we see in the film. Thus, the credits still attribute J. Mischaberg for inspiring us with his great pieces of art.

It was great coming back from the first short to create a second one that felt like it was the first I had ever made. You almost forget how hard it is everytime you start something new, but that's part of what makes it so fun. I am a child rediscovering the challenges of filmmaking like fools doomed to repeat their mistakes for eternity. Well, that sounds like something I stole from a quote book, and it is (Spanish born American philosopher named George Santayana). Anyway, that is totally irrelevent to this stream of thought (no pun intended) and what I'm talking about. Sorry.

In the end, Stream is just the 'me' short that I've always wanted to begin with, but instead ended up being my sophomore project. It's one of those things for which you can honestly say, "Yeah, that's exactly who I am." It was spectacularly enjoyable to make (I'm running out of words here), and gave me a chance to collaborate with really zany and supportive friends. They trusted an idiot with matches and turpentine.

Good thing though, we did not get fire. What we got was something really, really different.