From an autobiographical essay in NAEL...

on William Wordsworth,

"During the summer vacation of his third year at Cambridge (1790), Wordsworth and his closest college friend, the Welshman Robert Jones, journeyed on foot through France and the Alps (described in The Prelude 6) at the time when the French were joyously celebrating the first anniversary of the fall of the Bastille. Upon completing his course at Cambridge, Wordsworth spent four months in London, set off on another walking tour with Robert Jones through Wales (the time of the memorable ascent of Mount Snowdon in The Prelude 14), and then went back alone to France to master the language and qualify as a traveling tutor."

And later,

"He fell in love with Annette Vallon, the impetuous and warm-hearted daughter of a French surgeon at Blois. It is clear that the two planned to marry, despite their differences in religion and political inclinations (Annette belonged to an old Catholic family whose sympathies were Royalist). But almost immediately after a daughter, Caroline, was born, lack of fund forced Wordsworth to return to England. The outbreak of war between England and France made it impossible for him to rejoin Annette until they had drifted so far apart in sympathies that a permanent union no longer seemed desirable."

After that, and some other things,

"His suffering, his near-collapse, and the successful effort, after his break with his past, to reestablish 'a saving intercourse with my true self,' are the experiences that underlie many of his greatest poems."

I've left a great deal of it - the man's life and accomplishments, neatly bundled in two pages - out. What a life though, eh? I'm not sure how I feel about condensing it down to such simple phrases like "He fell in love with Annette." I suppose it is of no immediate use to the student, and it would provide room to explore... if one were so inclined to explore, in more detail, the biographical story of Wordsworth. All things fiction is what I'm talking about.
The film challenge is over. I felt a bit of obligation to participate that largely stemmed, I feel, from the question of how many college hold a film challenge? And I want to support something like this. I'm glad that it's over for another year, but Neal and I discussed (lightly and enthusiastically) producing another film for the hell of it because, and I think this needs to be said, you don't need a film challenge for permission to make a film. So I hope we do.
A film challenge is rushed and fun but I think it's greatest contribution to Dordt's campus is that it brings the larger digital media geeks (and their friends) to PRODUCE SOMETHING. And maybe that's an exercise we need once a year. Should we spend the rest of the year carefully crafting other things, putting thought into concept? I think so. But we should keep doing things, telling stories - that's the main point, innit?
Should Faith and Film hold a regular film festival for the media geeks (and their friends) to showcase, and celebrate, a year's worth of work? I think that'd be fun.

-more, because I'm such a huge geek...

Tolkien writes...

"We read that Beowulf 'is only a version of Dat Erdmanneken'; that The Black Bull of Norroway is Beauty and the Beast, or 'is the same story as Eros and Psyche'; that the Norse Mastermaid is 'the same story as the Greek tale of Jason and Medea.'
Statements of that kind may express (in undue abbreviation) some element of truth; but they are not true in a fairy-story sense, they are not true in art or literature. It is precisely the colouring, the atmospshere, the unclassifiable individual details of a story, and above all the general purport that informs with life the undissected bones of the plot, that really count."

And,

"In Dasent's words I would say: 'We must be satisfied with the soup that is set before us, and not desire to see the bones of the ox out of which it has been boiled.'

By 'the soup' I mean the story as it is served up by its author or teller, and by 'the bones' its sources or material - even when (by rare luck) those can be with certainty discovered. But I do not, of course, forbid criticism of the soup as soup."

He's talking about the value of story, of fairy tales in particular, but I felt a strong response in agreement to a lot of what he says. There's a matter of blatant plagiarism to discuss and acknowledge, sure, but there's a larger issue of when someone tries to tell you how awesome a movie is and one of their points is, "And it's a true story too!" Perhaps moreso is the danger of losing the joy of falling into a story. (I told you I was a huge geek.) When I took Fiction Writing with Schaap, he instructed us to read Best American Short Stories with a serious attention to how the authors wrote what they wrote, or, how they relayed the desired effect upon the reader. It was difficult to do and reading with the intent to see find the author's intent made the reading less enjoyable.
In the same way, it really angers me when a film discussion sinks so far down as to ask, "What is the director trying to say here?" or, at the end of the film, to turn to your neighbor and ask to "explain the film." Dude/lady, you were right there! I want to scream, "Who cares what they TRIED to say? What did the film say?" or, rather, "What's your response?" If you read an interview that the director said, "Oh, this movie's about this or that," and you didn't get that at all, pending initial attentiveness and intelligence of the viewer, then maybe the filmmaker slipped up. But please stop trying to sum up the story, or film, in one sentence because doing so murders every other decision that was made for the story/film to be what it is. There's no neat answer - no story or film is an equation in algebra.
There's a big danger in losing this joy in reading, if you're trying to be a writer, or in films, if you're trying to be a filmmaker. But it's more difficult in filmmaking because of the technical strategies involved. Instead of watching a film and falling in to the world that it presents, it's easy to slip up and pay attention to the production values. "OK. The camera is handheld and shaky as hell so I'm supposed to get that this Bourne guy is EXTREME."
I apologize - there's enormous value in acknowledging the methods of literature and film and it's hard to "turn it off" sometimes, but I think it's extremely important that we learn to do so because why else do we (try to) write stories or make films?

"We may put a deadly green upon a man's face and produce a horror; we may make the rare and terrible blue moon to shine; or we may cause woods to spring with silver leaves and rams to wear fleeces of gold, and put hot fire into the belly of the cold worm. But in such "fantasy," as it is called, new form is made; Faerie begins; Man becomes a sub-creator."

Instead of saying, "I see what you're trying to do," and then doing it, we should be able to respond naturally, by instinct. If we don't learn to dial the obsessive sense of production down, we're lose our ability to enjoy.