Be A Great Storyteller

“There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you.” A quote by Maya Angelou. Since the start of mankind, one thing that continues to live on even as time passes is stories. Storytelling is something we do every day and it’s what I find the most beautiful about everyday life. The exchange of stories and experiences with others are things I look forward to when I converse with people. I especially love it when I hear stories that strike and inspire me. This has become more evident since watching the movie Sound of Freedom.

Sound of Freedom directed by Alejandro Monteverde, with actors Jim Caviezel, Bill Camp, and Actress Mira Sorvino tells an incredible story of a former government agent turned vigilante. He embarks on a dangerous mission to rescue hundreds of children from traffickers. The creation of this movie came in 2017 after director Alejandro heard a segment on an evening news show about child trafficking. “I watched it and I couldn’t sleep, I knew about human trafficking. I just didn’t know about child trafficking for sexual exploitation.” He said. The next day he felt he needed to write a film about the issue. He sought out and created a story but in turn, found Tim Ballard’s story. With his co-writer Rod Barr, they wrote the script. Director Alejandro was so moved by this story that he was convicted to share it. So he used his skill of storytelling but took it to the next level, he created a film. It wasn’t to entertain the audience but to urge the viewers to see this morbid truth that’s happening to children around the world. He could have told the story in many ways, but he chose to translate it into film; which is what I wanted to highlight today. Stories don’t just become great stories, it all comes down to how you share it, and the way director Alejandro paints the story on film was everything.

As a viewer, I was able to feel how heavy and grotesque the act of child trafficking was, not because he painted and showed the act itself on screen but the way the shots just hinted at it, from the multiple close-ups in the actor's eyes and the medium frames that display the actor from head to their waist. I could feel chills up my back in certain scenes from the great camera work. This reminded me as a filmmaker that you can portray scenes without having to really show them. It can be translated through the way your actors act in a scene. Some shots just gave you an idea already but it was in the dialogue. The dialogue played a big role in this movie as it’s how they hinted at the explicit.

As a film student, I noticed areas in the movie where the cameras would stay on too long on the characters. There were parts I believed could be cut and swapped in for another angle or they added in slow zoom-ins and outs to keep the scene interesting. But overall, the film truly was moving. To tell you honestly I would have been feeling depressed leaving the theater if not for Jim Caviezel’s ending message on behalf of the film crew.

This movie reminded me how important stories are but not just that, it’s the magic that storytellers really hold. We can find thousands of stories every day but it comes down to the storyteller. If they know their goal for their story is to entertain, thrill, or inspire, they have the power to move all that hears. What more if it’s on-screen? We all have the power to become storytellers, in fact as I said we are storytellers every single day. But the difference is choosing the stories we tell and how we tell them. As for me, it’s now become my goal to create films that I believe will become a gift to the world and a source of light and inspiration to others. I’m now a bearer and keeper of stories. What about you? What kind of stories do you hold that you can contribute to the world to make it a better place?