Learning to See Beneath the Surface

Essays on storytelling, creativity, filmmaking, and the search for a well-directed life.

Some lessons take years to understand.

Others arrive in a single moment and quietly reorganize the way you see the world.

For me, one of those lessons began with a question that followed me through years of teaching filmmaking:

Why do some stories stay with us while others disappear almost immediately?

For a long time, I thought the answer had something to do with technique.

A better camera. A stronger script. A more talented actor.

I wasn't completely wrong.

I was simply looking in the wrong place.

Eventually I realized something that changed not only the way I make films, but the way I look at people.

The answer was never on the surface.

It never is.

THE FILMS WE NEVER FORGET

As a filmmaking professor, I watched students spend months making short films.

The cinematography was beautiful. The acting was solid. The editing was on point.

Nothing was obviously wrong.

And yet...

The film felt strangely empty.

Then another student would come along with half the budget and some crazy idea, and somehow everyone remembered that film.

In fact, students usually knew a classmate's film was going to be good before it was even shot.

It was almost as if they could smell it.

They could sense it.

How? What was the difference?

I've spent years thinking about that question.

Eventually I realized the answer wasn't technique.

It was depth.

WHAT MY CHILDHOOD WAS REALLY TEACHING ME

When I was a kid, I spent countless afternoons playing by myself with Star Wars and G.I. Joe action figures.

My mother would ask,

"Don't you want to go outside?"

Most of the time I said no.

I genuinely enjoyed being alone.

If you'd walked into my room, you probably would have expected to find an epic battle in progress.

Instead, you would have found something much stranger. Nothing was happening.

At least it looked that way.

The characters were standing there.

Looking at one another. Waiting.

The battle hadn't started yet.

It was coming.

Everyone knew it.

But for the moment...

Time had almost stopped.

I loved those moments. I played them over and over again.

The silence before the explosion.

The breath before someone spoke.

The instant when everyone knew something was about to happen, but nobody knew exactly what.

Years later I finally understood why.

I wasn't interested in action. I was interested in tension.

I was fascinated by what was happening underneath.

Without realizing it, those afternoons were shaping the kind of filmmaker, and the kind of human being, I would eventually become.

They were teaching my creative instincts what they loved.

There's a beautiful line in Mary Oliver's poem Wild Geese:

"You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves."

Looking back, I think that's exactly what those afternoons were doing. They were teaching my body what it loved.

They were teaching me that the most interesting part of any story is almost never the event itself.

It's what the event means.

THE LIFE BENEATH THE LIFE

The older I get, the more I think this is true of life as well.

Some of the biggest moments in our lives barely look like moments at all.

A father sitting outside an operating room.

A woman staring at her resignation letter before pressing "Send."

Two people washing dishes after silently realizing their marriage is over.

A few months ago, my mother looked at me from her deathbed and quietly said:

"I'm sorry."

Then...

"Thank you."

Four words. A lifetime of subtext.

Nothing was happening.

Everything was happening.

That, to me, is the life beneath the life.

WHY SO MANY STORIES FEEL EMPTY

I think this is one of the reasons so many films feel forgettable today.

Not because they lack technical polish.

But because they fail to connect to anything deeper.

The writer either doesn't know how to get there...

...or they're afraid to.

They confuse information with meaning.

Characters explain themselves.

They announce their feelings.

They tell us exactly what the scene is about. But it doesn't land.

Real life rarely works that way.

Most of us spend our lives saying one thing while feeling another.

Trying to appear calm while terrified.

Making jokes while grieving.

Talking about work when what we really want is to be loved.

The surface tells one story. The heart tells another.

Great cinema understands this.

It doesn't lecture us.

It doesn't explain us.

It quietly says,

"Here... take a look inside."

And then it trusts us enough to discover meaning for ourselves.

That's why I often tell my students something that sounds ridiculous the first time they hear it:

The scene is not about what the scene is about.

A love scene probably isn't about love.

It might be about changing a tire.

Cooking dinner.

Looking for a lost set of keys.

The dialogue stays on the surface.

The truth lives underneath.

That's where actors come alive. That's where audiences lean forward.

Because they're seeing life reflected back at them.

Someone had the courage to tell the truth they themselves have been afraid to say.

I think that's the artist's job.

Not to reassure us. Not to flatter us. But to hold up a mirror.

To ask difficult questions.

To reveal something we'd rather keep hidden.

That's where stories become unforgettable.

LEARNING TO SEE

I've come to believe that good storytelling isn't really about creating beautiful images or writing clever dialogue.

It's about learning how to see.

To look beyond the surface.

To notice what everyone else walks past.

To recognize that every human being carries an invisible story beneath the visible one. That's where meaning lives.

Maybe that's why I've stayed fascinated by cinema for so long.

Not because movies help us escape life.

But because they help us return to it.

They remind us that beneath every ordinary conversation...

Every quiet moment...

Every goodbye...

Every apology...

Every "thank you"...

There's another story waiting to be discovered. The life beneath the life.

And perhaps...

That's the story we're all trying to tell.

CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION

If this essay resonated with you, here are a few places to continue exploring these ideas.

I recently released a YouTube video exploring the reasons why film school has become the predictable and cliché approach to learning film, and some of the alternative methods.

👉 Watch it HERE.

📖 Download the Free Storytelling Starter Kit

If you're serious about becoming a better storyteller, download my free Storytelling Starter Kit.

It's the foundation of everything I teach—from finding the Core of your story to creating scenes that genuinely connect with an audience.

👉 Download it HERE.

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Don't just direct your movies.

Direct your life.

— Miguel Parga