Need Ideas for Making a Short Film?? Try this.. (PART ONE)

Ever thought of making a short film ?

Well.. yes.. a voice came from inside..

What about writing one?

What happened.. Not possible?

Let’s make it possible then..

It is not even that difficult a task. All you need to know is a few basics of storytelling and a little bit of passion. If you are not going to be passionate, why would others be ? More than the output, it is the process that you should enjoy. Once it gets mechanical, it is not writing.. It has to come from within.

Writers think in a number of ways:

a)        Inductively (from specific to universal)

b)        Deductively (from universal to specific)

c)        Logically (causality- how one thing follows another)

d)        Non-logically (co-incidences)

e)        Creatively (discovering hidden meanings and connecting two or more things beautifully)

Our brain tends to work creating visual relationship. When I was in 6th standard, I didn’t score very well in my internals. I realized when I had to study long paragraphs, my mind never used to work but whenever I divided those paragraphs into points which are at equal distancefrom each other, I could decipher the pattern quite well. May be because it created a form of symmetry that resulted in creating a visual that my mind could understand. 

Similarly, fonts also play an important role. Well this is all very subjective and may differ from person to person but the truth is that we all tend to think visually. 

In inductive thinking, it is like a divergent, opening out-of-the-ideas, the aim is to come up with as diverse ideas as possible. At this stage, you should only be interested in quantity and don’t filter out anything. Just let the ideas flow in and out. 

In deductive thinking, you can filter out your ideas, test them and select the best ones from not so good ones.

Generating ideas

Here, I am sharing a few good sources of idea generation:

1)        Personal Experience- This is something which is close to your heart. Your life. You have lived it certain way. You are the best person who can make a film on it. Real life is boring so it is important to make it interesting cinematically. Your upbringing, your education, your first affair, your first job, your biggest strength, your weakness, your lowest point in life- you know it all. No one can relate better than you. So write a short film based on your experience. 

2)        Others’ Personal Experience- Well, if you have lead a un-happening life or not to dramatic life, you can observe those close to you and write a short film on their experiences. Your father is a doctor, write a film based on medical issues as you can deal with it in a better way. Your brother used to be bullied as a kid in school and you have observed him venting it out behind closed doors. You can handle it in a sensitive manner. As a filmmaker, it is important not to venture into territories which are unfamiliar to you. 

3)        Newspaper- Recently you read an article in newspaper, where two students died in a road accident and the post mortem suggested that they were drunk. What would your conclusion be: They must be driving rashly. Ever tried to find out what could be the exact reason? May be they just got out of a friend’s party, all sober and a speeding truck driver forced them to go off track. What is your conclusion now: It could be truck driver’s fault also. So always try to create a back story of every such news and there you go- you have a story. 

To be continued…………..