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…………..
Very useful and wonderful techniques for all the filmmakers��
ReplyDeleteSo informative as u told in the class discuss.
ReplyDeleteInformative. Love to read more.
ReplyDelete