posted
I am making a movie this year because my dream is to be a director, but i am a bit stuck right now. I have several themes in mind, but i dont have a set idea of what to make my movie about as of right now. If any of you have an idea, please tell me, it'd help a lot! Also, if any of you have been involved in making movies before, do you have any tips about what to and not to do? my mantra right now is "keep it simple, stupid." this is the first "real" movie i am making, and i dont want to get in over my head. Also, i am not interested in making a romantic movie, but anything else sounds good. thanks guys!
Posts: 20 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
I know this isn't helpful, but we're not really going to be able to give you much good advice about how to write your story. You can look to others for critiques and advice about what you've already written, or help with a stuck point on a developing story, but without actually writing the screenplay for you, it would be pretty much impossible to advise you at the stage it sounds like you're at.
Having said that, it's totally acceptable to have someone else write your screenplay. Most directors do not write their own movies. Directing is an interpretive art form. What you have to do is take the screenplay and put images and sounds to it. Make it live.
My advice to you is to plan, plan, plan. Once you have the screenplay, you need to do a lot of thinking about the visuals in order to make it work.
Find good locations. In fact, if possible try to find locations as far away from your home or school as possible.
Think about what you want the characters to look and sound like, not just in terms of acting, but costuming, hair and makeup as well.
Storyboard as much as possible. I would recommend even going to the level of storyboarding each individual shot. If you're not handy with a pencil, you can also use photos for storyboarding purposes. It ends up being a lot of work to plan shots this way, but it will simplify the actual filming immensely.
You don't need great actors, but you do need competent ones, and, even more, you must understand what the story is, what it is about, what it is saying. Each actor will create his or her own character (assuming you have experienced actors), but you as the director are responsible for making sure that the performances line up with what you want, for coaxing the right performance out of each actor.
If you are going to be shooting indoors, make sure you have good lighting. Preferably, you should have your own lighting setup, but if that's not possible, then make sure your scene is well-lit. Avoid flourescents. Try to shoot in rooms with windows so the lighting is more natural (but make sure you see where shadows fall). Lighting can do more to affect the tone of a scene than almost anything else.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Another thing: don't let the impulse to be "innovative" run away with you. Your job as the director is to convey the story, not to make everyone think that you are a cool cinematographer. Interesting shots can work out very well, but you have to understand WHY you have set up each shot the way you have.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
thanks for the advice saxon-definitely helpful. I don't expect you guys to make my screenplay for me, i was just wondering if any of you had some cool ideas for a movie thats all...
Posts: 20 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
Go for a comedy. THat way any mistakes made can be excused as attemted humor.
I have a short story called "Eddy Putz Wreck" that could make a cheap movie. Not a lot of action, no special effects. Three maybe four locations. Only one scene requireing a crowd, and that can be worked around.
The detective story surrounds a Reality TV winner, Ed Putz, his fading older TV Star wife won on the show, and a TV producer found dead, a victim of road rage.
Secrets come out--TV Starlette had been married to producer. There child was put up for adoption. If you know the myth, you can guess the rest.
Even has the riddle of the sphinx--what crawls on four legs, then on two, then on three, and ends up on its back.
Today's answer--A Ford Explorer with Firestone tires taking a sharp curve.
posted
Here's another thing: make sure you have enough shots for each scene. Being in a scene too long without cutting to a new shot either increases tension or makes the audience lose interest.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
I will answer your question if you answer mine. If you are making a movie, can I be in it? If I can't be in it, can I at least work on it?
Now, to answer your question. Take a crisis in your own life and then write a screenplay around that. It doesn't have to be an autobiographical film, but take whatever crisis you think is of interest in your own life and embellish it, adding twists and turns. In other words, start with you and work your way out and around.
Posts: 2207 | Registered: Oct 2003
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posted
Here's your opening: --------------------------------------------- SCENE: A sunny outdoor day on the shore of a beach. SHEILA walks alone, her long blonde hair blowing around from under a sun hat held down with one hand while her lime-green fake-fur bikini ripples in the gusty wind. She stops and reaches down to the sand.
NARRATOR: As Sheila bent down to pick up the shell, her fingers digging into the sand to grasp the calcified snot-home of some deceased sea creature, she remembered the day, not so long ago, that she found out that she was allergic to hermit crabs.
posted
As an experienced production vet of three or four semi-long student films (and the author of a couple of shorts and a kind of good feature script):
Rule 1: Everything takes twice as long as you think it will. This includes writing, shooting, editing, waiting for everybody to show up on set (espcially true if they're all volunteers), etc.
Rule 2: Like saxon said: Don't be artsy. This ticks people off. You need to know how to make a coherent narrative before you start experimenting with film language.
Rule 3: Don't try to be overtly symbolic or deep. Try to be true. Understand your characters and why they react to things the way they do. Set up your situation and watch your characters react. There's no better feeling when you write than when you realize you know how a character would act in a situation because you know that character. Let them breathe; don't force them into a plot.
Rule 4: Comedy is much harder to make then it looks. In all ways. Slapstick slides easily into stupid, one-liners often are really inside jokes. Don't start a comedy until you have several people read the script and think it's funny.
Rule 5: Like somebody else said: Produce within your budget. Realize what you've got to work with before you start putting the thing together. If you've got nothing, come up with a story that your friends could act out. If you need special effects, think very hard about how you might make them work first.
Posts: 794 | Registered: Aug 2000
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We Coke bottles don't sleep. Inanimate intelligent objects never sleep, we just sort of tune in and out every once in a while to check out how things are going. Most of us never check out reality, and prefer ignorant bliss over watching you humans walk by day to day before we meet the day of opening and accept emptiness. For myself, I like to pay attention to conversations. Humans don't know how good they have it, having mouths. It's a pretty lame existance when you don't have a mouth or anyway to express your thoughts to your coke bottle friends. You can just sort of feel what the others want to get across, kind of like music. All kinds of music are played throughout the store I'm at. We coke bottles are very good at interpretting art.
But like I was saying, we Coke Bottles do not sleep. When the lights go out, it doesn't make a difference to us, we can either tune out, or have our nonverbal conversations. On the rare occassion that I am awake when the lights go out, I sit and look at the magazine rack.
Today was one of those days. I was reading the latest article following the pitiful, and wretched Bat-Boy, who had last been seen combing the desert of Iraq, looking for Saddam and WoMD, when the lights came on signifying that it was 6:00 A.M. I know that it is 6:00 because that's when Lance is always complaining about having to come in to open the store. For the first hour or so, it's primarily just a few lights coming on here and there, with Lance singing. The music he sings today is lonely, and angry. Because he sings, I know Sarah is not there. Sarah occassionally helps Lance open, but he never sings in front of her. Being a coke bottle, I am not a good judge of what human singing is like, but I don't exactly like the song he is singing today.
People in orange aprons are walking into the store now. It's Eric and Paula. Eric mentioned yesterday afternoon about how he was excited to date Paula. Human courting is the highlight of my days (I've been here for 13 now, can you believe it). You see, in the human world when a guy likes a girl, he throws those fruits from Aisle 3 at her. I think it's very romantic.
Ha! Looks like Paula's neck got bruised by one of the dates. If it happens like what happened to Sarah and Lance, her friends will point it out, and she'll be embarressed. I guess people get embarressed when others learn they've been "throwing fruit" as I like to think of it.
Erik is looking a bit troubled now. He wants to know where Sarah is. Uh-oh. Sarah wasn't here yesterday either, but Lance said she had called in sick. Well, I'm going to have to agree with Paula here and just hope that she's not too sick.
I wish Erik wouldn't complain so much about having to work a little harder because Sarah couldn't be there. Paula doesn't seem to mind too much.
A young human and his mother walk up past me to the register. Oh man, the kid wants a coke. This could be it, this could be my time. Wait a minute, LADY, Coke IS good for you in the morning. And I'm not just ANY Coke bottle! I am a Buy One Get One FREE Coke Bottle. I am a stepping stone for my other Coke friends to reach the final stages of existance and reach emptiness that we might be recycled into the next life. The nerve of that Lady.
So, I continue to sit as other customers go by. I start reading the magazines again. Some jolly looking dark woman named Oprah smiles at me. For the first 3 days, I tried to get over her, but darn it, now shes just doing it to tick me off. Arg, I can't stand that woman anymore. Friggin heck, I'm tuning out.
Whoa that was good. What was I upset about? Oh well...
Ok, some more apron people are here, and Erik and Paula are leaving. It must be 3:00, time for the teenagers to start showing up. Wait a minute... it can't be 3:00. Lance is still here, and he leaves at 2:00.
Whoa whoa whoa... Sarah is here now!? When did she get here?! And why does she look so upset? Lance you bonehead, quit ignoring her. What do you mean you have to go home now? Stupid human. That's what happens when you have a brain. Lance drove away, and Sarah put on an apron. Sarah didn't belong here today.
Nothing really happened for a while. There was a dispute about the price of beans, which at first seemed like it might be interesting, but ended up disappointing me.
Alex arrives. It's 7:00.
A new magazine is put out. The magazine was celebrating the 300th clone of Hitler. I think Hitler must have been in the same business at the magazine on the other side of the rack, the one kids like to stare at. Why else would he be so popular to clone?
Wait a minute, the lights just went off. But, people are still here...
Alex says to his box that there's a power outage.
Two guys are shoving magazines into their pouches, that are already full of things. Oh crap, they are reaching for me. They have put me in their overly warm pocket, and my fluids begin to sloosh. No, not this way. These people won't recycle me. HELP!!! SARAH!!! I DON'T WANT TO BE TRASH!!!
But it's too late. They open me, and start to empty me. I can't stop them. And the music, oh the music is too loud... ARG!!!
Trash. They put me in the trash. I will not fulfill my destiny. I will not be recycled.
posted
I don't know how much time you spent on that, T, but it was actually pretty good. Not very filmic, although it has potential. I liked it.
Posts: 4534 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Making a movie is amazingly hard work. Two summers ago, I thought I'd take a crack at it. I wrote a script set all in one basement, in order to eliminate too much set. It was too hard to get everyone together, the acting was miserable, we were fifteen years old. It was my first real time filming anything lengthy and my first writing a script.
I recommend that your script be fairly short, at least for your first movie and set somewhere local and very feasible.
My script was very far fetched (evil goverment versus a rebel group in a basement), and I have no suitible ideas to offer you... If I think of anything...
Posts: 8473 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
wow thanks all of you for your great suggestions, i'm gonna save this for future ref. The coke bottle story was hilarious by the way. I'm gonna start workin on my script, maybe i'll post it on the site when it is done. either way, i'll let u know how things went. thanks again!
[ November 11, 2003, 09:45 PM: Message edited by: kelly smith ]
Posts: 20 | Registered: Apr 2003
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posted
ok this is what you do see, take a camera and lean it out a window. and focus it on a person in a crowed, you have placed that person there to meet another person but that person doesnt know that its you that should be meeting them and you wont be there because you will have to hold the camera. so they call you and you record the call getting their panic...you tell them that you will be there soon and when they call back seeing where you are tell them you ran into trafic and will be there shortly...but you see where im going
Posts: 16 | Registered: Nov 2003
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