I had an interesting idea the other day while I and my parents were waiting for the movie to start in the cinema. My mum loves going to movies while I’m in town, which on the one hand I kind of get, because it’s fun to talk about them afterwards and I think a lot of the time she and Lucky don’t see eye-to-eye on what kinds of films they like. With me along it’s two against one. :D
But I also think it’s strange that we, as a culture, go to see movies as a social event, because it’s one and a half to two hours of sitting in silence, in the dark, next to someone, absorbed in something that is neither yourself nor the people you’re there with. And this isn’t a criticism – I get it. It just also strikes me as weird.
So I had this idea, which sort of melds the experience of cinema with the more active storytelling experience of, say, something like LARP or D&D, which is the idea of Going To Make A Movie.
The concept is this: you gather a bunch of people together in comfortable chairs in a dim room, and one designated “starter” throws out an idea: a tagline, a concept, a movie poster, an elevator pitch, the opening scene of an imaginary film. And in the time alotted – say, seventy minutes to two hours, which is the range of most films – you all, collectively, tell the story of a movie in real time. The worldbuilding comes at the start, the climax comes two thirds of the way into your alotted time, the resolution lands at the end of seventy-minutes-to-two-hours. And you can either chime in with ideas, or just sit and watch your friends try to tell you a movie.
Also there’s snacks. Snacks are an important, nay vital, aspect of Going To Make A Movie. Lots of snacks.
I think it could be a lot of fun.
