https://www.reddit.com/r/Filmmakers/comments/1nb3ooh/what_are_the_risks_of_waiting_decades_to_start_a/
As near as I can tell the one thing that holds back fledgling filmmakers is that they do know what a movie is but they don't know what a story is.
A story is a day in the life that becomes a unique problem that is resolved in the end.
Consider Night of the Living Dead, where we start with Barbara and her brother at the cemetery and then a ghoul that moves like a zombie attacks them, and Barbara escapes to a house.
The final resolution to her story is that Barbara gets killed by ghouls that move like zombies, one of whom is her brother.
Have someone do something they do all the time, challenge them, and have them face the challenge and either overcome it or succumb to be subjugated by it or learn to live with it or run away from it or be killed by it.
Your first movie will not be great. Accept it.
Make that first movie and then make your second movie.
DO NOT let your lifelong dream movie passion project be your first movie.
Learn to paint before painting a masterpiece and learn to make movies before making your masterpiece.
Make practice movies. Get the feel for it. Get in the flow of it.
The easiest visual story is to clean something that is dirty or rearrange something that is in disarray.
It is dirty. It takes work to clean it. In the end it is clean.
This is carried to near extreme levels in the first episode of Jeeves and Wooster, but the story is that Wooster's regular life is aloof and messy, a new valet is engaged to start this morning, and he cleans up the house and then cleans up hungover Wooster.
You must understand that the tools you have, probably all in one device, in your hand right now, are good enough to make a decent movie.
A movie need not be a feature film or fifteen minutes or epic or psychologically deep, and it does not have to look like a million bucks.
Most people who want to make movies seem to believe they must wait for permission to do it.
Before you decide to turn this into who you are and throw your life into it, find out what it is and how it is done by doing it.
Find out if you really even want to do it.
Make little movies and do it often.
If you find that you don't like it, change your plans.
If you find you do like it, make more little movies and by the time you get to the cutoff at 50-55, you'll have a more realistic idea of what it is and how it is done, and you'll have a reel showing that you can do this work, and you can include that in a resume/cv.
I’ve been noticing this too with a lot of young filmmakers and I can be accused of this too. They got a concept but don’t have the story nailed down. Think about that and what that actually means.
I notice this with a lot of shorts from young filmmakers. They have the idea in their head but something just didn’t translate onto the screen. They have all the technical aspects of making a movie nailed, a strong concept but the actual story just isn’t there and feels disconnected. I believe the disconnect is that they know their movie inside and out and see what it should be, but the viewer doesn’t. This then creates a feedback loop; the audience is wrong not my short!
Another thing I see on here is “see my new short!” And it’s another travel/vacation video. Again, nails composition, editing, grading etc but there’s no story. It’s just shot after shot of their vacation. You can still craft a tale out of these so it becomes more than another in the sea of travel videos.
This is one of the hardest lessons to learn and honestly I still say the only way to overcome this is to be aware of this and just keep making movies and always improving. Don’t try and make a complicated movie and make smart decisions.
No dinero = No movie. I'm STONE broke, man. I'd love to shoot just a small film, but I know nobody willing to act for free, and nobody willing to lend me a mirrorless camera.
There are probably at least some theaters that put on plays in your general area, possibly some acting workshops. Good actors love to create and if you have a compelling concept I find they're not as concerned about the money. They love the craft. Sometimes they need footage for their reel.
That's what I did with my first short - I attended some workshops, met some actors. Then I got some volunteers for the crew from a film school in the state. I met my DP in a class on how to make short films put on by the local film society.
You could always shoot on a smartphone, even a used or borrowed one.
All that said, you do need to at least try to feed everyone decently. And you get way better commitment from the production team if you can pay them at least something, however little. (It will differentiate you from a LOT of other beginning filmmakers.)
No matter how small a production, you will learn a ton and be on your way.
https://www.reddit.com/r/write/comments/1kj5ix6/your_idea_is_not_your_story/?share_id=Lt4lDSFTosgv7p-qv6apD&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_source=share&utm_term=1
Your Idea is NOT Your Story
Every time you write do it to be a better writer than you were the last time.
Every time you write a story, write an ending and know how the main conflict will get resolved.
Your idea or the basic synopsis of an outline or pitch is not the story.
I often see folks asking about the quality of their general story idea here and in other subs.
When people ask others if their idea is good they do it like a trailer... but there is no product beyond the trailer.
Does it matter if others like or dislike the basic idea that hasn't even been outlined or plotted?
Lord of the Rings can basically be reduced to: a small guy has to throw away a piece of trash and it is really difficult.
Would you want to read that if somebody asked you if that was a good idea for a story?
Luckily JRR Tolkein did write it despite the almost ridiculous simplicity of the idea it is built from.
Whatever you want to write about that interests you is probably the best thing you can write about.
If it truly moves you, it will probably move others.
If it surprises you, it will probably surprise others.
If it scares you, it will probably scare others.
If you genuinely find it funny others probably will, too.
But don't just write something about some subject that intetests others unless it actually interests you, too.
If you like vampires, write your vampire story.
If you like the uncertainty and weirdness of first dates, write a first date adventure.
If you like cruise ship mysteries, write a cruise ship mystery.
Write what you know, and enjoy writing it.
If you don't know the subject and/or find the researching and writing joyless or even pointless, then (unless it's for school or some necessary report or blog or whatever for work) it probably isn't worth your time to write it.
But it's NOT what the story is about that makes it good, it is the way it is written.
So I love this idea because it is very ingenious, it is not mine:
Scientists on Earth are developing a new weapon which would explode light and that scares Aliens and they come to warn us and threaten us and stop us.
If we would explode light, that could cause a chain reaction that would effect all light, everywhere in the Universe, at the rate of quantum tunneling, and that would destroy the Universe.
Humans ignore the warnings and so the Aliens use electromagnetic manipulation to reanimate the recently deceased to attack Humans, instead of direct confrontation from the Aliens.
This almost leads to a worldwide panic.
It just ends there; this is the basic breakdown of Edward D Wood, jr.'s Plan Nine From Outer Space long and wide considered by many to be the worst movie they have ever seen.
The final bit that I left out is:
Instead of a worldwide panic, an alien spaceship catches fire and blows up... but it is just one of the many alien ships... and then it just ends.
Ed Wood was long considered the worst director and screenwriter who ever lived, though, nowadays thanks to direct comparison with movies like "The Room" and "Vampire Men Of The Lost Planet" readily available at the touch of a finger, we can see that he wasn't all that bad--but was bad--but also had a few glimmers of obvious genius in his work.
What to do with your idea:
A story goes: situation leads to conflict leads to resolution which becomes a new situation or resolves the entire story.
When the primary conflict is resolved, the story ends.
Scene is long and drawn out like a setup and sequel is abrupt like a punchline and it either leads into a new scene or concludes a chapter or ends the whole story.
Your primary conflict and what it leads to could be anything at all but I want to illustrate with this classic exercise:
Get a man up a tree and have him realize he is afraid of heights. Now get him down.
Situation: Man climbs tree. Primary Conflict: Man is scared of heights and cannot get down. Resolution to Primary Conflict: Man gets down.
When the primary conflict is resolved, the story is over
Scene is his climb and sequel is the realization he is afraid to climb down which leads to scene he ponders a way down leads to sequel it won't work OR sequel he gets down.
If it's sequel it won't work and he is still up the tree then that leads to scene he must try something else. Perhaps a stranger will come by and he can ask them to help him down which leads to sequel the stranger climbs up the tree to help or runs away to get help or throws a rock at the man causing him to fall and he is down.
If it is sequel the person climbs up the tree to help, that leads to scene you now have two people stuck up a tree tying to figure out how to get down.
If it is sequel the person runs away to get help then that leads to scene the man wonders what kind of help will come which leads to sequel the person returns with a tool to help the man get down or the person returns with more people.
If it is sequel the person returns with a tool that leads to scene setting it up and sequel the man gets down.
If it is sequel the person returns with an axe and/or a saw that leads to scene cutting down tree or cutting limb from tree which leads to sequel man is down.
If it is sequel person returns with another person that can lead to scene two people help each other climb up the tree and sequel all three are stuck.
Or that can lead to throwing rocks at the man or forming a human ladder or getting the fire department or stopping traffic to get a ladder off a work truck or confusion about the nature of the emergency bringing a poison control unit out to the tree and they park their truck next to the branch so the man can climb down and just before he reaches the ground they grab him and strap him to a gurney and then they go through all standard poisoning emergency activities like feeding him ipecac and pumping his stomach or maybe the army gets called in and there's a miscommunication about troop movements leading to a huge war or maybe a portal to parallel universe opens and the man walks through it and he becomes the tree and then he finds another portal and it comes out two feet above the branch he was already stuck on so he goes back through and no portals open again anywhere ever or maybe anything you can imagine.
But when the primary conflict is resolved, when the man gets down, however he gets down, the story is over.
The hero may get the girl and the gold but as soon as the primary conflict is resolved--as soon as the plans are transported, delivered, and acted on, the story is over.
Consider the plans from Star Wars IV: A New Hope, the recovery of which were Darth Vader's initial reason for overtaking Princess Leia Organa's Corellian Corvette The Tantive IV, plans which she input into Artoodeetoo that "he" had to get to Obi-Wan, plans that Obi-Wan Kenobi had to get to The Rebels, and it was in an attempt to deliver the plans to the Rebels that, along with Han, Luke, Chewie, Artoodeetoo, and Ceethripio, Obi-Wan discovered the remains of Alderaan as an asteroid field, and when Han Solo decided to pilot the Millennium Falcon over to a small moon, to recalibrate the obviously malfunctioning--or was it?--hyperdrive, they all together discovered that it was not a moon but a space station, but that's impossible because it was over 2,000 km across, and then they had the opportunity to rescue Princess Leia, who they did rescue and who knew how to extract the data from Artoodeetoo, and the way to the secret Rebel stronghold hideout where they need to deliver the plans to, Yavin IV--coincidentally the Death Star's next destination because they tracked the Millennium Falcon--making Obi-Wan redundant, so Darth Vader killed him, which raised the stakes for Luke, who saw Obi-Wan fall, and to whom the stakes were now as high as they already were for Leia, who underwent torture and saw her home planet destroyed, and so, she told Han how to pilot the Millennium Falcon to the Rebel stronghold hideout where Luke would become a Rebel pilot, and, there, implemented the plans for their initially intended ends in Luke's destroying The Death Star, which was the space station they had already been aboard, you'll recall, where Luke had seen Obi-Wan fall, and so, Luke got his revenge, and so, Princess Leia got her revenge, since that was the space station that destroyed her world, and so, Darth Vader's dreams were dashed, and so, the plans, from the very start of the movie, no longer mattered because they were Death Star destroying plans and they had been used to destroy the Death Star, in a way that tied-off a bunch of loose-ends at once in a satisfying climax, and the story is ALMOST over: the medal-giving scene seems to just be there because John William wrote a heroes' march and they had a bunch of extras standing around, and some unused dress costumes as opposed to the uniforms and casual-wear costumes worn elsewhere throughout the movie, and so, George Lucas opted to include the medal-giving scene in the movie, but that is not the case and the story did not truly end when the Death Star blew up because Artoodeetoo was the main hero, you see; it was that little droid who first embarked on the adventure to deliver the plans and who went with Luke into the Battle of Yavin, and he was injured in battle so, after the Death Star was destroyed and Luke landed and got his hero's welcome, Artoo was carefully pulled from the X-Wing and Ceethripio offered to donate any gears or servos that might help his friend recover, and so the medal-giving scene gives final closure on the story not only when Artoo jostled happily, concluding the conflict of his injury and recovery, but when the protagonist, Princess Leia--who gave Artoo the mission and underwent torture and had her homeworld destroyed to protect the secret that he carried--smiled at him and we, the audience, know what that smile really meant, and that is when the story ends... Chewbacca barking was absolutely tacked on, what a scene-stealing hack!
That was one sentence. Did you notice?
The preceding story description will only really make sense to someone who has both watched Star Wars and read the official novelisation.
Your writing will only get anywhere if you rewrite your story so that it can make sense to someone who doesn't have your personal frame-of-reference and cannot imagine through your mind.
A sentence is a noun and a verb: a thing and an action.
A story is a series of statements about characters and/or things doing things with other characters and/or things with other characters and/or things and/or for other characters and/or things and/or to other characters and or things and/or against other characters and/or things generally for the benefit of themselves or to aid or injure some other character and/or thing, or for some greater ideal than themselves in self-sacrifice for faith.
Do this for every character in every new scene:
Who? Do this for every character and every action and every perspective.
What? Do this for every character and for every object mentioned and for every specialized location.
When? Do this with every sentence. Maintain a chronology as a fluidly ordered sequence-of-events and actions, and make sure the reader knows the time of day.
Where? Do this for every location, every character, and every object.
How? Do this for every action and for every sequel and for every situation and for every conflict and for every resolution.
Why? This is unimportant unless you really want to spend the time psychoanalyzing your idea of your character and maybe plotting an entire life history, and perhaps even going so far as inventing a whole history and prehistory for your entire world.
Consider the chronology of these examples:
The shot that made [EXAMPLE VILLAIN]'s head explode like a snowball thrown hard at a brick wall was fired after [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] picked up the explodiola gun from the table. [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] had leaned forward to grab it by extending their arm across to it, and then they cocked the hammer back whlie they were turning around. [EXAMPLE VILLAIN] called [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] a weenie and, then [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] said "Hasta mañanas, Poopsie!" and finally put their finger to the trigger and then squeezed it back. [EXAMPLE VILLAIN] had been performing [STOCK "EVIL ACT"] and wouldn't stop.
[CHARACTER EXAMPLE] leaned forward and extended their arm as they reached their hand across the table and then grab the explodiola gun, they spun around, cocking back the hammer, and then faced [EXAMPLE VILLAIN] performing [STOCK "EVIL ACT"], and they wouldn't stop, they had, in fact, called [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] a weenie; so [CHARACTER EXAMPLE] said, "Hasta mañanas, Poopsie!", stuck their finger to the trigger and squeezed it back, and then [EXAMPLE VILLAIN]'s head exploded like a snowball thrown hard at a brick wall.
