Starstruck! Break Down The Story!

Today was the day to present our short film ideas! As you may already know, we were given the task to write a synopsis for a ten-minute short film and accompany it with a mood board. Since we are supposed to come up with one science fiction story and one freestyle, I naturally decided on tackling my favourite, the science-fiction genre, first.

As you may also already know if you know me, I tend to overscript and write too densely, which is why this idea in this form and shape will most probably not be feasible for the task set. So this precise idea will linger a bit longer in my drawer until I can realise it. I will, however, adapt another version of it into the format that is required and see what I can extract out of it.

My story was received in a diverse way and while I was later on asked on when the tickets could be bought (awww, thank you!), I also received a lot of really helpful criticism along the way.

Basically and apart from being too long for this particular task, my story was considered too depressing and thus non-satisfying for a wider audience. I did not consider that outcome since I was mostly focused on the message and on depicting a different take on the whole notion of fulfilling one's dream against all odds. But yeah, I will try to find a way around this problem to keep the message by making it more digestible. For now, I am happy that I got that story sorted out.

And I am glad that I learned how deceiving our brain can be when it comes to memories and stories playing out in our head. Our mind is capable of retelling a story in a far more condensed time frame than the story would actually play out so there is a huge mismatch between narrative time and narrated time.

After that, we learned that stories need to be concisely following a theme which is why breaking down a story becomes essential to improving upon the quality of a film. Which is why we are henceforth supposed to follow the famous three act story structure (introduction, conflict, resolution) in order to make the story complete its cycle.

And of course, we learned more about the claim that there are only ever seven stories in the world, which are:

- man vs. man

- man vs. nature

- man vs. himself

- man vs. god

- man vs. society

- man caught in the middle and

- man vs. woman.

Furthermore, we are always supposed to ask ourselves into which category our story falls into and whether our story would fit into the three act structure, whether it was realistic for us to shoot it already and on how we want to introduce our characters.

The introduction of our own characters, as we learned, can mainly be achieved via two different means: 1. action and 2. fraction.

1. This divides up into three sub fractions since you can introduce your character a) by action instead of dialogue, b) through the eyes of another character and c) by their reaction to a previous occurrence.

2. Hereby, it is meant that we can introduce a character in bits and pieces, which in itself, would fall into two possibilities: a) creating mystery and b) making them larger than life. That opens up the possibility of using anticipation and contrast to our advantage when introducing a character and creating a lasting first impression.

These two aspects were a real eye-opener for me, because I realised that a) this is what cinematic storytelling is all about, b) that this is an element of visual storytelling that has passed me by even though it is essential in giving you a hint about the character you encounter on screen. I just digested them as I digested daily real-life encounters - without thinking much about it. Which only goes to show how pervading and successful this form of character depiction really is! And finally c) I started to get the feeling that my story idea really might turn out too long! I will of course test the waters first before I readily ditch the idea entirely, but I start to understand the issue a bit better.