One of the wonderful joys of an affordable digital camera is the opportunity it brings for anyone with ambition and an idea to film his or her own movie short.
A friend of mine teaches a cinematography class and his student currently face their final exam, the culmination of the program curriculum: combining everything they have learned into the making of their own short five-to-fifteen minute film.
My pal asked me to jot down a page of tips he could hand out as they embark on the writing aspect of fleshing out their stories. Here is what I wrote:
Tip #1: Write something you know about; and see it before you write it.
• Revisit significant emotional events from your past: good ones you’d love to do again, or bad ones you’d love to escape via a do-over.
• Select locations you are familiar with and can describe rather than invent.
Tip #2: Every film, regardless how short or long, must have three things. Those three are shown in the table below, along with a flexible estimate of time each stage should require based upon a typical “one-minute of screen time per page” estimation.
| a Beginning (25%) . . . | a Middle (50%) . . . | & an End (25%) . . . |
| Introduce your protagonist quickly. Make him or her identifiable to the audience. Introduce the problem or situation they face or must deal with. Show or explain why the problem must be dealt with. | Develop the situation, using action and behavioral choices to advance the storyline. Throw some problems in the way. How your protagonist deals with them can be according to type or against type. | Strive for a clever twist to tie up the protagonist’s journey – be that a successful resolution or a failure. Surprise endings are worth the time it takes to think them through. |
For example:
- A six-page script would have 1.5 pages focused on the Beginning, 3 pages dealing with the Middle, and 1.5 pages to set up and shoot the story’s Ending.
- A ten-page script would have 2.5 pages allocated for the Beginning, 5 pages for the Middle, and 2.5 pages to wrap up the Ending.
Tip #3: Characters who do things have more dimension than characters who say things.
Tip #4: Challenge your creativity! Let your characters take you where they want to go, do what they want to do, and say what they want to say.
Tip #5: Teach the audience something. Anything. Learning creates interest and hooks.
Tip #6: “If it’s not on the page, it’s not on the stage.” Get your scenes set up smartly, accurately describe the action you want, and use as few characters as you need to tell the story you want to tell.
Tip #7: Have fun & believe in yourself. If you can see your story, believe in your story.
Final Draft software simplifies scriptwriting, so you can buy that or simply download some scripts for free off the Internet and see how to properly lay out a printed page for filming.
While filmmaking involves a heck of a lot more than just following these seven suggestions, these tips will start you in the right direction. If you own a digital camera that takes a moving image, figure out a quick little story you’d like to tell, lay it out on the page, and then film it. Feature your family and friends as actors — you’ll all have a barrel of fun.