Short Film Story Ideas - Pre-Production Planning

Short Film Story Ideas - Pre-Production Planning

One of the first things that we, as a group, have to do is to create a story and a plot for our short film. The reason that we have this first is because it is the foundation for our short film and we can build the rest of our pre-production planning around it.

There are lots of different ways to come up with ideas for the story of our short film :

• Inspiration:
• from other short films
• from feature length films
• from books
• Imagine a story (come up with your own in your head)
• Pick a genre and vary some of the conventions to obtain a story idea (Neale's genre theory)
• Real life experiences
• Use a mood room or a mood board
• Ask others to see if they have a story idea
• Flip a well know story (change the binary oppositions)
• Reverse Budgeting where you work out the props and items you have available and your budget and build a story from there.
• Create a 'what if ...?' scenario and see if you can come up with a story idea from the scenario. 
• Click on random articles on the internet to see if there is a good idea for a story
• Remember to keep the idea simple.

We started by brainstorming some story ideas on paper and seeing as a group what we could come up with. These are the ideas we came up with:

• You don't know who you are standing next to:
• This story idea was based on 2 characters that were in an elevator.
• One of the characters was an everyday business man.
• The other character seems like a normal person, however, he is not (for example he could be a murder)
• Other people have it worse than you:
• This story idea like the first one was based on 2 characters who are in an elevator.
• One of the characters is going through a rough time (maybe not doing well a college - if a young person, or maybe doesn't like his job) and this character is getting really down about this.
• The other character is going through an even rougher time (maybe a victim of abuse of bullying). However, this character seems to be dealing with it better than the other even though on the inside he is being hurt more.
• All Alone:
• The world has become deserted (due to a big disaster like nuclear waste being dropped and causing radiation poisoning or some form of apocalypse.)
• There is one lonely person left on his own.
• This character only has 1 friend before the disaster and now he is even more lonely.
• One day he is out walking and he sees his friend walk past him. He has to double look before he realises who is was, but, then when he looks back the person is gone.
• This is a hallucination as due to the character loneliness.
• Spaced Out:
• A character is just living his normal life (does the same things every day over and over)
• Until some sort of disruption which breaks his cycle of his normal life.
• This leaves the character in shock as he doesn't know what to do and he keeps 'spacing out' and not being about to forget about the disruption.

Why we rejected:
We have decided to film 'All Alone' as we feel that it is our best idea and could be executed well when we don't really have a budget. 

• You Don't Know Who You're Standing Next to
•  We have decided to reject this story because the story didn't have enough depth to it. The overall message of the film was good but the narrative involved was simple and wouldn't allow us to create a good 5 minute film with a good story.
•  Other People Have it Worse Than You
• We made the decision to reject this story idea for similar reasons to the 'You Don't Know Who You Are Standing Next to' story. The overall message of this short film is good and will leave the audience with something to think about, but the story doesn't have enough depth so we would run into the issue of the film being too short.
• Spaced Out
• We made the decision to reject this story idea simply because we couldn't think of a way to add depth to the story and we couldn't figure what the story would lead to or what the overall message of the story would be. The main part of the story was some sort of disruption however we couldn't think of anything that would make sense for the story.