Brain fade

Get out of your rut, shake up your thinking.

Read short stories. Listen to the news. Go out and listen to people. Learn something foreign to you. Take something familiar then turn it upside down and inside out. Go out and have an adventure. Parody something very serious, or take something funny and treat it seriously.

The best stories come from "What If???" A now-tired cliche is "What if aliens landed?" They mostly become war movies.

But "What if aliens were friendly?"

"The Day The Earth Stood Still," (1951) based on a short story.

"Contact" (1997) based on a book.

"Arrival" (2016), which was based on, according to IMDB: Fermat's Principle Of Least Time and Variational Principles Of Physics.

There's a mouthful!

"What if the protagonist of a novel could hear the author writing about them?" "Stanger Than Fiction," (2006).

"What if a Disney princess came to the real world?" "Enchanted" (2007), a wonderful, entertaining parody on Disney films by Disney itself.

Dip into your memory well; do you remember the first time an adult swore to you rather than at you? In my case I was a 12 year old earning extra money working in a neighbors garden. We went to a local stable to collect manure for his roses. As were began filling bags with horse dung he said, "Ya know, kid, it should be the eleventh Commandment; "Thou shalt shovel shit."


Remember, we all got into the entertainment biz because it's supposed to be fun - so go out and have some fun!
 
Go out and listen to people.
Just as a follow up...

We're having some plumbing work done on the house today. Our contractor - whom we've used for almost 30 years - was born in Chile. He worked as a plumber/pipe fitter on merchant vessels, starting in his early teens. He has visited 32 countries; lots of fun stories. He speaks six - that's right, SIX - languages, English his most recent acquisition 35 years ago. No wonder I couldn't place his accent! He came to the US, learned English and eventually started his plumbing business.

Stories like his can provide creative inspiration. He's filed away for when I need a new character, and some of his stories make nice fodder for other things.
 
Get out of your rut, shake up your thinking.

Read short stories. Listen to the news. Go out and listen to people. Learn something foreign to you. Take something familiar then turn it upside down and inside out. Go out and have an adventure. Parody something very serious, or take something funny and treat it seriously.

The best stories come from "What If???" A now-tired cliche is "What if aliens landed?" They mostly become war movies.

But "What if aliens were friendly?"

"The Day The Earth Stood Still," (1951) based on a short story.

"Contact" (1997) based on a book.

"Arrival" (2016), which was based on, according to IMDB: Fermat's Principle Of Least Time and Variational Principles Of Physics.

There's a mouthful!

"What if the protagonist of a novel could hear the author writing about them?" "Stanger Than Fiction," (2006).

"What if a Disney princess came to the real world?" "Enchanted" (2007), a wonderful, entertaining parody on Disney films by Disney itself.

Dip into your memory well; do you remember the first time an adult swore to you rather than at you? In my case I was a 12 year old earning extra money working in a neighbors garden. We went to a local stable to collect manure for his roses. As were began filling bags with horse dung he said, "Ya know, kid, it should be the eleventh Commandment; "Thou shalt shovel shit."


Remember, we all got into the entertainment biz because it's supposed to be fun - so go out and have some fun!
What a fantastic response. :)

Well we just moved to a small country town, must be something here we can film :)

Just have to go out looking...
 
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Well we just moved to a small country town, must be something here we can film
There's your next project, comparisons between where you were and where you are now. "Wow; I thought small towns were__________; but they're really______________." "I never knew a horse could_______________." How similar things are done differently. Example:

When spending time with my sister and her hubby in Vermont it takes almost 30 minutes just to get down off of the mountain on a scary, winding dirt road, then I can start getting where I want to go, usually at least 15 to 30 minutes or more. You can't just pop over to the store for a quick quart of milk; you actually have to plan your trips or waste a lot of time & gasoline.

Or having an ATV to get around the property and for visiting the kids and grandkids - their two sons have homes on the same 10 acre parcel. It's faster to use the trails than the road.

Or having chickens - LOTS of chickens. A coop/run for egg layers and another for meat birds. Hatchings several times a year. (Did you know different types of chickens lay different colored eggs?) Having to deal with coydogs, weasels and foxes.

My nephew has a sugar shack - they tapped over 300 maple trees this year and the shack is where you render the sap to syrup.

The have their own mini-sawmill. They use the trees to build outbuildings (like the sugar shack) and then replant with fruit trees, which they can, preserve, juice, etc.

They get together with neighbors and buy a full steer, then butcher it up themselves and fill their freezers for a few months.

Well water, cesspools, propane tanks, stacking cords of wood to feed the furnace all winter - they are way the hell up on that mountain and except for electricity they're on their own. Satellite dish for TV and internet.


I'm sure there would be lots of thing to shoot. Interview people, get a "walk around town" from an old-timer.

But remember - HAVE FUN!
 
What do you do when you run out of ideas for short film? Racking my brain, but nothing is coming forward...
Watch one of your favorite moves again and look for things you never noticed before. Then, watch a movie you would never watch. It resets your brain. Try it, it works, and only takes 4 hours.
 
What it does it take your brain from your benchmark to creative mode. A so-called "bad movie" also works for movie #2.
 
I have the opposite problem. I get ideas that I know I could turn into a humorous short but I can never find anyone to collaborate with. I don't get out much to meet people and obviously Covid-19 didn't help.
 
I have one idea I could probably do pretty much alone, if I could co-opt some business people. I had an idea for a faux commercial for an instant camera (think Polaroid) where I went to a car dealership to buy an expensive car and (probably in silent movie fashion), the price was just too high so I decided to rob a bank. I take a photo of a gun with the instant camera, attach it to a request for $50,000 and send it up the tube to a bank teller at the drive through. Then the teller takes a picture of a stack of money and sends it back. I take the photo to the car dealership and the salesman produces his camera, takes a photo of the car and gives it to me in exchange for the picture of the cash.

It's just one of my crazy concepts that I never get around to shooting, and it wouldn't be *that* difficult. I think it would be best with no spoken dialog. Sigh.
 
Keep us up to date. Even if you're shooting alone you don't have to work alone. Lots of folks here on IndieTalk with experience working out production issues. Run things by us, people can tell you how they solved similar problems; everything from shooting alone to bargain basement equipment to script troubles. Even if you just want to moan a little.

My thing is sound-for-picture, primarily audio post. Just ask a question in the sound sub-forum or PM me.
 
I have one idea I could probably do pretty much alone, if I could co-opt some business people.
Barter. The director/producer of a short I worked on bartered a "promotional" video for a deli he wanted to shoot in. In one day he and his DP shot the staff working, the food, and the customers, plus a few interviews, to create a video for the shops website. While doing that they also worked out the preliminary ideas of how they were going to shoot there. After shooting/finishing with the location the edited video was given to the deli, who later got a copy of the short with a thank you credit. Bonus - other shops in the area liked the video so much he bartered or made some money doing more promotional vids.
 
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What do you do when you run out of ideas for short film? Racking my brain, but nothing is coming forward...
The first step is to realize that the block is all in your head and has no relation to reality. There have now been millions of good stories, and every one of them has scenes, and a lot of those scenes could have gone a different way. If they had gone a different way, you'd be looking at a whole new story. Did you open the refrigerator today? Maybe there was a sandwich inside, but what if there wasn't. What if instead of the sandwich you expected to find, you found a large stack of cash jammed into the refrigerator. You don't know where it came from, and you live alone. Suddenly there's a knock at the door. What happens next? You are now already writing an original story!
 
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