Not money or marketing
These scripts don't get picked up
No paying audience would pay for noreal story
These scripts don't get picked up
No paying audience would pay for noreal story
can we all agree the problem with indie films is lack ofstory andwriting?
- Thread starter davidevans10
- Start date
You also can't ignore the indie filmmaker's ability to shoot a "good looking" film, or their ability to edit a "good sounding" soundtrack (fx and music).
Story is the most important, because if the story isn't good, then the film probably isn't good enough to make. But even if the story is solid on paper, everything else matters in order to make that story play well on screen. Cause if it doesn't play well on screen, most people will not care.
Story is the most important, because if the story isn't good, then the film probably isn't good enough to make. But even if the story is solid on paper, everything else matters in order to make that story play well on screen. Cause if it doesn't play well on screen, most people will not care.
If story is so important, as every filmmaker keeps saying, why does Hollywood do remakes? If people were craving the story, why can't they just buy the DVDs of the old movies? If story is so important, why is every superhero movie about somebody wanting to destroy the universe, and some people trying to save it?
The average viewer wants a spectacle and they get it, good story or not. The spectacle is marketed and images are plastered everywhere and the movie makes a billion dollars. But nobody is going to remember one Avengers movie from the next.
Of course, if the story is different AND good, then it's going to last forever. For instance, "Predator" is not your typical alien movie. There aren't a bunch of aliens in flying saucers with bad intentions. It's just an Alien dude on safari, and he's hunting. Now that's a story. For no reason other than you've never heard of such a thing before. And of course it has everything else going for it too. The details are fantastic.
But at the indie level, how good can a story really be anyway. We don't have the budget for a spectacle. So all we can offer is a "feeling." No indie film story is going to make a billion, whatever the story, without marketing. So the only thing one can aim for is trying to make a certain segment of the market feel kinship with the story, and hope they get interested enough to want to watch your film. But that's just the premise. Then you have to write the story. You have to get a team together. You have to get your actors. You have to get some sort of budget together. You have to make sure you have your locations. You have to shoot. You have to edit. You have to make sure your sound is alright. You have to make sure you have a soundtrack. You have to complete everything,... and that is just the beginning. After the "beginning" is over, you now have to make sure it leaves your computer and goes on to the real world. And then without a marketing budget, since all the money has been spent on production, you have to figure out how to get more than 5 people interested in your film, not because your film is a spectacle, not because you have a great story (how great can your story really be? It's highly improbable that the average filmmaker is so creative that they've come up with an amazing story nobody has ever heard of), but because you made them feel something,... anything... at some level, deep enough for them to recommend your film to their friend.
If you can't do that, your film or mine, won't make it very far out of our respective computers,... whatever the story.
The average viewer wants a spectacle and they get it, good story or not. The spectacle is marketed and images are plastered everywhere and the movie makes a billion dollars. But nobody is going to remember one Avengers movie from the next.
Of course, if the story is different AND good, then it's going to last forever. For instance, "Predator" is not your typical alien movie. There aren't a bunch of aliens in flying saucers with bad intentions. It's just an Alien dude on safari, and he's hunting. Now that's a story. For no reason other than you've never heard of such a thing before. And of course it has everything else going for it too. The details are fantastic.
But at the indie level, how good can a story really be anyway. We don't have the budget for a spectacle. So all we can offer is a "feeling." No indie film story is going to make a billion, whatever the story, without marketing. So the only thing one can aim for is trying to make a certain segment of the market feel kinship with the story, and hope they get interested enough to want to watch your film. But that's just the premise. Then you have to write the story. You have to get a team together. You have to get your actors. You have to get some sort of budget together. You have to make sure you have your locations. You have to shoot. You have to edit. You have to make sure your sound is alright. You have to make sure you have a soundtrack. You have to complete everything,... and that is just the beginning. After the "beginning" is over, you now have to make sure it leaves your computer and goes on to the real world. And then without a marketing budget, since all the money has been spent on production, you have to figure out how to get more than 5 people interested in your film, not because your film is a spectacle, not because you have a great story (how great can your story really be? It's highly improbable that the average filmmaker is so creative that they've come up with an amazing story nobody has ever heard of), but because you made them feel something,... anything... at some level, deep enough for them to recommend your film to their friend.
If you can't do that, your film or mine, won't make it very far out of our respective computers,... whatever the story.
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your a smart guy but really off on something here jeez.
If story isnt important why do indie films suck? how about that question
remakes are made to bank off an original story
you dont need money to make a story and predator is a good idea not much of a story but enough.
creative enough to write a story? wow then why make a movie. you dont deserve to make a fu cking movie if your not creative enough. Your implying a good story or idea is all money. sad.
No one can write or be creative anymore thats it. They used to be . Its sad that young guys like you convinced themselves there never were to justify the fact that you will never create
Okay fine. Maybe I should just speak for myself then. What I'm really saying is that I am not creative enough to write a story great enough to be great without marketing, great visuals, sound design etc. Maybe the average filmmaker is.
Just because Hollywood can get away with it and everybody goes to see most of their movies doesn't mean they're doing things the way they should be done. If viewers aren't given something new, then they really have no context for what makes an "okay" movie and what makes a "great" movie.
We shouldn't make films just to present spectacle, we should make films because we have something to say as well. Not all films need be like this. Guardians of the Galaxy doesn't really have the best or most realistic story, and its characters aren't really all that three-dimensional, but at least the characters are fun, and the film plays out and looks like a video-game, which drives you very well from one event to the next. Not all films manage to look or feel like that, though.
Exactly, because the stories are cookie-cutter, and the only differences are how they present their specific iteration of the character's personal arcs, even if those arcs have been explored previously. The Avengers may be considered the most successful and the best of the Marvel movies so far, but for me, it's one of the most forgettable. I mean, I can remember almost everything that happened in Iron Man 2, but the majority of The Avengers was taken up by long conversation sequences that really didn't feel like they advanced the plot, they just advanced character interactions and personal grudges or competitions that would be expanded upon in later installments. That doesn't mean it's not a well executed film. But I think an interesting story has to be based on both the action and the dialogue if your film is one with spectacle intended to be in it. So story should be based on an even ground of character dialogue and character action. That helps to keep the general audience engaged.
So then what are you arguing about?
I totally understand that not everybody is a fantastic writer, and I also understand that not everybody has a deep or "compelling" story to tell. But it's always better if you do. And by far the best short films that get made are the ones that surprise you with a unique stand-alone premise that doesn't need a sequel and doesn't need further explanation. So why shouldn't we strive to make shorts like that?
My short right now is definitely closer to Guardians of the Galaxy than it is to something like Pixar's Lifted. But I still worked hard to write the best story that I could within the limitations that I had for time, and even though it's still rough, I want to make sure to go back and improve upon it so that a much longer story will have a more compelling and touching tale with realistic and interesting character development.
A good story doesn't always need great visuals. My ideas almost always need great visuals attached to them, but that's because I am who I am. I'm fascinated by grand locales, lasers, lightning, strange contraptions, warp drives, robots, magic, dragons, all of that stuff. But other folks don't need to be the kind of writer/director that needs explosions or robots or zombies to make their story a good one. Just look at all the fantastic creepy-pastas that are written all over the internet. Plenty of those would make great short films. And although they are in the horror genre--which is perhaps the easiest genre to use in indie or small-budget projects--the stories that I've heard recently are far more unique and spine-tingling than most current horror ventures in theaters. And they are extremely simple to execute. Almost no visual effects, a few minor special effects, some make-up skills, and spooky and creepy locations.
I think you've pretty much just summed up my point.
I am not saying "story" has to be unique or has to be one-of-a-kind, or has to be unreachable. All I'm saying is make your story something that people can care about and that people can relate to.
But often times what I find very concerning and worrisome is that people aren't very good at writing good relatable characters or reasonable and logical story progression. And if you're not good at that, then there are plenty of people out there who will look at your film and be more concerned about your plot-holes and your boring characters than they are interested in your film as a whole.
If you don't care about those folks, and you think way more people will watch your film regardless of it's story issues, than that's your choice. But all I am saying is exactly what you were saying. As long as the story can make you feel something for what's going on, then it's a good "story."
But again, just about anybody in the animation world will tell you that "story is paramount." And even if you think animation has no relation to what we do here, believe me, it does. It is no less a part of the film industry than cut-scenes in full-motion video games from the 1990s. I have learned more from animation in regards to my filmmaking skills than I have from anything else, and it has proven that if you have a solid basis with your story, then everything else will make sense and will flow well. If you have your characters worked out on paper, then you don't have to struggle so much explaining them to your actors, and their performances will likely be more believable. If your plot line makes sense on paper, then you might not have as much trouble editing things together in post.
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No, I'm pretty sure the average filmmaker isn't either. That's why a lot of short films are really rough and bank on the visuals so much. Why do you think there are so many slasher and zombie shorts out there? They make zombie and war films because all they have to do is write some tactical dialogue, have a few characters die while the protagonist mildly cries over their bodies, and then they eventually get cornered somewhere before they either die themselves or destroy all the enemies in the area. The story is very basic and very rough, and the characters often don't have much to them. Therefore, they are not interesting to watch in most cases.
Visuals should never trump story, even if everybody else is doing it. Because eventually the visuals will lose their impressive quality either through them becoming out-dated, or because people have watched the movie(s) long enough to realize that they aren't as awesome and important as they thought when they watched it the first time in the theater. The story has to be able to stand-up despite those possibilities, and stick with the viewer for a long time.
Even the subtlest of changes to the character's personality, dialogue, or the story's plot-line can make or break a story. If a story is not so great, there are things one can do to make them better. There are even ways of writing characters and writing stories that almost always work, and they work so well that you could literally write numerous stories almost the same way, and as long as you changed up the order of their elements and changed up the character's costumes, the story's location, and the main elements of the premise, then each of those films would all be relatively good. So it astounds me that more films can't figure out how to fix their story problems in the scripting phase.
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I also don't agree with your premise. I'm more in agreement with trueindie, though not entirely.
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what film is. It's not directly about story and it's certainly not about story writing, film is a medium of story telling. Let me ask you this, would you rather hear a mediocre or even a weak story told by a great raconteur or a great stand up comedian or would you rather hear a great story told by a talentless story teller with no sense of empathy, timing or drama?
Film is far and away the most complex story telling medium ever. There's so much technically and artistically that can go wrong with each of the many individual film crafts, let alone in how all those film crafts combine to form the illusion of a single unified story telling medium. Why do (most) indie films suck? Because one or more of those film crafts and/or the way they were combined was executed poorly enough to disengage the audience from the story telling.
G
You seem to have a fundamental misunderstanding of what film is. It's not directly about story and it's certainly not about story writing, film is a medium of story telling. Let me ask you this, would you rather hear a mediocre or even a weak story told by a great raconteur or a great stand up comedian or would you rather hear a great story told by a talentless story teller with no sense of empathy, timing or drama?
Film is far and away the most complex story telling medium ever. There's so much technically and artistically that can go wrong with each of the many individual film crafts, let alone in how all those film crafts combine to form the illusion of a single unified story telling medium. Why do (most) indie films suck? Because one or more of those film crafts and/or the way they were combined was executed poorly enough to disengage the audience from the story telling.
G
I disagree.
Story is important. It all starts with the script. The script has to be great. The big issue with a lot of independent films is so many think that the script is the only element that needs to be great. Every element needs to be great. Acting, directing, editing, camera work, sound, distribution, marketing and the list goes on and on and on. It's all important. Miss the execution of any of those parts and you end up with a pile of unsellable crap.
It's not to say that many independent script aren't crap. This counts for studio scripts too. Too many move out of development and into pre production while the scripts are underdeveloped. When time is limited, as it often is during pre-production, you shouldn't also need to do work that should have been done beforehand.
There are plenty of good stories that have been hacked to death by bad directors, poor performances etc. etc.
That's the hero's journey.
Big odds, big powers, big spectacle.
If it is about someone wanting to replace a little parc with a shopping mall, it's about different powers and thus less spectacle
Cheer up!
I think your trailer hinted at a creative story
This. I very much agree with this.
I also don't think we should get into discussions of which aspects of the process are more important. It's all important. ALL OF IT.
If you don't have a rock-solid script, you're not going to make a great movie, and I don't care how much financing you have behind you.
If that's what you need no one has it. I see absolute shit compared to 15 years ago and longer. Indie or mainstream. Puke. What you stated would create what you don't see anymore. Pandomonium
I strongly disagree. There are plenty of great films being made, both at the indie and studio levels. You, apparently, just ain't watching them.
Name some so I can laugh at the lowered standards of modern society and that they've never actually watche d a great film