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What you do to get ideas?

SquaretheJon

SquaretheJon

Hi guys,

What do you do to get ideas for your next film, documentary etc.? Do you sit by the park and take notes on what happens? You ride inside buses to watch people's interactions? What do you do, what is your "idea-grabber" place/thing that you do to get those ideas. Please share.
 
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Are you writing a spec script, or are you a filmmaker with a story to tell? What are your passions? Your politics? Your fears? Your experiences? What story do you want to tell?
 
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Most of my film ideas, started off with something that happened in real life. My "trapped astronauts" movie, TERRARIUM was inspired by taking care of a friend's tarantula, for 6 months. I would put the crickets in the terrarium and then I would think to myself, "what if those crickets were people?" The idea was born.

For my movie, ROADKILL, my inspiration came from a fight with an ex-girlfriend. She was yelling at me, so I just got in my Trans am and started backing out. While the car was moving, she scratched my neck and didn't let go, so I gave it some gas. :lol: Anyway, she couldn't hang on, but I thought what if she did? I made the movie around the "What if?"

I also listen to movie soundtracks, so I get lost in that dream mode and think of all sorts of ideas. But,.........and this is a huge "but", nothing inspires me more than watching a no budget indie movie that becomes successful. Specifically, it was a Super 8 movie, called GAME OF SURVIVAL, which was all over the place, when it got released in the 80's. At that time, there was also A POLISH VAMPIRE IN BURBANK, also shot on Super 8, which did huge business. Of course, EL MARIACHI came out and that is the poster child for the indie success story. Still, everytime a BLAIR WITCH, FIREWALL, OPEN WATER or anything along those lines catches fire, I'm totally inspired. I watched Peter Jackson go from BAD TASTE to where he is now. When I get the inpiration, story ideas just flow....

When ideas are dry, I'll drive out to some weird desert locale, put on a soundtrack, or watch something I know nothing about. Sometimes, it takes 10 movies, before you get to the inpiring one, but we're filmmakers, dammit. We should be watching all sorts of unknown material, and not just what the critics and masses say are good.
 
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I get a LOT of inspiration watching other movies (though be careful not to rip anything off.) I think the most important thing is to keep your eyes and ears open with everything you encounter. Read a lot, watch a lot, keep an eye on the news, try to see everyday life from a different angle..
 
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For me is watching movies, seeing what I didn't like and wonder how I can make it better. Also talking with friends and random people can really help. Finally when I want to get some good horror idea I like to listen to Alice Coopers later stuff like Dragon Town and Brutal Planet albums, don't know what it is about those two but I've gotten some crazy ideas from them.
 
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I get inspiration from a variety of different things.

For my feature screenplay "Stranger" it was a combination of me thinking of the loneliness of driving for hours on along stretch of road, and a quote my old man told me when I first started driving: "You are the one in control when your driving." So I thought what if you weren't in control?

My second feature, "Yesterday," was inspired by a rough break up I had, in addition to basing the characters off my friends in my home town. Also, the Beatles song by the same name helped.

Anyway, those are just two examples of my own. For me I just base screenplays off my life experiences and embellish a lot to make them fiction. I like to base the characters off of people I know in real life to make them more realistic. Other than that, I guess you ought to just keep your eyes and ears open to the world around you. You never know when inspiration will come crashing down on you like a comet.
 
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my current feature 'Masking Agents' was based on a short bio a friend wrote and then we fleshed it out, using interesting stories we already know from within the music industry which we work in that we found interesting and would suit the themes we wanted to explore. so from a very simple bio and an urge to satirise a lot of interesting pop cultural histories, we somehow wrote a feature script. so we went about that one in a strange way.

my next feature idea actually came from hearing a quote from one of the members of The Pixies and designing a poster and a lot of ideas came from that.

So i guess a lot of my ideas come from my pop culture obsessions.
 
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Most great ideas come from the question "what if?"


What if animals could talk?

What if machines took over the world?

What if a person had extraordinary powers?

What if interstellar space travel were possible?

What if we slice the bread before we sell it?


I could go on and on, but you get the idea.

I'm not a writer and probably never will be, but I still need creative inspiration to do my job as a sound designer, so I'm always looking for new and different things to experience. And never lose your sense of play; have fun with things - time and budget permitting, of course.


Just a couple more thoughts for the fun of it:

Getting ideas is like shaving; if you don't do it every day, you're a bum. - Alex Kroll, Advertising Exec.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have. - Emile Chartier

Every act of creation is first an act of destruction. - Pablo Picasso

A question that sometimes drives me hazy;
am I or the others crazy? - Albert Einstein

What concerns me is not the way things are, but the way people think things are. - Epictetus

The only person who likes change is a wet baby.
 
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I go through other writer's trash bins.

This is also how I find women to go out with - I hang around THE BACHELOR house and wait for cast offs.

Usually I start with some emotional issue from my life and make it a millon times worse. What if my girlfriend really isn't telling me the whole truth about her past... and she's a spy using me as a cover? Or an *alien* spy? Or a serial killer? Or she died in a car wreck - but sold her soul to Satan and is on a mission? Or...?

There are a million "or?"s - and you just let your imaginatiion run wild. Come up with 30 of them... and pick the most interesting. Now you have a story about your emotional problem that is also unique and interesting and kinda weird.

- Bill (she used to be a dude!)
 
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wcmartell said:
I go through other writer's trash bins.

This is also how I find women to go out with - I hang around THE BACHELOR house and wait for cast offs.
Click to expand...
That's not good. You might end up with the type of girl from 'Flava of Love'...(shudder)


Usually I start with some emotional issue from my life and make it a millon times worse. What if my girlfriend really isn't telling me the whole truth about her past... and she's a spy using me as a cover? Or an *alien*
Click to expand...
...maybe you ain't soup yet! Okay, I'm done :D


One of the things that gets me is when I hear someone say that they want to do a film -- insert film here: Blair Witch, Lord of the Rings, ANY zombie film --

but they don't have: insert what you lack: woods, big money, people who want to be zombies

Considering these ideas have all been done, come up with something else.

Stephen King can make a chair scary, I can't remember the name of the short story-sorry. Gus Van Sant made the desert scary and it is if you are lost in it with no water. The movie is called 'Gerry'.

I am working on a short story -- All my short stories I want to turn into short films but the idea has to be there first, but anyway. My short story is coming from the fact that I often get tired of seeing the same old story plots in horror. So I am trying to write something that I have never seen. Who knows if it will be any good, but the point is to try it anyway. So maybe it won't win any awards...maybe it will, maybe it will give me ideas for other stories.

Film shorts don't have to be elaborate. They don't even have to be deep or have a 'lesson'. They only have to tell a little part of a story.

-- spinner :cool:
 
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It's like LORD OF THE RINGS... in Oakland! They take BART from the shire, and...

Yeah - if you are doing it yourself you have to work with what you have - and inject your imagination. Like you said, Stephen King can make a chair scary (the one that freaked me out was the retired astronaut living in the middle of nowhere, alone, because his hand has grown an alien *eye* and it's watching him).

I know a lot of people who have made their own features, and the biggest problem is that their story requires, say, lots of great CGI... but they don't know anybody who does CGI. That means their film *depends* on something they don't have and don't know where to get and will probably have to pay a bundle for. So the film has crappy CGI that cost them a lot. Instead - if you don't have it or know where you can get it cheap, don't put it in the story.

- Bill
 
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Big ones for me:

Watching 'Inside the Actor's Studio' on youtube. Major good there.
Goin out for a smoke. Not sure if you smoke, but just walking in the open air for 5 minutes, not worrying about the script, usually causes me to think of something for the script that I can't get off my mind.
Again, youtube interviews of any sort. Specific ideas if you don't have any: 'Jeffrey Tambor workshop' 'Robert Rodriguez film school' <-----Really f***in good one (can we cuss on this thing?)
Someone mentioned this earlier, but watching indie movies.
Rappin with other creatives. This is what I forget; ya don't wanna be a all-talk do-nothin, but without telling other people your awesome ideas, they are bound to become non-exciting.

I'd advise, right now, you watch the Steven Spielberg inside the actor's studio. 11 parts, all online, and he explains a lot of things. Just watching interviews, you can get a feel for how the person operates in general, and helps you model your best approach.

And never be afraid to put in your experiences, no matter how close they are to you. If you're completely stuck, you might just need to go experience more of the world... Remember, you're actually an animal, not a 'filmmaker'! lol. Don't forget that.
 
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Personally I take inspiration from watching other films. Sometimes I'll just wake up in the middle of the night thinking "Holy Sh*t! This is a great idea..." and I write it down. I'll either pen the whole storyline that night, or I'll pen the basic idea and come back to it to spread it out and expand it.

Mostly the "watching other films" is inspiration though...
 
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Alcove Audio said:
Most great ideas come from the question "what if?"
Click to expand...

I'm in this ballpark. :)

Most any everyday, routine situation gets turned on its head when "What if..." comes into play.

It doesn't even have to make sense... and quite often evolves into something totally different when it's all done... but that's simply the starting point.

Turning the mundane into something eventful is what it's all about. :cool:
 
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hello most of my ideas come from when i been smoking weed with my friends, it may sound crazy but when your all chilled and relaxed, you can start to think about normal everyday things, and make them different. or maybe a long walk, or even stories you get told by drunks at the pub. life is a story you just have to pluck the beginning middle and end
 
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My ideas tend to come in from all over the damn place. The most frequents sources for ideas are songs and stuff from my own life. A single line in a song can literally fuel an entire screenplay for me, or a poem, short story, novel or whatever.

Other films can inspire me as well, but that's usually kind of abstract. I'm watching a movie, thinking about the scene, and it then leads me to think about something entirely different.
 
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