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Writing a coherent story

Dear god I want to f**king kill myself already.
I am on my final year of film school, Trying to create my masterpiece but I keep being told "your images are strong, but you need to write a coherent story". I don't give up. I wrote story after story after story. They all involved a guy that sees a warped version of reality, they all had 3 story arcs, Things make perfect sense in my mind but when I see it to my teachers they are scratching their heads.

I've been told today that maybe I should choose some tale, joke or song that I like and give it my own spin. I might do that but I can't shake this feeling of wanting to tell my own story. For the last month and a half I've been writing and drawing storyboard everyday, all day long. Something should have paid off didn't it?

And whats making me the most crazy is that they expected me to succeed, they believed in me and I feel like i've failed them and myself, while doing my very best.

Can anyone help me make a coherent story in this last attempt before I'll be made to make something that I didn't come up with?

Thank you.
 
The problem with inside his head is it is traditional to make a break from reality inside someone's head and when it is revealed the film is about what is going on inside someone's head, harsh reality takes a different turn.

Reference material is Mr. Brooks, Dexter, The Snake Pit, The Hand, The Matrix, and even choice episodes of Smallville.
 
I think your story is pretty simple and tried and true at the core, with a little bit of modification:

act 1: Nathan gets bullied and loses the girl
act 2: Nathan (no longer fat, but not yet confident) asks a girl out
act 3: Nathan gets bullied by the same (or similar person) but in a more adult fashion (they're not trying to beat him up, they're trying to "steal his girl" by belittling him). He finds confidence in himself, stands up for himself, and impresses his date (who had thought him a bit of a pushover).

The key to conflict is confidence (that's fun to say!) By making him already confident in act 2, there's nothing to resolve in act 3. Obviously he needs to be a little confident, or he'd have never asked the girl out, but make it seem like she agrees more out of pity than interest.

My two cents. I personally really like your other ideas (and am in the tiny minority that likes stories that aren't real, and thus commonly perceived as "pointless", but that's another discussion), but school shouldn't be where you make your "masterpiece". It's where you learn your craft, and learn to speak to the 99.9% of your potential audience. Keep at it though!
 
Back after a few days rest.
JohL what did u mean "I think your story is pretty simple and tried and true at the core".
cliche?

Yes, but not necessarily in a bad way. Archetypes are how we relate to stories and characters. If the story is familiar, and the character is something most people can relate to (insecure guy) and aspire to (guy finds his courage), then you're free to do different and interesting things with the visuals, which it sounds like you have a good grasp of and good ideas for. This is, I think, what your professor is trying to get to. Learn to develop a simple story, then put your own twists on it. If he thinks it's TOO cliche, then he can help you twist it, while keeping it coherent (or should be able to anyway. It is his JOB to TEACH you after all!)

Again, film school is not the place for your masterpiece. It's the place where you learn to hold a paintbrush properly, and draw a duck so that most people can recognize it as a duck. These are important skills that people with artistic aspirations sometimes dismiss. My background is in noise and abstract music. The artists who did that well, and with meaning, understand more conventional music theory than your average rock band, even though they rarely use it in immediately recognizable forms, if that makes any sense.
 
...It's the place where you learn to hold a paintbrush properly, and draw a duck so that most people can recognize it as a duck.

Yes, that is the reason for the Rules and Film School that so many "I'm a filmmaker, hear me roar!" folks dismiss. Thank you for stating in a such brilliant way!
 
I dont understand 3 with 3A. It just seems like random events with no real meaning or purpose behind them. hmmmmm.
Edit: I just read the whole thread and I agree with your teacher.
 
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What do you guys think:
In a robot world identical to our own, everyone wears a monitor on their chest showing bars indicating their health, money, mood and energy.
The hero will wake up on one ordinary day to find out his health bar is increasing in an alarming rate and try everything he can to get it to stabalize.
 
What happened to the carnival? Wow! Pick a story and work on it... FOCUS! You'll be spending months on this thing, if you can't focus at the start, do you have any hope of mustering the focus on a single topic for that long? Filmmaking doesn't start and end with a single revision of a 3 page script, or with a single shooting day, 30 setups and done.

8 minute short done for a 100 hour filmmaking competition... then re-edited to give the appropriate time to the post prodiction... total time spent over all, 6 weeks, at least 4 hours every day... the color grade took 2 days to finesse all the shots into the same color space. filmmaking is not a gig for the mind that flits that heavily. Hunker down, make A SINGLE STORY and work on it. I'm not helping any more because I feel my time is being wasted... time spent then thrown away is not valued.
 
Do both.
Write a story about an artist who sees a warped vision of reality - and can't seem to convey his perceptions.

start the film as pure narrative then devolve into imagery based storytelling.
Wether he finally conveys his images and the effect of that is up to you.

If you make your short comings part of the point - you shortcomings cease to be shortcomings.


And I respectfully disagree with Rayw.
Creating for an audience is a terrible idea unless you are that audience.
First and foremost you're relegating any notion of quality to other people. Maybe they have a good sense but you're automatically making decisions based on interpretations of someone elses perception of what you're doing. That makes you not only unnecessary but in the way.

I've tried to make this point here but to no avail but -
You're not going to sell Britney Spears to Megadeth fans. David Lynch isn't going to go over well with fans of desperate housewives. Some people just aren't going to "get" what you're doing.
Punk is never going to sound like Jazz.
That's not to say interesting things won't happen when you try - but you've got to understand that people don't look at, they look for.
People will always look at your punk record and say "that's a terrible Jazz record".
And yeah, it probably is - but you need to figure out what you want to do.
If you want to make punk records, you should go find the punk crowd.
Jazz - take ever piece of advice you can and keep working at it.

My 2cts.

Edit: I respectfully disagree with what Rayw said on the first page - I have no idea what was said since.
 
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And I respectfully disagree with Rayw.
Creating for an audience is a terrible idea unless you are that audience.

...

If you want to make punk records, you should go find the punk crowd.
Jazz - take ever piece of advice you can and keep working at it.
Hi, Aaron

We're cool.
I respectfully acknowledge your disagreement and am quite accustomed to similar responses.

You're advocating it's a terrible idea for filmmakers to make a "product" for an audience.
And then go on to state "If you want to make punk records, you should go find the punk crowd.", presumably to make punk music - which of course means... making a punk "product" for the punk audience through the same process you previously described as involving too many assumptions and dilutions of spirit/essence/vision/whathaveyou.

They are the same thing.
We're both presenting Amld with the same perspective: Don't pander to EVERYONE. But then again, don't pander to no one (his current path). Find your market and tailor your product to them.

Five bucks says Jazz people can produce more than jazz, and punkers can produce more than punk music.

:)
 
Knightly - Same thing my teacher told me, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. just trying to come up with a good story.

You did, then after getting all kinds of help, ditched it entirely and started from scratch. Work the story, don't flit from one to the next... that's the problem and the solution is to stick with one story and work it til it's presentable. This is a work for hire... your teacher has commissioned the work, produce a deliverable for him... to do so, stick to one story and make it fit the customer's expectation.
 
Well, the majority of the posts here have been toward developing the Carnival idea... 4 or 5 of us spent time with you working on it, you had brought it from a series of images, to a story arc for a character telling a story. As soon as you got to that point with it, you moved off of it to another undeveloped idea.

Before that, there was one that folks (potential audience for your work) liked that was about a puppet builder, those comments seemed to be blatantly ignored as you then brought up the carnival idea (not in the original list of ideas). It's difficult to offer to help if you move the target as soon as help is offered and given.

Take the time to start at the beginning of this thread and read through it as though you were one of us and tell me how it looks to you. It's a little bit frustrating.
 
You're advocating it's a terrible idea for filmmakers to make a "product" for an audience.

no no no no.. I'm saying that if you are not part of the audience that you are producing a product for than it's a bad idea to pander to that audience.


hmm - it just occurred to me that perhaps a better reply to this thread might have been a single word.

"Baraka"
 
Rayw - I'm on it.
Knightly - Same thing my teacher told me, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. just trying to come up with a good story.

I think your trolling. And You've been told numerous times that your stories lack structure. Your teacher even told you, so why do keep changing stories when your story's "incoherence" is due to lack of structure and not the story itself?

Problem: lack of structure.
Solution: create or follow an existing narrative structure. I don't reccomend creating one.
 
knighlly - The reason I started this topic is because this is an issue that is causing me trouble. Telling a coherent story. I have plenty of ideas but putting them in a short film structure prooved problematic for me ( As in, I've been told it is ) and that is the reason I came here to talk to you guys and get tips and experience basted stories about an issue like this with the solutions.
I certeinly do not mean to frustrate ANYONE. I appreciate everyone's help and if someone feels annoyed by this he can just not respond. I've respectfully reply to every post, even the ah.. "unneccecary" ones.
I should've mentioned that some of my "switches" were per my teachers' instrcution, I am in contact with them too and they give me some contrasting feedback :)

All I want is to tell a story that will mean something to me, and that others (not everyone ofcourse) will enjoy.

TheNoob - Wish I was trolling man. Never trolled so if these guys go to lenghts like this to troll people then I'm impressed ;)
I've tried doing just that numerous times and I still don't 100% get it haha. I will though. Blame it on the ADHD;)
Care to share some structures?
maybe I'll type in some of the stories that way.
 
Person + conflict + resolution = story structure... this short a piece, work it in that order and you'll have a cohesive story everytime... longer pieces have a slightly more complex structure.
 
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