LESSON 7: STORY PLANNING

So we have a basic understanding of how you could start a simple project.  If you are reading through the first lesson and wondering why so basic? The point is to introduce someone into the idea of film making. I have talked to numerous people that have no idea how to start.  Of course throughout this blog things will become more advance. I will share great websites to get free content for your films and offer some technical help if you need it.

Since the point of film making is telling a story its really important to get a knack for this so the next thing we will go over is planning a story.

When you are writing a story you need to think of how it will effect your audience.  So you need to create likable characters to catch audience attention.   script writing we will get into later but I want explain something before you start writing,  typically 1 page of script = 1 min of video. A movie that is 1 hr 30 minutes=  90 pages of script. This is not a rule but something to follow so you will have structure to your script.  Later when you write your script, you will want to keep this in mind. 

A 90 page script is broken into 3 sections, of course the beginning, middle and end. When writing your script the first section should introduce the characters then about 20 pages into the story, you can have a twist to put the characters into a bad situation. this should last most of the story, finally the last 20 pages will be how the story concludes

The best way to start writing a story is to create what is called a A story This is basically a list of scenes titles. Of course you will name them whatever you want to identify what the scene are about, example: 

1. Diner (girl chokes on food)
2. Hospital (rushed to hospital)

So you will continue this list until you reach the end of the story. This method will help you organise writing your script later. if we have 30 scenes, this doesn't mean you will have 30 pages. each scene can run over a few pages depending on the length of the scene, this is just a way to create a structure to your script and it may change once you start writing it.

So you have your list completed and now you want to get into writing your script. Just remember your script might not be great the first draft. It will take some time to make it great.  Just make the characters interesting and make them have real problems to capture a audience.

The next lesson I will get into script writing.