Short Story Research

First a quick preamble

For some basic background we are choosing to make an indie style short film. I'm sure I'll discuss the concept and its inspirations more deeply in future blogs but for now all you need to know is that its a story told through the idea of a bathroom wall romance. While watching a video, one of our group members Nicole stumbled upon an etymology creator discussing the incredibly interesting place that bathroom walls hold within our linguistic world as entirely private and anonymous interactive boards of communication. 

This video prompted a lightbulb moment, and from the title alone, it already sounds like a perfect indie short film. "The writings on the bathroom walls". The title for me evokes similar undertones as a "perks of being a wallflower" or "the eternal sunshine of the spotless mind" or "500 days of summer". With this concept the themes we want to explore is a queer romance that emerges from the walls of the bathroom. This unique vehicle for our story can give us a lot of interesting themes to explore, like the ways that societal expectations can mask people's true behaviors, and the importance of spaces were free expression is truly fostered. 

So what was that long preamble for... well... hopefully now you have a bit of a sense of what we are going for with this short-film. Queer character-focused indie-short film with emotional depth and an art-house aesthetic. But before I get too deep into the nitty gritty of specifics, I wanted to do some more digging on what actually makes a successful short film 

How to make a succesful short film (according to the New York Film Academy)

Short film tips for aspiring filmmakers from the NYFA

While I've worked on a lot of recent projects for AICE Media, many of them have not been strictly in the short film world. For the most part they have been more trailers and the Documentary that we worked on. As a result I wanted to 'go back to basics' and explore at its core what really makes a short film great.

Simplification is key

One key mention of the article, and something I've tried to keep in mind since the beginning is the necessity to keep things simple when working with he short film medium. Their recommendation for this is to ensure the story can be told through one simple logline . If the story can be broken down into a very simplistic form, then it is very likely to be able to work and be developed throughout as a short film.

I also immediately realized that this would make the marketing part of our film much more straightforward as being able to explain a film through its log line, in the attention starved internet, is a must. I believe our current title "The writings on the bathroom wall", essentially serves this purpose on its own. Maybe that is precisely what I immediately loved about the title, in just a few words, like a "500 days of summer", it explains the whole subject of the film, but keeps just enough intrigue to keep a viewer interested.

Be creative with cinematorgrpahy

In short films, while conceptually, it is much better to create a simple vision, stylistically many of the best short films play around with some level of cinematic experimentation.

I'm very confident we will be able to do a lot on this front, especially since our production is going for an arthouse feel. In many of the movies I have seen from a similar genre, innovative stylistics are one of the things I've instantly noticed. The subject of the film also inherently invites a lot of invitation for non-traditional storytelling, as unlike most films, the characters are for a lot of the runtime only connecting through an emotionless ink. One potential idea I have is having an unreliable narrator that imagines the perfect version of what is on the other side of the writings, slowly through the cinematography and editing the film then reveals how this idealized version of this person is incompatible with reality.

Rapid fire tips

• Sound is everything for short films
• Plan and organize with actors early  
• During the editing process don't be afraid to make hard cuts. Even if it means undoing work, often cutting it can accentuate a message fort than adding. 

In Review

After reading this piece I feel more comfortable working with a short film. I felt this piece did a great job at discussing a lot of the concepts that I always feel but can't fully express when watching a short film. I felt that the section on simplicity was especially poignant as one can always tell when a film was meant to be much longer than it ended up being. This and the other topics mentioned were great reminders to have before going into the rest of the project and I'll keep them in mind and reflect back for the rest of the project.