Film Story Ideas

Most of you are now decided on the genre of film that you are going to create for your practical coursework. You must bear the conventions of your genre in mind when you are developing the story idea for your storyboard.

Storyboard genre ideas from slayas

 

Your task is to develop a story idea for an entire film. An idea is the starting point for any practical work and, as such, it is worth spending some timeworking through an idea to make it as good as it can get.

 

 

 

An idea initially develops into an outline for a story and then may begin to grow characters. At this stage, it is important to keep control of the idea to stop it spiralling off into unstructured developments. This can be done very easily by applying a simple set of questions:

 

1. What is the situation? This opens the story and may well be disrupted.
2. Whose situation is it? This defines the lead character (or protagonist).
3. What is the central quest? This relates to the main body of the story and is oftern defined by a lead character trying to restore what has been disrupted. This is where most conflict and drama arises in a story (and is often simply described as the conflict).
4. Who stands in the way of success? This defines another principal character, who will be in opposition to the lead character (and is often referred to as the antagonist).
5. How does the quest end? Often this will be where the antagonist is defeated, and the protagonist's situation is restored. This is often called the resolution. 

The work you have done with Mrs Quoroll about the narrative theories of Todorov and Propp should also help you to structure a story.

Once your story is fleshed out you need to make sure that it is a filmic idea. This means a story that involves action - not necessarily fights and car chases, but rather activity - characters doing things on screen. Activity is visual and this is most important in film stories. Activity tells an audience not only about the events, but also about the characters performing those events.

It is from this full story idea that you will select an extract to create your storyboard from.