One aspect of the course that I am thoroughly enjoying but at the same time finding challenging is the requirement to generate good stories. Even if the exercise material gives a hint of a storyline, you are still required to build up the body around the story. In many instances the course gives you the freedom to create your own stories.

Frequently our projects are short stories of only a few minutes duration. Originally, I assumed this would be easier to achieve than developing a longer story that covers a wide range of messages and context. Having now attempted a few short, visual stories it is clear that the challenges in completing this tasks are:

• Creating a story that can be developed and then wrapped up in a couple of minutes
• Developing a single, non-complex message in the story
• Finding a suitable ending that will allow the audience to feel that the video was worth watching to the end
• Developing the story visually

I have been reading Michael Rabiger and Mick Hurbis-Cherrier’s book, Directing. Film Techniques and Aesthetics which contains a chapter on the Essential Elements of Drama. Whilst the authors acknowledge that in the mainstream movie industry, the director is usually not involved in screenwriting, they do need to have a good understanding of how dramatic narrative works.

Another interesting point that is made in the chapter is that as a director it is important to try to find or create stories that have a real interest for you or that have personal meaning for you. This makes sense; we put more effort into the things we are passionate about. However, finding the things that have meaning and can be told visually is at times difficult.

Rabiger (2013:34) explains that a dramatic story must contain elements of conflict and that these conflicts can be external or internal. He categorises these types of conflicts in the following way:

• ‘Person vs person (external conflict)
• Person vs environment or social institution (external conflict)
• Person vs task they are compelled to undertake (internal and external conflict)
• Person vs themselves, as in someone with conflicting traits or beliefs (internal conflict)’

Although Rabiger is writing primarily about stories for full length movies, some elements of the chapter can be applied to short movie story writing as well. In considering the conflict, it  does not necessarily have to be a large scale conflict such as Harry Potter fighting off Voldemort, neither does it have to be an obviously good versus evil conflict. Sometimes the conflict can be found in everyday occurrences and can be quite subtle yet still identifiable to the audience;  these could include the internal conflict of deciding whether to sit on the couch reveling in your social media or spending time playing with your toddler (who will just look at his screen if you don’t play with him!), or an external conflict of deciding whether to help a struggling homeless, disorientated person to a place of safety or passing him by and getting to your meeting on time. In our type of short videos, the conflict must be fairly quickly understood and the solution/decision or action also reached within a short space of time.

David Mamet, the author of On Directing, breaks the drama of a story down into three questions that the writer needs to ask and answer; ‘What does the hero want? What hinders him from getting it? And what will happen if he does not get it?’ (Mamet 1991, cited in Rabiger 2013:36). These three questions may be summarized as the objectives, the obstacle/s and the stakes.

In the short film 2+2=5, these three questions are played out in an internal moral conflict where the stakes are extremely high. A class is told that 2+2=5 after having previous been taught the correct version. This is challenged by one of the students who will not be persuaded by the teacher to blindly believe what he told. Ultimately the student sticks to the truth and pays for this with his life! The twist at the end is that the audience at first believes that all the remaining students, having seen the consequences of resisting, will go along with the 2+2=5 line, except that this is not the case; a student at the back of the class still can’t bring himself to believe the lie. In the end, the message is that the truth will prevail no matter what the stakes.

This is a very dramatic story and is told in just under seven minutes with all three questions being answered:

• What does the hero what? – A sound education.
• What hinders him from getting it? – The ideology and propaganda of a corrupt teacher/school/system that wishes to manipulate the minds of the young into believing the unbelievable.
• What are the stakes? – He will be shot for not complying with the wishes of the teacher/school/system.

Finally, I have been reading the book Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg. Although this book covers writing in general, whether it is poetry, novels, screenplays or anything else, one of the main messages that comes through in almost all chapters is the need to practice. It is through practice that we learn and become more comfortable with writing. This is true also of making videos. I have learnt so much more by picking up a camera and trying to record something in an aesthetically pleasing and logical way than by reading and watching. This is not to negate the necessity to study techniques and watch other movies. Quite the opposite; when picking up the camera to go practice there is a need to have an objective and to apply a technique that you have been reading about or try to recreate something you have seen in a movie you have been watching.

One of the most insightful bits of advice that the author gives is that we should free ourselves up to write some rubbish. Not everything we put down on paper will be brilliant and neither should we have the expectation that only exceptionally good ideas and plots should be recorded. It is the act of practicing that builds ideas. She makes a wonderful comparison between idea generating and composting (Goldberg, 2005:15). She explains that our minds collect experiences and it takes time to turn them over and contemplate them in relation to other ideas and eventually, from this turning over of ideas, a fertile environment emerges from which a good story could grow in much the same way as we throw a collection of different greens and food into a compost bin, turn it over from time to time and eventual fertile soil emerges.

Bibliography

Rabiger, M. and Hurbis-Cherrier, M. (2013) Directing. Film Techniques and Aesthetics. (5th Edition). Burlington: Focal Press.

Goldberg, N. (2005) Writing Down the Bones. (2nd Edition). Boston: Shambala Publications.