Looking for Inspiration

After a few listens and discussions with my partners, we began to formulate some ideas regarding our short film. For our concept as of right now, we are thinking of doing a story that revolves around two characters who are both auditioning to be the "main character" of the film story. The storyline and dialogue would be our main focus and where our attention to detail would come in to play. Throughout the series of events in the story, the characters could be fighting for things such as, screen time or character development. We would want it to be witty, funny, and thought-provoking at the same time (touch balls to juggle, I know!). We have been throwing this idea around in our heads since the summer when we viewed, Stranger than Fiction, together.

Source: Sony Pictures

This film revolves around a main character, Harold Crick, who begins to notice his life is being narrated and he is a part in someone's story. When watching it, I loved how original, wacky, meta and funny the story was and the uniqueness planted a seed in my brain ever since. The fact that the voiceover in the film was something Harold could hear and interact with, which lead to his written fate being intertwined with his free will was incredibly interesting and told a really compelling theme.

Source: Dreamworks

Another movie that gave us some ideas was Shrek, believe it or not. The opening sequence of the story being told like an old time fairytale via a narrator was something that came up in our conversation. We could play around with our film already being a play on storytelling and the suspension of disbelief among the characters and audience with how meta it would be. We could have a narrator that interacts with the protagonists or the protagonists fight against the narrator, etc.

When it comes to breaking the fourth wall, there is a lot of room to play around with and a lot of fun we can have when crafting the elements of our story. I am very excited to see what else we come up with and what concepts will go into our final cut.