Brainstorming

When I first began thinking of an idea for a short film/film opening I knew I wanted something either quirky or creepy. I'm very interested in psychology, and am most likely going to minor in psychology in college so I thought it would be interesting to incorporate that in my film. Originally I thought about a concept for a psychological thriller where a teenage girl realizes her boyfriend (who is really a hallucination) is abusive and she ends up trying to kill him before her own sanity comes into question. However, while discussing this with my peers I realized that with my own resources and the time limit of this project it was way to complicated. Although I was disappointed, the original idea helped me think of a couple other ideas. I wanted to solidify my idea early on however, so to help with my inspiration I started watching some short films.

Still from the short film Skin 

One short film that I particularly like was called Skin (directed by Jordana Spiro), which is about a child taxidermist who has a crush on a girl.  This short really inspired me to do something with quirky weird characters, and its cinematography was beautiful and unique, which is what I would aspire to do. There wasn't much dialogue in this film, and although I would want more dialogue I think the simplicity of the film is what made it very beautiful.

Another short film that I watched was The Crush (directed by Michael Creagh), which was about a boy who had a crush on his teacher and went to drastic measures to ruin her relationship. This particular film had a very good plot, and a really unexpected plot twist at the end. I had the idea to take elements of the two films together that I liked so that I have a good cinematography, quirky characters, and a cool plot twist at the end of my short film. All of these elements led me to the idea I now have. The story of my short film would surround a quirky teenage girl and a strange teenage guy. The girl would be very artistic and musical, and she would often street perform at random locations in her town. The strange teenage boy would see her performing and instantly be mesmorized by her, he would then begin to stalk her until he finally gets the courage to talk to her. The plot twist I would have is that the girl actually likes him and when she finds out he's been stalking her she is not creeped out but instead intrigued. From this point now I want to create a clear outline of my story, develop the characters, and then begin writing a script.