Ideas for film.. Making a movie with cousins?

Hi,

I probably won't give you a specific idea by the end of this answer but I'll I’ve you some advice that has helped me out as a filmmaker in college. I was watching an interview with Ricky Gervais once and he said 'write about what you know'. He said this in relation to his show 'The Office' (there is a US version with Steve Carell you don't know of the show). Basically he worked in an office for years so he wrote a TV series about that, because he knew about it.

At first when I heard this like most advice from filmmakers and screenwriters I was disappointed because I never get a specific answer - this is exactly what I'm doing to you. When I did a short film for my Media course at college I wanted to do a really cool action movie. In my first year I did this but looking back on it now it was quite fun to do, but it wasn't really very good. All I really did was copy from action films that I liked. The reason was because I didn't know anything about the subject matter of my film which (which was about Gangsters) apart from what I seen in the movies. This year however I did a new short film and instead of just doing something that in movies I think looks good or is cool, I took Ricky Gervais's advice.

I didn't work in an office or anything like that so I found this quite hard at first, but it doesn't have to be. I thought of doing something that I knew about that was equivalent to the Office idea, but it doesn’t have to be like that. My idea in the end came from only a stem of something that I know specifically about. I did a film about someone who is obsessed with collecting money; the idea just came from the fact that I always keep change and collect it in a change jar. I just took a little thing from life experience and made something out of it.

This is the best advice I have had for coming up with ideas. You could do a film about a funny thing happened to one of you cousins and just retell it on film and change bits about with it to make it more interesting. I would also advise basing the location on something that it available to you.

It is also a good idea to set your story in a place that you can actually film on rather that an idea about aliens in space because it just won’t look as good when you're filming. This is also another helpful thing I learnt the hard way after going against it for some time. I thought that for ages doing a film in my house will look rubbish because it not a professional looking place - you don’t have to do it in your house, but as long as it is well shot than it will look good. There are plenty of films that at some point go in worse looking houses than mine - so it'll work.

If by like me you would be annoyed with this answer not giving you a specific idea, why don't you do a film about you and your cousins and you hate each other, every time your cousins come around you pretend you like them to your parents and aunties and uncles but when they're gone you all beat each other up and tie each other to chairs and lock each other inside cupboards and stuff - the first thing that came to my head.

If you are really stuck with ideas try this...

Give a piece of paper to each one of your cousins and one to yourself and sit in a circle. Each one of you writes down something for the different sections below and after everyone’s written something you pass your piece of paper on. For example everyone writes down a a name then passes their paper on (so you get a different paper every time you write something)

To get your characters -

1 - Name

2 - Their character (eg funny / horrible / shy etc)

3 - Their favourite object / something they like to do / a secret they have (eg) -

To get your story -

The piece of paper you have now should not have been written on by you.

4 - Start writing the opening to story involving this person who is on your piece of paper. For example, a suggestion for an opening would be talking about what the person does in the morning and then that they lose their favourite object.

5 - Pass the paper on and write the middle section of another story you haven’t seen. For example what the person does to find their missing object, eg hires a private investigator (writing the story can be elaborate or fantastic as you want)

6 - Pass the paper on again and write for the final time and write the ending to another story you haven’t seen before, eg how the person gets their object back after finding out where it is.

7 - pass the paper around the circle once more and now you should be back with the paper you first had an wrote the name on.

Now this has given you 6 different stories and characters. Now you can pick the best on a have everyone be the characters that they have on the sheet they started with in it. Or you can just mix and match different stories together and make an amazing story.

Hope that some of this helps you out.

Cheers

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since there are no adults in the film. you should make a movie about a babysitter watching the rest of the children. the babysitter is the antagonist and grounds the kids and calls his friends to have a party. the kids stop her by humiliating her in front of her friends.

try to get a few more people like an aunt or uncle or an older cousin

its very helpful also for me.....