How to Design and Compose Movie Story Ideas
Have a story idea? Confused about developing story ideas? Ideas always stuck on a white laptop screen? These various obstacles may often arise for students of communication science when working on creative work projects. Whether it’s a film script, novel, essay, short story, even writing based on field reportage. The key is strong in research: researching and reading.
“So the key is research and observation. We will have a lot of data for us to put in the storyline,” said Dirmawan Hatta in the Creative Work Design Workshop on Saturday (12/12/2020). Dirmawan, the speaker this time, is the Founder of Growing Up Cinema Rakyat. An institution that has the vision to grow the spectacle of the people and their networks.
The event is aimed at supporting students in designing their final project Proposal Seminar. On the second day, the workshop was held online and broadcast live from the Audiovisual Laboratory of the UII Communication Science Study Program.
If the research is complete, and you have found a lot of material to include in the story, the next step is to determine the boundary range.
How far will the story in this film take. Make concrete boundaries about time. Time limit for telling. How to tell events according to what the senses get, not from ideas.
Begin to lay down story ideas. “What did it start with, what did it end with? Then look for the most important thing, put it at the end, that will make it taste different,” added Dirmawan.
He added, “So, the point is that the story line can be seen first. The way of presenting a film can be reversed freely.”
According to Dirmawan, conveying information is easier than capturing feelings. Our tool to captivate the audience, one of the currencies is feeling. So make a story that brings feelings, that’s what is captivating.
How to Capture an Audience? Use the Suspense and Surprise trick.
What is the difference between surprise and suspense. Many budding filmmakers confuse the two. Even if its use in films is often inappropriate. Dirmawan tries to explain it to the workshop participants so that these two tricks can be used in designing story ideas.
“Surprise was unexpected but happened. It was surprising,” said Dirmawan, whose film some time ago was nominated for the 2020 Indonesian Film Festival / FFI.
As for suspense, for example when we realize that we think something happened but never happened. “We thought it must have happened. It didn’t happen. For example, They chasing the police. Hiding in the room, but when the door was smashed there was not there,” Dirmawan gave an example.
“If you make a story that always has suspense and surprise, it will make the audience watch until the end,” he explained.
Apart from using the surprise and suspense tricks, character and plot development must also be considered. Character development is determined by, “how much knowledge you have and how focused you will be on developing the character of the character,” he explained.
“The development of character is not random either, it must follow a certain pattern from the way we define the cultural space and the spatial space attached to the character / character,” he said.
Character development can be done by translating the form of characters between characters or between characters and events and story values.
Dirmawan said, “So we have to define characters. If we can’t describe the characters, hobbies and character traits, then our ideas and story characters will have no appeal and will be just ideas.” This deepening of the characters, stories, and story plots can only be obtained after doing research.
Basically, according to Dirmawan, the formula for telling or telling a story is always reading, being critical, “not just listening and imitating, but being processed.”
He added, “if we know our character well, by doing research and observation from various directions, the audience will bring something after watching,” he said.
