40 Minute Short Film Ideas

[JoeKickAzz]

Im attending a Media Arts Academy and will be making a short 40 minute film. From my group I have been chosen to be the Director and I could use some help to think of an idea for my short film and i thought to myself, who better than to ask the people of The Escapist to help me! Now do mind, we dont have a massive budget to make this film, so keep the idea sweet and simple. Possibly one of your ideas will be made into a movie so people of The Escapist, watcha got?

 

[BENZOOKA]

Have you done any movies before this?

40 minutes is massive to say the least. At least if there are some quality standards, and you want to keep it interesting. I've been on a few short film projects, mainly lighting, scripting, filming and some acting. Depending on the project. You have quite a job with 20 minutes, but 40 minutes is not too far from a feature film. Try to keep the quality high as possible.

I'll get back to this, if I get an idea.

 

[zHellas]

Possibly one of your ideas will be made into a movie so people of The Escapist, watcha got?

I say try for like a really intense scene of a man being interrogated as he's suspected of committing some horrible and audacious crime but keeps insisting that he's innocent.

And the tension builds up as evidence is being called in and helps the case against him and near the end he takes the officer's gun and holds him hostage, nearly at the breaking point and commits suicide once he (the suspect) ends up believing he did it.

Then they get a call saying they caught the real criminal who turns out to be like an abandoned twin of the now dead suspect.
----

My idea sounds more like an Outer Limits episode or a 2-hour long movie, but that's my idea.

 

[Griffstar]

A fake documentury of Napoleon.
A+ right their.

 

[BioHazardMan]

Make something Silent Hill-y

 

[smearyllama]

Document the long and bloody history of the deadly pen15 club.

Or, on a serious note, something about a vampire hunter, with the soundtrack being old Castlevania tunes.

 

[New Troll]

Check out the Artist in Thee thread for stories. Just make sure you ask the original author's permission if you select one.

edit: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/18.72805-The-artist-in-thee

 

[Jasper Jeffs]

Make a satire of indie horror films with poor acting and bad directing. You can get away with purposely directing and acting it bad. It could be decent too with a clever script, there's a lot to go off.

 

[Mr.Mattress]

Okay, this is what you're gonna do:

You're gonna A) Get a low budget Camera and use Window's Movie Maker to edit the film. You are going to show behind the scenes footage of an indie film that was never finished. Why you might ask? Well, because something is stalking the camera crew, and it makes it's presence more and more clearer all the time. What is this creature? Well, you make it up. Once you get all the footage you need, use the WMM to add things like "This film was made by piecing together footage found at an abandoned camp site." and "If you know the current location of X, Y, and Z, please Contact P". Yeah, you're gonna make a horror documentary. My advice: Watch "The Blaire Witch Project" and "Marble Hornets" if you go this route so you know how to do this right.

Or you could do B) Serious Version of Children's Shows or Games. Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario, Link: You should cash in while the flame is still hot! If you go this way, look up "There Will Be Brawl" (Which is on this site as well as Machinima) or "Pocket Monsters" [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-escapist-film-festival-2009/1185-Pocket-Monsters] for inspiration.

Or how about C) Make your own stuff! Don't take advice from complete strangers on the internet! Cause sometimes, they'll just tell you to "Do It, F*****!" even if it's bad.

... Or D) Make a music video of "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2c98zNHDx4&feature=related] by Iron Butterfly?

A fake documentury of Napoleon.
A+ right their.

"Napoleon Conquers the Martians"?

 

[JoeKickAzz]

Okay, this is what you're gonna do:

You're gonna A) Get a low budget Camera and use Window's Movie Maker to edit the film. You are going to show behind the scenes footage of an indie film that was never finished. Why you might ask? Well, because something is stalking the camera crew, and it makes it's presence more and more clearer all the time. What is this creature? Well, you make it up. Once you get all the footage you need, use the WMM to add things like "This film was made by piecing together footage found at an abandoned camp site." and "If you know the current location of X, Y, and Z, please Contact P". Yeah, you're gonna make a horror documentary. My advice: Watch "The Blaire Witch Project" and "Marble Hornets" if you go this route so you know how to do this right.

Or you could do B) Serious Version of Children's Shows or Games. Pokemon, Yu-gi-oh, Super Smash Bros. Brawl, Mario, Link: You should cash in while the flame is still hot! If you go this way, look up "There Will Be Brawl" (Which is on this site as well as Machinima) or "Pocket Monsters" [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/the-escapist-film-festival-2009/1185-Pocket-Monsters] for inspiration.

Or how about C) Make your own stuff! Don't take advice from complete strangers on the internet! Cause sometimes, they'll just tell you to "Do It, F*****!" even if it's bad.

... Or D) Make a music video of "In-Da-Gadda-Da-Vida" [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a2c98zNHDx4&feature=related] by Iron Butterfly?

We have the best HD cameras out of all the Media Arts school in Texas, and that sounds pretty good. I have seen blair witch and I like the whole "found footage" idea (blair witch, cloverfield, last exorcism) and i also like the idea of making an old childs tv show into a serious film like they did with Transformers.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

Just a video of yourself sleeping, start recording 39 minutes before your alarm clock is set to go off, and then in the last minute BBBBBBRRRRRRRRRRRRR aww crap, I'm consious again.

 

[loc978]

Depending on just how abstractly artsy your professor is, you might be able to get away with filming a piece of cheese sitting on a counter with sad piano music in the background. Bonus points if there's actually someone playing a piano behind the cheese and slightly out of focus.

but uh...

A fake documentury of Napoleon.
A+ right their.

^that's an awesome idea^
Make sure to give Napoleon some serious fetishes and/or fears that make absolutely no sense.

 

[Hero in a half shell]

A fake documentury of Napoleon.
A+ right their.

You could make it a serious presenter trying to give a serious documentary on Napoleon, but the research team, camera crew, script writers etc. are all rubbish, just using google, so pictures of Napoleon Dynamite come up, they say they have actual war footage which turns out to be a recorded Total War (the game) battle video from youtube, etc. and the presenter gets more and more frustrated because he wants to use this doc. to further his career.

See, this is what happens when you outsource thinking to the internet, we find some crazy daft idea and run with it for all we are worth.

 

[Evil Moo]

Make the most nonsensical, surreal thing you can think of. Lots of sinister lighting, with a subtle tint of unnatural colours, but not so far from reality as to seem completely alien, just a bit off.

Have the main character exploring an environment of some sort (preferably somewhere enclosed), while unexplained events happen around him and things are not as they first seem. For example, a man could appear in a room with your main character, run to a window, close the curtains behind them, only to have disappeared when the main character investigates and the window is now a brick wall. The main character breaks through the wall to find a small tunnel. Exploring the tunnel he finds a dead end. Going back out the tunnel again, he finds himself in a different room to the one there previously, and there are various suspicious red stains leading to the only exit. After a long and tense build up, he opens the door to find a small broom cupboard with a microwave containing a rubber duck, sitting on a stool. And so on and so forth, in that fashion for about 40 minutes.

Perhaps you could make it relatively normal to start with and then slowly build the mad world around the main character as they lose their sanity and eventually culminate in the character snapping back to reality, having just inadvertently murdered someone, preferably one who you would establish early on as someone the main character cares greatly for, creating a nice contrast to the main character being the victim of their own hallucinations and having committed a terrible crime, destroying something innocent and very important to them.

Maybe include an epilogue with police questioning the character, and or going over the report as a means to give some explanation to the fatal visions. An added twist could be that the hallucinations are somehow the fault of the murdered character (the main character's partner might put LSD in his drink as a way to get him to drop his reserved and uptight nature and loosen up for a bit which of course backfires horribly, for example).

This would be fairly simple to do and wouldn't necessarily have to cost very much. Most of the atmosphere could be done with relatively simple visual editing and good use of sound/music. As a fairly slow paced idea for the most part, for the sake of tension, you would be able to fill the 40 minutes without actually having to work out a lot of story or dialogue heavy scenes.

You might want to go for something more mainstream and story oriented though.