Creative Block.

This process has barely even started and I'm already struggling with certain parts. Over the past few weeks a few people have asked me if I've had any ideas for my film and in all honesty, they're really really rough ideas. So rough that I couldn't explain one right now because it's seriously that rough.

Don't get me wrong, I really want to make my own film and have something that I've written, come to life. It's just that struggle before the ideas that's getting me. My mind blanks when I actually sit down and try and think of something. Before I started this course, I wanted to be a screenwriter, for television mainly; many people know that I'm more of a television watcher than a film watcher and in my opinion, that's not such a bad thing. I have been watching more and more films, and watching classics that I probably should have watched years ago; but if I can't think of at least one idea at this very second, that's something that worries me.

Anyone in my position would be overjoyed because they get to make pretty much anything they want (within our theme, of course) but I'm just not at that 'excited' stage yet, and I really should be. But I'm not.

There's two things holding me back:

Time
We only have five minutes for our film. We can make it longer but for it to be put in the festival, it has to be five minutes. So I could make a fifteen minute, but it would have to be cut down to five, which sounds simple enough but I need to make sure it still makes as much sense as it does in the longer version. I also worry that I can't do a great story in five minutes. It sounds incredibly pessimistic and I would agree, but once you're in that mind set, it's a hard one to get out of and I think this is where the "mind block" is coming from.

Characters
I love characters. One of the reasons I love The Sims so much is because I would spend so much time perfecting the characters look, their job and building them up to have these amazing careers. I love character development and the reason I love television a little more so than films is because television gives you the character development that people love. It doesn't matter whether you have a show like "Sherlock" that only has three episodes per season, or if the show can last as long as "ER", "Friends" or "The Office"; within each show you see each character grow and become a better person without even realizing it half the time. You only realize when you look back at older episodes or you're rewatching the series, when you realize "This person used to be so guarded, but now they're letting themselves be a little more vulnerable" for example. Along with the time aspect I spoke about, I worry that I can't bring across a character well enough within five minutes.

Hopefully in the next few weeks while I'm trying to write down more ideas and develop them, I'll be able to get over my fear of 'it not being good enough' and just go out and do it.

First initial theme thoughts.

Since finding out our theme last week, I hadn't actually realized there was going to be a theme, I thought we could make anything we wanted essentially. So after realizing this, part of me was actually glad that we have some sort of limitation.

Getting into the 'depths of life' for just a second, I personally feel like we have too much choice. For example, we go into the supermarket and you go to look for a cereal; not only are you bombarded with special offers and comparing prices of the shop down the road, you're also given at least 100 choices of cereal with different shapes, different flavours, different ingredients, different health benefits (or lack of) to name a few. In the 21st Century, there's no such thing as 'simple', there's a lot more choice than the world used to have and sometimes that can be extremely overwhelming.

Back into the main point I was trying to make; with our theme we are limited to a certain point and this makes the entire process a lot easier. We have to justify our final decision on what we want our films to be about, if we can't justify why it fits into our theme, then we can't use it. Sounds like a bad thing when actually, to me anyway, it's smart. It's less pressure, it makes us think about why we want to make our idea and it makes us research even further to make sure that everyone involved understands exactly why you're doing it as well as you being 100% on point about everything you want to happen.