Sweet Music Centre

Short movies are becoming more popular nowadays. In the side of film makers, these kind of film are great since it is easier to make them and the production cost is also cheaper. Having said that, let me then share some short film making tips for you.

But before going into the short film making tips, let us first define it. When we say short film, we are referring to the movies that are relatively shorter than the normal two-hour movie. It can be 30 minutes or even one minute. While it is short, it must still have a complete story. That means it must still have an introduction, body, and conclusion.

My Short Film Making Tips

1. Make a simple story

Since you will be making a short movie, just create a simple story. Don’t make a novel because the time might not contain it. Just focus on a single idea and let the story revolve around it.

2. Make anticipations

Don’t show everything from the beginning immediately. It’s good to place some suspense to let your audience anticipate on what will happen in the end. This will capture your viewers’ attention until the story reaches the climax.

3. Use few characters

I watched some short movies that are not so effective due to having so many characters. It makes the story not so focused.

Don’t be afraid to use few characters. if you can even make a story that has only one character then that will be great. There’s a short film I watched where in they only used two characters but it was very nice. Having few characters not only make your life as a film maker easier. It will also easily drive the audience to focus on few elements of the film.

4. Complete the story

As I said above, a short film must still have a complete story. I’m not really a fan of those short movies that just end abruptly without any conclusion.

I understand that there’s another way of ending a story which is the open-ended one. In doing this however, you must still bring your audience somewhere. Do not just cut the story and that’s it. So what’s the point of ending the story if you only showed an introduction?

6. Gain inspirations

My mother always told me to take care of my brother, and this I tried; I let him have his way much of the time, and played with him when invited to play with others. I was his best friend, simply because of the fact that he had no friends. I tried to change this one day, when mom was at the shop; inviting my friend Timothy over to play cowboys in our yard, thinking this would help introduce my brother to the “outside world” and make him friends. At about ten in the morning, the day of, our bell rang. I darted from the den, where my brother and I were watching westerns, no doubt, up the slender staircase and opened the door to see a thin boy with black hair, smiling as he moved his hands down to a giant belt buckle with a cow skull on it, surely bragging. I payed no mind to this though, ignorance had been something I’d mastered, having to consistently back down in fights with my brother, at the discretion of my mom. “Hey Timmo!” We all had nicknames at school. “Hey Art, how are ya today, part-ner?” Slyly saying the last part, hands on his buckle, a useless attempt to get me started on it again. “Can you wait ’round back while I get my brother?” “Sure. Never knew you had a brother though- how come you never told me you had a brother?” I stood for a second like a deer in the headlights. “Guess it never came up.” I lied. “Oh… Guess not! I’ll see ya ’round back then.”

The existence of God ranks among the most profound and some would say most vexing mysteries we face. Many words have been written and spoken, with fervent pen and compelling voice.

With this article, I will add to those words, but with a particular slant. Rather than talk about whether God exists, I want to consider the other side. Can I reasonably conclude God does not exist? Can I be sure of non-existence?

And while on some questions I can argue to both sides, on this I can not. I find I must challenge people who say, definitively, there is no God.

To get started, we first need to define, briefly, a God for discussion here. We will use the Western/Middle Eastern God of the Bible.

The major monotheistic religions posit this God to be a single all-encompassing being, eternal in time, holy, Creator of the universe, the source of goodness, and the ultimate goal of our existence. This God has sent prophets in the form of man to deliver words of moral and theological truth. Mankind is to give homage and glory to this God and God will intervene with his power to strengthen individuals and mankind in general, and bring them to salvation.

So the question is can we definitely conclude this God does not exist.

Many have. They point out that over mankind’s history, Gods and gods of many cultures and many ages have come and gone, with their dogmas reduced to folklore and myth in the face of mankind’s expanding intellectual grasp.

Extrapolate forward, and the God of our current age appears headed for extinction, to be boxed into a corner and ultimately vanquished.

But I can not dismiss God. Why?

Metaphysics - Let’s start with the metaphysics of God. The Biblical God exists as a transcendental entity, eternal, outside of time and space, the creator of time and space.

Now that is an amazing belief, one which can readily strain credibility. How could such a thing be? But we must stop. You and I, humanity, we exist inside time and space. We are bounded by our three-dimensional, time dependent, limited-life-span existence.

So how can we know, for sure, what is outside of what any of our senses and instruments can measure. If I can not see outside of time and space, how can I make any firm conclusion about what exists in that transcendental realm?

Limitless is a film with so much going for it. Great plot, interesting camera techniques and shots and the acting isn’t half bad. So then why has it not reached the perpetual level of film greatness? This film has it all and yet is missing the key ingredient to bind all these elements together. And what is this key ingredient you ask? Well it’s not ‘Chemical X’ (sorry for the power puff girl’s analogy) or anything complicated for that matter. All this film is missing is an ending. Of course Limitless has an ending, but I mean a ‘real’ ending, one of substantial relevance that would pack a punch and catch the viewer off guard. I have my own ideas for an alternative ending, but we’ll come to that later.

Plot

Limitless is basically about a struggling writer (which is apt as the film is based on a book) who takes some magical pills that allows him to access inconceivable super human brain power. And thus he becomes an overnight success, finishing his book in less than a week and instantly becoming a dab hand at anything he puts his mind to. But with great power comes great responsibility, oh wait no, that’s Spiderman. But Uncle Ben does have a point. Eddie Mora (Bradley Cooper) does inherit great responsibility. His newly acquired powers are put to the test against formidable foe’s including loan sharks, a mysterious stalker, the financial tycoon Carl Van Loon (Robert De Niro) and the drugs devastating side effects. And thus marks the start of Eddie’s drug induced, action packed rise to greatness. This of course brings us on to the ending.

The end

The final scene takes place ten years later where we see that the main character has become a senator and is running for president courtesy of those mighty little tablets. Eddie appears to be a new man, stereotypically presidential looking. He comes face to face with Van Loon who has now solved the riddle regarding Eddie’s unexplainable intelligence. Van Loon has bought out the labs which produce the ‘pill of limitless power’ or NZT as it’s called in the film meaning that Eddie would be form here on indebted to Carl Van Loon. If I was directing this film the end credits would begin rolling at this point. But as I am not director the film plays on. We see that Eddie no longer needs NZT. And thus he no longer needs Van Loon. The end credits instead roll after a victorious Eddie passes an un-subtitled joke with a Chinese waiter.