One of the most basic mistakes that start up filmmakers make is that they try to stuff all the ideas in their head into their movie and end up with a five hour monster.
Thing is, most beginning filmmakers don’t have the experience or the skills to pull something like this off and they end up with a disaster.
So, what you want to do, when first starting out, is make the film shorter than you actually want to make it. Leave the audience wanting more…even a sequel. In fact, you might want to leave the ending of the movie open ended so that it lends itself to a sequel. You can never give the audience too little, but you can give them too much.
What you should do is map out your whole movie ahead of time with storyboards.
For example, let’s take this murder mystery.
1. Murder is committed.
2. Police arrive on scene.
3. Investigation begins.
4. Suspects are questioned.
5. Clues begin to surface.
6. Hint of who murderer is surfaces.
7. Final clue reveals murderer.
8. Murderer is hunted and caught.
It’s basic, but you get the idea. Then, after you have your storyboard designed, you fill in the pieces as sparsely as possible. Don’t drag things out.
If you find your storyboard is pages long, then your movie is probably way too long to begin with. Storyboards should be relatively short and simple.
Think Hitchcock.
For more ideas, check out this Film Making Course…
