Storytelling - Part 1

Storytelling has been a huge part of my life. One of my earliest memories is my grandmother telling me stories while preparing breakfast. We had this morning ritual of her doing stuff around the kitchen and me sitting in my special place and listening to her entertain me while waiting. It woke my imagination and inspired me to tell stories myself.

My fascination with stories continued after learning to read and discovering there was a room filled top to bottom with stories – the library. The next few years were spend filling my head with ideas. And after that came computer games, the Internet and finally films. So as one can see, my personal history has been largely defined by storytelling.

Today, I am a video director and I frequently claim my favourite part of video making is storytelling. However, lately I have noticed I am not very good at it. It is one thing to enjoy and understand a story, but a completely another to structure one by yourself. The thing is, I have never researched storytelling structures and methods. So I decided to look into it during my next project. In addition to theoretical research I will also shot a video based on the concepts learned.

At first I would try to define storytelling as any structured communication with a beginning, middle and end, designed to convey a desired message. However, isn't that the purpose of all communication? What is the difference? Is sending a data package through the Internet storytelling? It is communication, data is structured and it has a message. Well, thinking about it some more, I believe the difference is in the purpose - storytelling aims to inform, educate and entertain through a set of simplified ideas organized in a narrative structure.

Historically, one of the most important functions of storytelling was socialization – transferring knowledge and values through generations. That is why my grandmother told me fables during breakfast. It is also one of the reasons clerics of any religion preach parables based on lives of holy man. It is a way of education and conforming future generations to the way of living in a certain culture. Storytelling is essential to a culture and it can be observed in literally every society from the dawn of man.

But why do we tell stories and not simply the facts? Why do we feel the need to hide real life events in made up constructs? I believe this is a method of simplifying complex problems and concepts into short entertaining lectures. They lose some of its initial complexity, but are in turn easier to comprehend and have a wider area of application. Think of Aesop's Fables, which illustrate this very clearly. More complex problems require a longer treatment, as a novel or a TV series.

Stories help us abstract our problems and ponder them on another level. Just think of a kid demanding the same story every night – there must be something inside it that reflects his struggles in real life. And the same happens to adults re-reading or re-watching books and movies. During elementary school, where I was struggling to fit it, stories from the library were at the same time a getaway and tool to ruminate on my problems.

As we can see storytelling is an important tool in our society – from socializing and education to entertainment and problem solving. And I want to serve all these with my video work.

Film storytelling is a wide area. Basically any film tool can be used to tell, or at least enhance, a story. All choices made during making a movie matter and influence the story. To make sense of all filmmaking storytelling methods I prepared a diagram, which can be seen below.

Film storytelling methods

As you can see there are quite a lot of them and I presented only the most important. I would like to point out not all the terminology used in the diagram is appropriate for the storytelling function they describe. However, for the sake of understanding the complexity of film storytelling, it should suffice.

All concepts can branch deeper into other areas, since basically every title in the diagram is an independent area that requires specific knowledge and is usually done by more than one person. Except the director. He has to be familiar with all areas to adequately understand how they come together to tell a comprehensive story.

My future research into storytelling will be limited just to writing methods. It is my weakest field as can be seen from the empty section of the diagram – writing has no additional methods listed. I am especially interested in how to structure a story for a short film.

Just like creativity, storytelling is one of the basic human characteristics. Even more so, since it's vital to short term (solving problems) and long term (transferring knowledge and values) survival. From my personal point of view, it is also vital to me if I want to make meaningful films that entertain and educate.

Creativity - Part 2

Creativity is a broad term. It has been present thought out all human history – it seems to be one of the defining human characteristics. That being said, it does not mean it is exclusively a human trait – many animals also show traces of it. Creativity is not uniformly described, but the central idea of all definitions describes it as an ability to create something new/original and at the same time worthwhile.

Although creativity has ever been present, the concept is relatively new. Antique society did not acknowledge it, instead all that was new was discovered instead of created. The term came into foreground with the rise of Christianity and God as the "creator". It was not until later, after the Renaissance, that creativity has been understood by the meaning it holds today.

As said above, definition of creativity is as broad as creative endeavour themselves. Its research spans almost every scientific discipline, not to mention arts. It is impossible to do justice to the whole idea, so in this short text I limit myself to one area – education.

It was my impression from material I discovered that a debate started at the break of the century, which emphasizes the decay of creativity in us caused by a misguide education system. Children are creative by nature. And our school system systematically instructs them to repress it and conform to the crowd. Which is logical from the point of an industrial society of the 19th century where our current system originated. Student's minds were moulded just like the product they were crating. But Ford's human conveyer belt is no longer needed - our society has changed and hold little need for repetitive production and repetitive thinking.

It has been suggested children should be thought more creative thinking and problem solving. Not only in traditionally creative disciplines of fine arts, which are looked upon as a waste of time, but also in more logic based sciences like maths and physics. Problems we face today will require solutions that are more "out of the box" and in turn, thinkers that are able to mix ideas from different fields to present new answers. 

Creativity - Part 1

When I was still a kid, me and my cousin used to put up theatre shows with sock puppets and marionettes. We had a script, rehearsals, scenery, proper story acts and even a curtain that went up and down. At that time, I remember being fascinated by how is it possible to present entertaining content when there was none before. Me and my cousin started with nothing, tabula rasa so to speak, and managed to make something just from our ideas. That was for me the definition of creativity.

Creativity - to make something new from nothing. Although, when I think about it, this is kind of misguided. I do not believe creativity exists in a vacuum. This notion that an artist just comes up with things and nobody can understand them is too romantic and naïve. I do not remember creating something without inspiration. But what is inspiration? Some genius idea that just comes to you? No, for me, inspiration are works of other artists. There is a saying, famously repeated by Pablo Picasso and Steve Jobs that goes: "Good artists copy, great artists steal." Either way, nothing comes from nothing, it has to be borrow from somewhere. The difference is in copying or stealing. Good artists simply repeat what they have already experienced, while great artist try to understand the source and what makes it so powerful. So they make it their own, hence, they "steal it".

Creativity cannot be observed only from the artistic point of view.  It is in our biological nature to reproduce, which is also a form of creativity. What about inventiveness – how much modern technology comes from people who were too lazy do to something and took the time to go around it?

I believe creativity is in its core the power to appreciate the world around us which in turn enables us to understand it. This, coupled with our desire to reproduce and enrich our physical and mental ability to survive, leads to creating new things, regardless of their purpose.

Title + Abstract (Draft)

The Obvious and the Meaningful; Story Development for Low-budget Fictional Short Films
The purpose of this work is research of story development methods for low-budget fictional short films. Just like feature films or TV series, short films have specific format conventions - some of them originating from length, some from budget constrains frequently associated with limited monetary value. These constrains have to be acknowledged to truly make use of the medium and in this work we take a closer look at format's advantages and limitations, and their impact on story structure. The work defines short films, presents other data already written on the subject, lists different types and corresponding limits of shorts, describes different methods of story development, evaluates their narrative role and supports them with examples. In the conclusion different methods are summarized and compiled into a list of good practices.