Good Film Tips - Plot That Makes Sense

Photo courtesy of fotogail

There are many factors that go into making a good film. Filmmaking has got to be one of the hardest occupations out there, at least to do well. This is primarily because there are just so many factors that go into a films creation, and many stages - you have preproduction, production itself and postproduction, and at each stage lies many different components that must fit together in order for the film to work or be good. I firmly believe that a good story or script is a good starting ground in making a good film, because if there are errors or problems in the foundation of the film its going to be difficult to turn it into something good. This is to be the first post in a series of posts talking about my experiences and things I have learnt. Although I've hardly made many good films, or at least films which I would consider good personally, I have learnt a great many things along they way which will help in the future with both writing and filmmaking, which might be useful to those either writing or planning to make a film.

One of the most important features of a story or screenplay is a plot that makes sense, something that often gets lost in the writing process. I've seen this so many times in my fellow students pieces of work, including films and animation, and have certainly see it in a lot of my own work and creations. Basically, what happens in the story and why it happens has to make sense and actually be understandable. Although you may have some cool visuals or interesting sequences or ideas in your film/animation, if it doesn't make sense then your audience won't understand or perhaps appreciate it as much. Its all very well for them to say ooh or aah, but afterwards its never nice to hear the words "So... what actually happened?"

An understandable story needs to have a plot that would make sense to a child. The underlying plot needs to be simple, dead simple. Person A gets from Location A to Location B. It doesn't matter exactly how you present this information, or the layers you build up onto it to make it interesting, the main plot has to be simple and understandable. With this in place it should give audiences a decent enough cue to follow what is happening in the story.

Another important feature is for a story to have many layers. Onions have layers, to use a Shrek analogy, and so should stories. This can be seen most clearly in the way a lot of children's films and animation deal with comedy. They use many layers of comedy, which include jokes that cater to the lowest common denominator for the youngest in the audience, up to jokes that only adults would understand. If they included only jokes for adults, or wrapped up adult jokes in a way that only adults would understand, then these films wouldn't appeal to as big of an audience and certainly wouldn't be considered children's films.

Although your target audience may be teens or adults, it is still important to include a plot that caters to the lowest common denominator. It will always be much more difficult for someone not familiar with your story to follow it, so you must take steps to ensure you're guiding them through by proverbially holding their hand through the plot.

Having a simple, understandable plot that makes sense really is an important factor in the creation of a good story, which in turn is needed to make a good film. Although the story itself may not be simple at all, having the basic underlying plot simple and understandable will help in leaps and bounds for people to make sense of what is happening in your film.