Filmmakers have decided to follow a particular goal: To find the way into people’s hearts and minds through stories.
Telling stories to one another is one of the most intuitive ways of interacting and connecting. But throughout history, we have found plenty of ways to tell them a little bit differently every time.
Sometimes we don’t come across new stories; we just have found a new way of telling them. These new versions can help us understand more about this story, realizing there was so much more in it than we would have thought.
So, now, we will share with you 36 fun activities to inspire you to play around and keep your creativity growing.
- Make a commercial for the first thing you find in your room.
- Play around with the different story-structuring theories (Three act structure, the hero’s journey, seven plot point structure, and so on).
- Fill a bag or a digital roulette with all the archetypes you want. Then, take three and create a story with them.
- Tell the same story but in three different genres.
- Take an astrology chart calculator and give in some random information. Then, read some fractions to build a character out of it.
- When going on public transport, pay close attention to the people around you. You may find the beginning of a fantastic story!
- Get a movie, a video, or a song, and play a random part of it. Then, create a story as soon as you find something to work with.
- Take a classic story and create different endings for it.
- Choose a story and find different ways to tell it to kids, young adults, middle-aged people, and old people.
- Learn how to write jokes. It might seem easy, but believe me when I tell you there is some theory behind it.
- Make a short mockumentary. Then, show it to your friends to see how convincing it is.
- Make fan music videos. Music videos allow you to be as creative and experimental as you want, and you already have the song as a prompt.
- Play with the order in which you present the events in your story. You may find a non-linear way of telling it that works much more with what you want to say or how you want people to feel.
- If you have the chance and feel comfortable doing it, speak with strangers, let them tell you their stories and maybe tell them about a story you’ve been thinking about.
- Participate in short film festivals with specific prompts.
- Choose a random object and make it crucial for your story.
- Write a letter to somebody you would have liked to say something but never did. But write it so that anybody who reads it can understand the whole situation but would still feel intimate if that person read it.
- Make three short stories, but recycle a portion of the previous story into the next one. It doesn’t matter if what you use is not in the same order as it was in the previous one.
- Adapt a little scene from a book or classic story you like.
- Make a story from a new technical thing you want to try, a new VFX you learned to do, or a lighting scheme you found online.
- Find plot holes in a story and fix them.
- Make a short film recreating a happy memory.
- Create a story using only stock material.
- Start vlogging! You don’t have to share it with anybody, but you can make it as cinematographic as you want. Your life can literally feel like a movie.
- Make one-minute films as gifts for people. Use what they like as inspiration.
- If you have more filmmaking friends, do a filmmaking against-the-clock activity. Make teams if you want to, and establish a short amount of time in which you all have to make a short film. You can even add more rules if you’d like, and then watch what you came up with together.
- Do the exact opposite of your usual style. Whether it is narrative or technically wise.
- Play around with roles! If you’re usually DP, try recording sound this time. If you’re from the art department, take the DP’s place. Of course, you can still work together and get advice from the person who usually is in the role you took, but it could be a very enlightening experience working in something you typically don’t.
- Study the style of someone you admire and try to imitate it as accurately as possible.
- Make a references night with your friends. Spend the night sharing your favorite references. All of you will definitely have a lot of ideas after it.
- Choose a location and let yourself be inspired by it.
- Learn about a field, culture, or such you have yet to learn about. That can inspire you to explore it through filmmaking.
- Create the trailer for something. It can be an event, your life, or a party. It’s up to you.
- Create full but short stories told in one very long shot and no dialog.
- Gather some friends, and choose a scene. It can be from an original story or from a famous movie. Then, each one of you shall make a storyboard for it. After finishing, everyone shares what they did and why they chose each shot. This is a really eye-opening activity.
- Shoot in black and white, play with contrast, look for references from different decades, and analyze how black and white contributed to them. Once you understand how vital it was for other stories, it will be easier to use it yourself.
As long as you don’t forget that the idea is to have fun while reaching people’s hearts, you will be able to do this for as long as you want. There will always be a story waiting to be told, maybe even re-told.
Stories can change the world, and as long as you keep telling stories, you will be part of the creation of the world you believe in. So never stop learning and creating. Find new ways to catch people’s interest and make them fall in love with your story.
In Skillademia, we have many courses that can help you find and explore new formats that you could use for your stories. From 3D modeling and animation to video editing and so much more! Visit our courses page to find everything you can learn about with us.
