Ideas up for grabs


            Make Your Own Movie


A lot of us would love to shoot his or her own
movie, but this is impossible. To make a movie
is prohibitively expensive. Yet, there is a way.

Early in the 20th century, the Russian pioneers of
the cinematic art invented the technique of montage.
They shot a series of short scenes and edited them
later. They figured out that even scenes which did
not carry any specific meaning would take different
meanings in different contexts.

So I think it would be possible and feasible to shoot
a lot (hundreds) of micro-scenes and offer them on DVDs.
Such micro-scenes would include steps, running feet,
people turning, buses and trains arriving and leaving,
clouds (very much suited for expressing feelings!) and
rivers, waves of the oceans, birds, doors opening and
closing, beds, drawers, bathrooms, showers, red stuff
imitating blood, heavy breathing ... and so on and so
forth. All the movie director to be should do is
shoot a couple of faces and edit the clips into a
full-featured movie. If he or she does not want specific
faces, even those faces could be supplied.

All this can be done with literary works: a lot of
paragraphs can be pre-written, and they would only
need editing, reordering and only a few original
paragraphs should be inserted, by the author's
own hand.

This would be a little similar to the well-known phantasy
stories, with numbered sections. The difference is: those
have a limited variety of story-making, since each scene is
too much determined. By contrast, my idea of using prefab
modules would give the "author" absolute freedom in using
the pieces to make the patchwork of the novel or the movie.
(Teachers of composition would appreciate this, in developing
the students' editing skills.)

Who would volunteer to make this set of modules? First in
writing, like a modular scenario, then in pictures?

This would be fun and, I'm sure, good business too.