How I come up with interesting film ideas

There are thousands if not millions of ways to come up with new ideas, whether those ideas are any good or not is the real question.

It takes a lot of time and practice to be able to establish the skill to decide whether an idea is good or not. Mostly it takes experience.

Having made thousands of projects I am at a stage where I can clearly see whether an idea is going to be a success or not. The experience is essential to making a great idea so the best place to start is to well… start. Make loads of stuff, see what sticks, see what doesn't, and overtime you get better at refining your ideas naturally.

As for how I come up with specific ideas and how I know whether it's going to be a good one or not, also comes down to whether I have a strong emotional response to an image, a concept or even as simple as a title for the idea.

An example would include how we did the style of animation for ‘Mental Health Transparency’. The pressures of university life gave me daydreams of people walking around campus with heads that were crumpled in like cans under pressure from the bottom of the sea. If I was to create a similar project in the future, I still feel like it would be an appropriate image to represent hidden mental strain on people. However, I took the idea and blended it with the logo of ‘Mind’ which is all scribbles. Based on the medium that I enjoy working with best, instead of making 3D models of heads that have been crashed in, I used stop motion animation to represent the heads of scribbled minds as a representation of those under mental pressures and confusion.

So, the emotional values behind that ticked all the boxes, the obscure and rushing line shapes help show that concept of confusion and disparity. Contrasting with a serene and calming situation showed how people didn't see the struggles others were under. However, using the style of animation that we did, it was able to be conveyed.

Another example would be one of our comedies, ‘Seagulls Man’. The idea was just naturally funny. As I lived in Brighton for so many years, I was aware of the culture of seagulls and how they are in Brighton. The idea mixing pest and superhero as Seagal Man worked and instantly. It was funny for people of Brighton.

Looking at what made a good character design, they were based off a lot of the tripes that seagulls have in the community. Great ideas come from what society relates to around your idea. Is your character socially irritating and funny? Building that together with culture of that particular creature (seagulls) and what's hot in media, for example superheroes.

By having the instant gut response of it being funny, tells me that the idea is going to be a success.

Those of you out there wondering if there is such a job coming up with ideas like this yes there is it's called a creative and I'm not saying that in a general term that is genuinely a professional job it's someone's it's someone's responsibility to come up with the ideas for a company or a a show or or a design firm it is a whole profession in itself that takes is a man of skill and experience to be able to filter out what ideas are good and what are not there is a fantastic activity that you can do to stir this creativity one which I found to be exceptionally useful in terms of coming up with my future projects

The activity goes like this I think about the circumstances that I have what is available to me how much money can I put towards a project and what is current what is big and socially accepted and funny in the world from there I have a massive brainstorm session I like to call this the divergent thinking session this is where I write down as many film titles as I can don't exist just ones that I think roll of the tongue ones that I think sound interesting some funny sunlike and obscure project that is relevant to today that could be something that I'd like to tell I make a massive list I aimed try and get at least 20 in a session then what I do is I sleep on it. The next day brings the convergent phase, I wake up early and I'll look at all the film titles and I write a logline/synopsis for each one, trying to work out the story of each title. What is going on in this world? After doing this, I find that I tend to get at least 10 to 15 great possible ideas. That gives you a choice. It enables you to then decide which path you'd like to go down, it opens new doors and opportunities.