Voice and Vision by Mick Hurbis-Cherrier

Chapter 1: Developing Your Film On Paper

• Ideas can come to us anywhere and at anytime.
• Raymond Carver once said, " You have to be a sponge, you have to constantly absorb the world you live in". If you keep your eyes and ears open, you will discover that material is all around you. Everyday life provides fertile ground for story ideas, visual ideas, and character ideas. Stay alert and connect to the world around you, then you'll be able to connect with your audience.
• Another word for hero is protagonist.
• The plot is the order of events of your film- the unfolding of the story and the scenes.
• The events of your film result from the chemical reaction between three dramatic elements: your character and their goal and any complications or obstacles that pose some sort of conflict.
• Bringing a film to a resolution means to an end.
• pyrrhic victories means a victory or goal achieved at too great a cost.
• iconoclastic means a breaker of images
• A concept is a very brief outline of the basic dramatic elements involved in your story.
• With short films the key is to work on a compact scale.
• Short films usually revolve around a single, simple idea, recognisable characters, and a sharp turning point to make one moment resonate.
• Short films can tell stories without direct character conflict if they replace the conflict-orented dramatic question with something else compelling- another type of mystery or question.
• Short films can work well with this provided that the question posed is compelling and visual and the answer is satisfying.
• Peter Hedges: is an American novelist, screenwriter and film director.

• Jean-Luc Godhard: is a French-Swiss film director, screen writer and critic.
• Ideas in their raw form are not a film story, once you have an idea, you need to translate it into a film concept, with specific character, conflict, action, then you will be ready to write you screenplay.
• Next step is to identify ideas that can both be great movies and be accomplished within the filmmaker's real-world limitations. Always keep in mind that there is a symbiotic relationship between ideas and resource, you must work from the beginning, with what one has rather than what one wishes one had. Such resourcefulness will go a long way to ensuring that you will in fact make movies.
• Every project big or small is an opportunity to show that you can master the craft of filmmaking, the art of cinematic storytelling, and your specific circumstances to deliver an effective film.
• Having a bigger budget does not mean a film will be better, the less money the better as you must be more creative.
• As long as you can be smart, sharp, elegant and work intelligently with minimal resources.
• There is an actual law of diminishing returns when it comes to overextending your crew.
• The more people you have in front of the camera, the more time and money you can generally expect to spend.
• At the beginning the first thing is to establish the logistical, financial, and labor parameters of your production.
• Working fast can also being called "frantic filmmaking".
• You can turn limitations into an opportunity to create a flamboyant style that perfectly matches the story and mood of a film.
• Peter Sillen: a cinematographer.