Over the last couple of months I have become increasingly desperate to write another short film. I want to write something that will show how far we've come as filmmakers since college and be a bit of a last hurrah before I go to university. The problem is in order to make a good short film, you need a good short script.
Currently I am buried in editing which probably isn't great for the creative flow but I've thought of ideas in less likely situations! I've been watching about five short films a night and wondering why some work and some don't and reflecting on the things I've written myself like a true nerd.
But still no inspiration seems to stick. A recent workshop I was at said that if a script doesn't feel right then it's probably because it's not about anything. As in, there is no central theme to the story and the writer doesn't really know what they're trying to say. That's all well and good but with short films I've found that isn't always the case. Sometimes a brilliant short film can come out of playing with one visual effect.
At just over two minutes long, The Black Hole is a brilliant short film. What's it trying to say about society? That we all have a human need for escape and imagination in our mechanical lives... ah shit... it does have a theme....
How about this one then. One of my absolute favourites about a deaf woman who magically regains her hearing for one mile only on the beach? That nothing works forever but we should enjoy it while it lasts... damn!
Ok so maybe that workshop was onto something. Strong short films, even seemingly abstract ones are about a central theme. Having not watched all the short films in the world just yet I'm sure there are exceptions but for the most part the short films I see without a theme are weaker and less interesting than those with them.
So, I made a list. And I encourage other struggling writers to do the same. My list is called "Themes that I, a person living on planet earth, want to tell stories about" And already that seems to have got me out of the writers block phase. The problem then remains as to what story you want to use to explore your theme. You can either inject it inside a pre-existing idea to give a shell of a story some meaning, think of something around the theme or look through some writing prompts and see if anything leaps out at you.
There is no shame in using writing prompts whatsoever. Whatever you write and your theme will still be something original if you work on it long enough. Usually when it comes to short films the simpler and more visual, the better.
Right so to answer the title question. No I don't think there's a right way to write short films but there's definitely a pattern concerning what works and what doesn't. Ultimately if your short film has no theme, even a stupid or a simple one then the audience has no reason to care.