Short film - idea

Just shortly: Try to find inspiration in whatever you are doing or thinking about at the time. I wouldn't focus on a cleverly spun phrase by another person. Of course, if you are supposed to spin a story around a phrase that you have to show in the end, you have to go this way. But inspiration is better had from within, since you will make a better movie if you care and know about the subject.

What do you currently think about? Some silly subjects could be:

- "Skyfall" is everywhere right now. Maybe do a story about the adolescence of the young James Bond? Being made fun of for wearing suits to class, having to hide his drinking habits, being scared of girls' dads, staging car chases with toy cars... could be funny and has endless possibilities.

- "So, girls actually aren't aliens?" If you have a younger brother, you could try to have him meet with friends and make secret plans on how to expose girls as an alien race, until he learns from you that they aren't...

Two more serious subjects:

- "Give us a voice!" After having had to watch the US elections pass without you, you could try to form a lobby for students under 18. Or maybe introduce a system that lets young people vote and the results have influence in some way. Something with elections, you know what I'm getting at.

- Mobbing in class. Those can get very cheesy if you try to deliver some morally perfect phrase with a sledgehammer, but you could just make a documentary style: Interviews with classmates after a girl killed herself. Flashbacks of her being treated badly. Try to not overdo the "bad treating" or it will get corny again, just make it very subtle comments and slight teasing. If you have a good actress that can deliver how much that hurts, this can be very powerful.

Now, these are all just examples based on your age. You know way better what is currently on your mind, and you'll get the general idea from these four suggestions.

All this being said: Christopher Nolan is a very high bar to reach. I haven't seen the short you were talking about, but be aware that you will probably have to make your idea into a movie. And this movie will probably suck. Your first 10 movies will most likely suck. But you will get better with every single one. Don't get discouraged. And don't try to make your first film overcomplicated.

If you want more hints in this forum, it can help to feed us a little more information. If your teacher didn't give you anything you have to cling to, try to tell us the country you live in, maybe your hobbies or the landscape you live in. Creativity hardly ever comes from nothing, it starts with things you know or have seen, even if that may be unconsciously.

Have fun, I wish I would have had such an option in my school.

Put a empty coke can on the floor were lot of people at your school walk and see what happens.

I like your camera work and pacing.

I don't know whether you're a transplanted Texan or a French person who lived in Texas. I suspect the former.

How about having you explain some things about Texas to your classmates?

I don't mean Q&A. But you could set up a situation where it's on you to talk about a place no one else has seen, except in films/TV. That could get pretty interesting.

You could get into a good language thing there (French-speakers speaking English, English speaker speaking French) and the cross-cultural possibilities are enormous.

True, 2-5 minutes is pretty tight. But you could start slowly, move into rapid fire audio/images/clips and then slow it down to an ending. The jumble in the middle would let all the students take part (finding material, prepping it, editing).

As a filmmaker it can be difficult to look for inspiration but instead of getting other people to come up with ideas for you you should look at fun and quirky creative games and exercises to help you come up with your own ideas.

An example of this is something we had in a lecture the other day.

We were given twenty minutes to write a pages worth of script where X is in a room, Y enters the room with object Z. They chat and then Y leaves the room with or without object Z.

Try something like that rather than expecting other people to have strokes of genius for you!

Alarm clock-Wake -up- Breakfeast table- Mother saying....... Meet our new house maid.

It's the future and people can download food from the internet. A notorious food hacker is hacking into the system and introducing harmful substances into the food.

The film begins with a raid on his apartment, then his interrogation serves as the frame story for what he does.

I'm in actual film school, and I always have trouble thinking of ideas...