hey everyone it's cor thrill film making and today I want to talk about something that I think is wildly overlooked when we as filmmakers are putting together our short films particularly when we're writing them and that is the idea of crafting a good theme into your short films normally when people are putting together a short film they're going to figure out like hey I need to do this this character needs to go from here to here that's what's going to move the plot forward whatever but I think one of the biggest misses of not incorporating theme not thinking deeper is connecting with your audience more and more it is so important to be able to communicate to your audience to be authentic to connect and the Heart of that is being able to wrap your story around a theme or like a truth and a theme is something that we can relate to it's like a bigger idea than just the story that is at Play the theme of Brotherhood of sacrifice of Courage of true love like all these are themes that stick with you after you watch a film a story that can really be engaging and have compelling characters but can also be cemented in a good theme is a winning formula for any film and particularly here you know I talk a lot about making short films you might be thinking to yourself it's like hey I'm just trying to make the short film Corey there's already so many pieces I'm juggling trying to write it I'm trying to shoot it I'm trying to find minimal crew to make this happen like how how important is theme and like I just mentioned I think it is the most important thing and it gets overlooked so much of the time if your film doesn't have a good theme it doesn't have a heart and I know that can be really difficult to hear you might be shooting it with the best camera possible you might have awesome visuals you might have incredible acting but if you're filmed doesn't have theme it doesn't have a heart I've learned this the hard way I've shot things I've planned short films I've had them come to fruition and it's a horrible feeling to finish a film and to look back and be like man that film didn't say what I wanted it to say or even worse that film didn't say anything the theme is the central message that your audience can connect to it's What Separates just a series of actions that look cool from something that actually has heart it's being able to connect with some people so practically I want to break this down in one of my own films because you know the best critic of your work is yourself in some cases and I want to take two quick examples of this the first one is the short film I released last year it's called choices you can go check that out it's here on the channel but the quick synopsis is a detective follows a lead to Corner people who he thinks are involved in a murder things happen and then he is confronted with a choice that is the very brief elevator pitch summary of this film the depth of this film that I really tried to incorporate and you even see it reflected in the title is the theme of choice and Duality and because of this I feel like it elevates what otherwise is just kind of like a it it's a fine film you know I'm happy with how I shot it I think the color grade looks really cool I spent time working on it but besides that it would just be like a cop detective doing a normal detective thing but because there's a deeper element a deeper theme of choice and Duality tied into this film I think it really helps to connect to the audience the detective is in the spot that when he confronts the people who are responsible for this murder you find out this woman has been using the other man that she is romantically interested in and she kills him and you find find out that the detective and this woman have a romantic past together so he has given a choice and we're going to compromise my morals and my values of doing what's right for this person that I love that I had a history with that maybe we could have a future with or do I choose to do the right thing which is what I have sworn to do to protect and uphold the standard of Truth and Justice and with this focal point as my main idea this theme of choice and this theme of Duality that we can all make choices we can go one way or the other I really tried to shape the whole film around this how I had my actors perform scenes how I lit some things where it's like I would purposely shoot them with split lighting so you kind of see like this Duality even the vo that I had my friend Jordan record for me like very fitting in the Noir style outlines this you know he says I've come to find that there's no good there's no bad there's just people and the choices we make even in this vo it's establishing a duality between good and bad it's establishing this idea of people can make choices and that is reflected in every element in the film as you watch it like I said from the lighting choices to how I frame things it's very much this idea of like there's always two options and we as people have to choose what we're going to do without the theme it just misses connecting with the audience because we all know that feeling of facing the duality of a choice and having to make a choice and maybe in a place where it makes us almost have to compromise on what we believe or what we feel about a situation because there's somebody that we love involved with it there's some personal stake in it and so it turns that Duality that black and white into a lot more of a gray area and that's really what I wanted to highlight you know and that's characteristic of noir films and so this felt very fitting for this another example of putting theme into a short film and I think this is probably the most successful I've been in doing this is the film moving on that I shot a couple years ago and you know the plot synopsis would feel kind of boring honestly it's basically like a episode of a TV show where it's like characters end up in the same place and they're forced to talk and interact with each other about stuff in their past and that's basically what happens so the simple story for this film is that Mia who's engaged to Dean she's packing up her apartment where she lives with her roommate Jess and she's moving all of her stuff and Dean has suggested that he has some of his co-workers come help him you know just move some stuff get it in the truck and when his friends show up his co-workers show up to help them Mia finds out that one of his co-workers is Matt who is a former romantic interest for her they have some history there together and of course you know conflict comes up when some of the other characters have to leave for various reasons and Matt and Mia are left alone and the past arises and they kind of start rehashing things and getting into it and you kind of see more of like their previous relationship and how they worked together and under all of this very simple story is the theme of growing moving on in life uh the road not taken so however you want to categorize that but if I had to distill this film down to its Core theme because there's a couple things going on here I would say it's growth what does growth look like and what do growth not you can clearly see in these characters that they have grown but they've grown in different ways or they believe they have grown in different ways you know there there's some deception of growth that Mia believes that she's had versus the growth that Matt has actually had and it's not a case of saying who's right or who's wrong but it's of how they've processed the grief and the trauma of this very difficult situation that they had in their past and those are the things that are going to connect with people in this short film it's not the fight or how I shot it honestly when I watch this film there's a lot of things I I wish I would have done differently in terms of the cinematography but in terms of the script and their performances and my friend really conveying this theme of growth I think they nailed it and I think the film Nails it and I think that is the strongest point of this film and I think that's why whenever I have shown this film to people I've gone so so many comments of this feels real it feels like something I connect to versus some of my other films where I show it to people and they're like oh this is cool you shot a cowboy in the desert some of the other short films that I've shot they're just they're just that they're just images they're just things happening and that's cool you know it's cool from a visual standpoint it's cool to figure out like how did you get that to look a certain way but if we're really making films if we're really wanting to create movies that tell stories videos that speak to people you have to focus on theme it's the most important thing in telling a story and I really believe it is the most overlooked aspect of Storytelling it's really easy to write something and say a character needs to go from point A to point B it's a much more difficult thing to say a character needs to go from point A to point B why is that happening and how does that fit into a bigger message a bigger thing that I am trying to communicate to the audience that's hard and you have to dig deep to find it so practical steps you know I've talked a lot about this we've seen an example but practical steps when you are writing your short film even before you go into figuring out like who the characters are what is the location what's all the situation everything I want you to take a step back and I want you to decide what is the theme that you want to explore what do you want to talk about you know in the example of choices I said I want to talk about Duality I want to talk about Choice those are the big themes that I really want to encapsulate in that film in the case of moving on the big theme was growth this idea of moving on what does moving on look like what does moving on not look like and how does that affect everything that we're seeing in the film and so once you have that idea once you know what your theme is everything that you do how you write your characters the plot what actually happens in your short film can all be motivated by that one central idea and I promise you your films will be stronger because of it I'm not just making this to say like oh yeah like theme's a good thing to talk about is the most important thing it is crucial to storytelling and it really will elevate your films if you take the time to stop and to dig deep and to really implement it inject it into your short films so I hope you found this video helpful I'm hoping to do some more videos particularly about storytelling diving into different aspects because writing a good story a compelling story is such a huge thing for films because telling a captivating story is so crucial in getting people to engage with your films and getting the film to stick with people long after they have seen it so I hope you found this video helpful if you did make sure to give it a thumbs up and subscribe to real film making for more stuff coming about film making storytelling Magic Lantern all that goodness and until next time keep making movies and watching movies and I'll see you on real film making