"Discussions" - Day One + Writing Tips

Today we decided to start posting something that could be more interesting to you than our productions. Of course, as usual you can read about making "Discussions" but from now on you can also find here some tips on making your own film. In every post we will update you on producing "Discussions", plans for new projects and mainly help you making short films. Today we talk about first day of shooting and give you some hopefully helpful tips on writing your own screenplay!

Dmitar Velimir left the cast at the day of shooting his scene and we are sorry he wasn't able to shoot that day, but we agreed it was for the best. First day of shooting was easy for one reason: although we didn't separate units we did separate scenes on 1st degree and 2nd degree, and first scene we shot was 2nd degree scene. In our made-up film dictionary 2nd degree scene is an equivalent with 2nd unit. We filmed only video and no sound. Branko Praštalo appeared as "boy going to school". Scene is approximately 40 seconds long and is monotone. We wanted first few scenes to describe the way we look at life in this case. As we already said, the film is about life and death, love and hatred, religion and philosophy. On picture from shooting you can see our DP Darko Sladojević with vlog runner Višnja Reljanović, executive producer and script supervisor Dragana Rokić, actor Branko Praštalo and assistant director and VTR Logger Dejan Šurlan on location.
Now we are about to tell you some more interesting things on how to make a short film. Today we discuss writing a script! On both of our projects we were well aware of the fact that we are making a non to micro low budget film and it affected our writing. You should also know, if you are making independent short film, what can you use and on what you have to spend money. Try to save money on everything that won't affect quality too much. On "The Strange Mind" first thing was to think of main theme for story. After having that it was easy to add ideas to it. You should know that we like to get weird with our stories and it helps us to get creative with the story. It helped us to read some real scripts to get the basic idea of scripting.
It can get really fun in writing room. You don't have to rent a room, use one of yours! It's helpful having calm environment, helps you concentrate on your story. If you're lucky like we were some of writers will be funny and make great atmosphere for working.
Once you set the main idea try to make a storyline. Make few fixed points (beginning, twist and end). It can get very difficult if you don't know where you are going with your story. First thing we decided for "The Strange Mind" was that our main character won't survive, then we added DID and other characters. Also, sometimes it is interesting to go straight forward with writing. For example, Vince Gilligan (the creator of "Breaking Bad") was able to make one of the greatest dramas on TV because he had no idea where he was going with a season. Writers would make a problem and only after think of possible solutions. On the other hand it's easier to find solution and then make a problem. We recommend our way for beginners.
There are several questions you should have in mind. We suggest you answer them before writing the script itself.

• Whose story are you telling?
• What does your character want?
• What's stopping him getting it?
• What's at stake?

While modelling your character it can get really helpful to answer these questions we found on this site. To make a character profile think about these questions:

• Who is your character secretly attracted to?
• What's a topic of conversation that your character's particularly touchy or overly sensitive about?
• Who is your character's role model?
• What's something your character tries not to reveal about himself or herself?
• What's something your character spent too much money on?
• Who is someone your character pretends to like but dislikes?
• Think of something bad that happened to your character in the past that your character's excessively afraid will happen again!
• Where does your character hide private things, and what is it that he or she hides there?
• What's an unrealistic daydream your character has?
• What's positive quality that your character is unaware that he or she has?

You don't have to show all these in your story, you should know the answers for the story. Just answering these questions will help making the plot. We don't recommend making plot around one or more of these questions. Of course, you could make a film just from these but it wouldn't be a very good one. By knowing your character you will easily create a story around your character.
Decide what genre it is! That is the first thing to do. Later in process give your film a tagline, it helps you define the direction you take and overall picture of your film. For "Discussions" we took a line from "Steppenwolf": "For Madmen Only".
It is also a good idea to find inspiration in quotes from your favorite novels. It's very important not to use quotes in your script except if your character quotes someone on purpose.
Try not to use cliche phrases in dialogs.
Great source of inspiration can be music or pictures!

We hope we helped you with some tips. If you have any questions feel free to leave a comment or contact us by e-mail or on facebook. We wish you all the best in writing your scripts. It is our goal to spread creativity all around the world!

"Discussions" open this fall.
For Madmen Only!

New Poster and Updates on Production of "Discussions"

Hello everyone. We are very proud to announce that the shooting will start on Saturday, July 19th. It'll be our first day of shooting and we decided to film chronologically so it's the opening scene of "Discussions". Danijela Gačić will be playing a girl and Stefan Gligić will play a boy in that scene. We hope to have nice weather and to shoot some pretty nice frames in the woods. Darko Sladojević signed on as a director of photography and Dejan Šurlan will come along as director assistant. Višnja Reljanović will accompany cast and crew to make some additional photographs and film our video blog just for you! It's confirmed that no sound crew will be there on the day of shooting, mainly because it's a second unit task.
Tagline of "Discussions" is "For Madmen Only", we hope you like it!
"Discussions" will come out in September.
Here is our third poster for "Discussions".

"We live in a mute, grey film and we wait."

-Alexei

New Poster for "Discussions"

The production is going well. "Discussions" start filming this month and we are very proud to present our second poster! Two men battling each others views on life, religion, fate, afterlife and art. It's a philosophical drama with a twist, starring Boris Ručnov and Miloš Aničić. Two days ago we added a new cast member: Dmitar Velimir as a boy in oppening scenes. "Discussions" will be out for public this fall!

Discussions - short film in production

One year after finishing "The Strange Mind", "Seven Productions" team reunited for one more short drama. This time we are working on a short philosophical drama inspired by the theatre of the absurd. At the beginning we wanted to make a short version of Beckett's most popular drama "Waiting for Godot", but while scripting we noticed it didn't look natural so we decided to go in another direction. We still wanted the absurdity to be the main theme of our new project, also we didn't want it to be just absurd. We decided to add some depth to the story by introducing philosophy in the discussion that (anti)heroes have. Note that heroes and antiheroes aren't different in theatre of the absurd, so we didn't make one of the two main characters look good, and the other evil. In the story good and evil are entwined so we would get grey picture of black and white side of both of them. Not to reveal too much, but the story is set in unknown place and time around the chess board. And also at the beginning of the film, first few shots will tell the audience how we see life of individuals, but the rest is dedicated to The Life in larger scale, as well as some religious views and other interesting subjects.
The film is written and will be directed by Mladen Reljanović. Samir Gaši and Boris Ručnov signed on the project in March, as the main characters Sergei and Alexei. Nikola Zorić joined the cast in a minor role in June. Branko Praštalo signed on the project in June. Producers are negotiating with Danijela Gačić to take on the minor role in opening scene. Darko Sladojević joined the crew as the director of photography. For more information feel free to contact us at any time. You can visit our facebook page. There you can arrange meetings and/or interviews with the cast and crew.
Here is our first poster for "Discussions"!

"Discussions" are set to start shooting in July. Hopefully you will be able to see it when it comes out in September.

The Strange Mind - Production Journal

This post is dedicated to the cast and crew of "The Strange Mind" and we hope you'll enjoy reading about creative process of making our first movie.

At first we didn't really know what we want to do. We were inspired by the poems of Edgar Allan Poe, Jelena (Jurišić) and I (Mladen Reljanović) talked about making a short film. The first idea was making one of Poe's poems or stories as a short film but when we started the research we decided to add more elements to the story. So we slowed down a little bit and added another element that inspired us: Franc Kafka's story telling. We immediately knew the film would not be well received if we use Kafka's style, but we did it anyways, and hopefully we made something different.
One of the main inspirations was our mutual respect to a certain director from 20th century - Edward D. Wood Jr., also known as "The Worst Director Ever". Maybe he was a bad director, maybe not. We liked the way he didn't pay attention to little things that "could ruin the film". He had a vision about the large picture and meaning of story and he did things his way. After discussing his work we knew that we want to do things his way. So, while filming we didn't really want to notice things that don't belong to the time period that story takes place in. Of course, we didn't make mistakes on purpose, but if we would notice a possible mistake we would just ask ourselves: "How would Edd do it?" and we would continue shooting. In post-production the fun thing was making the film as dark as possible. We didn't want for audience to see everything, that's how we would increase mystery motives in "The Strange Mind". There are scenes that are almost impossible to watch because of the dark effect. Also, we increased the intensity of blue channel to add some "Burton touch" to the picture.

For some time the idea of making this movie was incubating in our minds and that Jelena came up with few stories that were really great. After few hours of discussing the possible story we agreed on this one and the making of a script began. It's been quit a journey through the process of writing. We made so many additional changes even when we were sure we got it that time. Every night we would think it's the perfect script and in the morning we would be sure that something must be changed. We worked very fast and within a month the script was finished and the pre-production done. We had a lot of fun scouting for locations. We visited some houses, abandoned rooms of a hospital, open fields by the river and we hope we found the right locations for the film. While making scene concepts and concept art we decided to go weird with the film. I mean, weirder! At one point when designing doctor's office, we thought it would be funny to put some dead bugs in glass on the table, but it wasn't enough so we added an old tree branch in a jar with reddish liquid, old papers that we got from even older hospital we were shooting at, a potato in a jar and very interesting, closed little box that we talked about. Also, we decided to make characters look like they were dead, mainly because we wanted to set the story in mirror world of our 18th century. So, we added some scars on actors and made their skin pale. We weren't adding those objects just for the sake of the scene. Every object had some meaning to us and we wanted viewers to add meaning to the objects as they like. So, whatever you think that potato in a jar means - you got it!
The first day of shooting (8. February, 2013) we went to local hospital where we were given the rooms to use and we shot some minor scenes and one major scene. The next day we went to a "Chess Club" to shoot two scenes that take place in Vuk's office and a tavern. On 16. February we went to an old house to shoot 5 scenes (three of them minor) that take place in Aleksandar's house (and a minor scene in front of his house) and Anastasija's house (one minor scene). On 22. February we went back to our hospital to shoot the scenes with two doctors, scenes with Aleksandar and Katarina and a scene in front of tavern. That was probably the longest working day. On 9. March we went to shoot scenes on open field. We found a great river bank east of our town where we shot those scenes. For many hours it was raining and we weren't able to do anything and when we agreed to cancel the shooting for the day the rain stopped! I believed it was destiny, but there could be more discussions about it. We had a great sky that day. It was creepy cloudy and dark. That day one of supporting actor had a minor injury - he cut his hand on glass. We decided to add some frames of his bloody hand in the final cut of the movie even though it doesn't make sense because he didn't hurt his hand in the movie.
Post-production was fast. We didn't need major visual effects so we managed to do everything in time. We found out about a German composer who makes beautiful and creepy scores. After contacting him he sent us some pre-made scores that fit perfectly - in the style of "The Strange Mind". We are very thankful to myuu (or myuuji as credited sometimes).
Subjectively speaking it was a great pleasure to make "The Strange Mind", even though we had terrible conditions some times while shooting. And I'd like to say it was my honor to work with these talented people who helped me so much. Stefan Ličanin did a wonderful performance as Aleksandar Branković, he is a very talented young man who can do wonders with his face expressions. Jelena Jurišić portrayed minor character, Bognad's daughter Anastasija, and she wrote this great story. Mihajlo Basta played the part of Inspector Vuk Begović and did a great job, just as imagined. Danijela Gačić did a great and more than creepy performance as Katarina, although she does not have a major role in the story, she really left her signature on "The Strange Mind". Aleksandar Marjanović and Milanka Buvač were very fun to work with even though their parts were very small. All of them, and I myself, did a hard job and we all hope you enjoyed or will enjoy watching "The Strange Mind".

Note: We will release "The Strange Mind" on our blog as soon as we add English subtitles. You can see the OFFICIAL TRAILER here or find it in our video gallery.

Our Third Poster for "The Strange Mind"

We are happy to show you our third poster! Danijela's on this one and she looks scary, that's why we love it. The film was released in September, 2013.

Second poster for "The Strange Mind"

It was cold, but we still managed to take this awesome picture!