Post: Driving in the Outback can be inspiring.
Valeska and I took off for about ten days and went to outback NSW and rambled from town to town, going with the flow and only moving when we felt like it. We did not see a drop of rain and loved the constant blue skies.
Before you ask, “How can you go to a part of the world that has temperatures hitting the 40C mark (105 F)”, please let me explain.
Well I did have a mission. I wanted to come up with a great story outline and treatment for our next screenplay. I love the great open spaces of the outback and country New South Wales. Very inspiring. No tourists are crazy enough to go out here in the heat of summer and that is exactly why I love it. It feels like the real deal, like a road movie.
Our goal was to create an awesome story outline and utilize the passing scenery and all the quirky cooky and very friendly characters we met on the way.
Idea after idea flowed and nothing seemed to gel. We would come up with one story outline after another and then trash them. We could only find enough for B Grade film. Story after story idea was tossed around and then trashed.
Even at Lightning Ridge where black opals are mined, we could not get a story outline that was a winner. All the story ideas, we came up with in the first eight days of traveling just seemed to be a cliche and stale. From Coonabarabran to Gundegai to Lightening Ridge to Bourke to St George , we created only garbage. Our characters seemed to be just flat.
Exasperated, I was about to give up on Day 8 and just enjoy the rest of our road trip, when it happened. We were approaching Moree when something on the radio sparked me off. Suddenly an amazing idea floated into my head. I got out my IPhone recorder and started flowing with a story that would prove to be so cool and original and dare I say it “Fresh”
Valeska and I then started talking about the story and more flowed. Out of that amazing creative dimension called creativity, scenes spouted out at a faster rate than we could record them.
There was an excitement about this idea that was missing from all previous ideas. We were suddenly on fire.
The next day we went back to the story and it still seemed like a really fresh story. More ideas and more scenes appeared to us and we felt that sense of flow that happens when you hit oil. I reflected on inspiration and what happens when a story truly appears.
Here are some of my thoughts: I believe that finding a great story is like searching for gold. You have to shift a lot of dirt to get to gold but when it happens it’s priceless. Then it’s like striking oil. Ideas and scenes spew out at an alarming rate faster than you can process them. To get to this point I believe that you need to trash bad story outlines as soon as you know it. This saves you so much time and stress later.
Today I am knocking out a 20 page treatment of the story that will encapsulate the whole film from beginning to end. Then the story is submitted to my 3 week test. In other words, will the story be as strong at the end of Janaury as it is now. If so, I will fully comit and move on to producing and developing the story as a film.
What is the movie called , “Hot Streak”. 30% of the film takes place in California and the other 70% in Australian outback towns. Our lead character is American and most of the supports are Australian. Anyone interested in investing, get in early.
If you are interested in creating a really cool story, look at our
4 month Film School in Sydney . The first two weeks is all about developing a story and writing a screenplay or please look at our Weekend Film Schools in Adelaide and Melbourne
Till next time, have a great one.
Colm O’Murchu