John is a 40 year old accountant who wears royal blue polo’s on sundays and the rest of the week his business suit. John describes his car with words like “reliable” or “fantastic” – His life is best described by looking at the happy photo’s of him, his wife, and their son, Kris, on a park bench. Or by looking at the numerous “love, laugh, live” signs his wife hangs around their suburban home. Every day he finds the things his father told him about growing up and being a father to be true; His story is of Discovery.

Reggie is a 29 year old Zoologist from Hawaii; Zoologist by day, Explorer by night. He scales the faces of the West Maui peaks, mostly for fun – for recreation. After 19 years of the hobby his travels eventually find him lost in wild Hawaii; his story is of Discovery.

Which of these stories sound more appealing? Yes, that’s a trick question. John’s story is like that of ‘American Beauty’ or ‘The Truman Show’ – relative relation. Reggie’s story is more like that of ‘Cast Away’ or ‘Into the wild’ – A tragic scenario. The difference is that they take the same motives and make a random story around it. They both want to discover, self-discover, explore – but their stories couldn’t be more far apart, unless Reggie went to space, or John’s story had some sort of Shamalayan twist that reveals he’s some sort of 9th dimensional alien.

Life is Random, without this sporadic nature in your movies then they feel forced, they feel unreal, impossible; but in a bad way. Too many amateur filmmaker’s take a story, lets say a mystery – and introduce little to nothing new. A film about a mysterious lakeside town in Idaho, A man’s wife goes missing – he sees her everywhere he goes. A kid that get’s bullied in school by getting shoved around by the same old carbon-copied bully from Back To The Future. What i’m saying is, “Introduce a little anarchy”.

Turn the mystery upside down, the man’s wife isn’t missing – he is; he’s trapped in a infection-induced coma that separates him from his family. Or maybe the bully is small, racist, anti-semitic, maybe he’s troubled (but that’s becoming sort of a trend of it’s own). I suggest building the story, then taking parts of it and tweaking them to reality, to what would or should happen in that scenario.

I’ve found in many student films or amateur debut’s that the common mistake is this static pattern-like structure that is a copy and paste from every other student film or amateur debut. The reason your film isn’t believable is because it’s not realistic, not in the sense that it’s not down to earth; Star Wars managed to make a realistic space war film with laser swords and telepathy. More in the sense that it’s not random enough, Life has no pattern, make that so in your films and they’ll be one inch closer to being decent.

This isn’t a trick to make the next Godfather, Nor is it a trick to be a better filmmaker – it’s a piece of advice that i’ve seen work well. It’s an experiment you can take to possibly write a better, more convincing story.