Any ideas?

Robbie Comeau

Robbie Comeau

Como's back. back again
Hey guys,

Today is the anniversary of my baby brothers death, 26 years ago. I never got to meet him, he died as an infant.

This got me thinking today, that a lot of you guys are saying that you can write about your own, personal life experiences, and that is totally true.
I was just wondering, if anyone could help me out on how to implement this idea into a 10 minute short. I think it would be mostly a drama.
Maybe a teenged boy (like me) just found out he HAD a brother, and he goes through life a different way, i'm not sure.

Thanks,

Robbie
 
Perhaps a child who recently unearth he has a brother and compiles a tribute video through old slides and home videos, to show the love to a brother he never met?
 
I had five dead-at-birth-or-soon-after siblings - which I never knew until I was in my twenties. Had never thought of that as a film idea. Now you've got me thinking. Yeah, I believe you should use _everything_ in your life in your films, even if not directly.

Dramatically, the problem is how to base a film around someone who no one ever got to know. Some immediate possibilities spring to mind:
- someone theorising about what their dead sibling would have been like, e.g. wildly romanticising them, or alternatively blaming them for everything that's gone wrong (e.g. "Where were you when i needed you?" selfrighteous whining)
- someone so obsessed by their dead sibling as to pretend they're alive, e.g. setting a place for them at the dinner table every night for twenty years - could be an interesting look at grief and obsession and denial
- story told from the point of view of the dead sibling, who is watching over the family (for better or worse, could be anywhere from a guardian angel to a nasty vengeful ghost, or maybe something else entirely)
 
You know what I find interesting is that you referred to him as your baby brother... but he would have now been nearly 10 years older than you.
He would have been your older brother... I don't know, maybe there's something there....
 
Luis Caffesse said:
You know what I find interesting is that you referred to him as your baby brother... but he would have now been nearly 10 years older than you.
He would have been your older brother... I don't know, maybe there's something there....
Click to expand...

I noticed that too.

To me, this is a ghost story.
 
Maybe the teen finds out about the brother he never met through an outside source and the story is all about the teen getting his parents to accept that the infant (who died very early - days. let's call him Jake) was in fact a real living, breathing person who had a lifetime ahead of him. The parents all but dismissed the birth of the child.

Since you work so fast Robbie, I'm gonna put some Christmas spin on it. The teen and parents have a huge argument over the subject the teen says he doesn't want anything for Christmas, just parents with a heart. Drama, yada yada yada. Christmas morning. The Teen sees a single present under the tree. He opens the card first, it's signed 'merry xmas, all our love, mom, dad, Jake xoxo'. The kid all but sheds a tear. he opens the present, it's a framed photo, some black and white shots of his bro, some color shots of the teen as a bub. Then cue the mom/dad coming in an explaining exactly why they shunned that period of their life when the lost their first son.
 
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