It would be no exaggeration to say that I have seen at least 60 X 52 X 3 = 9,360 movies, and I’m comfortable upping that to 10,000 as a realistic minimum. Of those, I would speculate that way over half of them (let’s say 7,000) are some variation of at least one other similar theme.
I can imagine being faced with the task of naming 100 movies that are close to unique in how they have been put together and how they stand apart from “movies in general.”
But based on your own experiences and tastes, what would be a movie that nobody has ever done anything like, and that you would pay money to see?
Imagine yourself a producer who is trying to come up with a New Movie that is unlike all others.
What would it consist of? And avoid use of the phrase, “it would be like…” since that’s exactly what you need to avoid!
I’m going to use “it would be like…”, but for a reason.
It would be like a movie version of Ulysses, but not plotwise (which has been done). It could follow the Odyssey structure, or use some other common plot, or do something completely different.
The key is that each section of the movie uses a different aspect of the vocabulary of film to illustrate a theme or make a point. So someone has to pay attention to the light in one section in order to understand the point of one section, or they have to pay attention to the production design, etc. One section might have the evolution of editing from the very beginnings of film to present day jump-cuts to possible future techniques, etc.
There have been a few films close to what I would pitch, but I remember my first trip to Europe - just me, my backpack and a guide book.
I always thought it would be an interesting film to see one person travel on a budget and hit the hostels, meet people on the train, fall in love, part, meet someone else, get ripped off, see wonders, try new foods and drinks and basically grow up and become somewhat more worldly because of this adventure.
Could have comic and serious elements, but mostly keep it fairly real instead of running into CIA spies or French fashion models and the like.