Generating Concepts - The Future is (Sorta) Here

I’m calling this one a bonus round because, for right now, it’s more nerdy fun than it is useful. But just as this isn’t the stage to be censoring your ideas, the crazy ideas that you might get out of this process can probably be mined into gold.

If you haven’t yet given Chat GPT a try, you definitely should. Imagine Tony Stark, interacting with his AI computer to build the latest Iron Man suit. Using Chat GPT is kinda like that, if you squint just right. When you do a Google search, the algorithm scans the database and gives you links to articles and pages that might be what you’re looking for, and might not. You then click through the ads and hyperlinks to hopefully find what you need.

Chat GPT is a different kind of beast. You can ask it the same question as you did Google, and it reads the articles and summarizes the search findings for you. And if the information isn’t quite what you’re looking for, you can ask it to try again with tweaks—it learns what information is relevant to you. Its data is not current, however, so you shouldn’t attempt to use it for picking stocks.

So, how can you use this to generate movie ideas? Visit chat.openai.com, login, and just ask. The trick to getting good results is to tweak the wording of your question to get useful results. I went back to my “CSI Strategy” post and fed the listed headlines as prompts and asked for a high concept movie idea.

The AI spat out something like “Big Bird mourns the loss of an original ‘Sesame Street’ character.”

​After a couple more tries, I landed on the following prompt:

Can you generate 10 one-sentence high-concept movie ideas using one or more of the following prompts: "Original ‘Sesame Street’ Character Dies", "Antarctic sea creatures ‘trapped under ice’ for 50 years found after huge iceberg split", "America’s ‘office apocalypse’ is even worse than feared", "Kids from the 1960s imagine life in the year 2000 and their predictions are eerily accurate", "Prince Harry has been begging King Charles for money", "‘Shark Week’ blasted in Washington Post report for ‘overwhelmingly’ featuring ‘White men’ as experts"
 
And the AI came up with:

• A grieving Big Bird embarks on a journey to uncover the truth behind the mysterious death of an original "Sesame Street" character.
• When a massive iceberg splits, revealing a hidden world of Antarctic sea creatures, a team of scientists race to study them before they're lost again.
• In a bleak future where office culture has run rampant, a disillusioned worker joins a revolutionary movement to overthrow the corporate overlords.
• When a group of 1960s kids' futuristic predictions start coming true, an adult version of one of the kids must save the world from the dystopian future they envisioned.
• Prince Harry must navigate the political and financial consequences of his strained relationship with King Charles as he tries to secure funding for his endeavors.
• A diverse group of scientists and activists join forces to expose the lack of representation in "Shark Week" and bring attention to the marginalized voices in the shark research community.
• The remnants of a once-thriving office struggle to survive in a post-apocalyptic wasteland ruled by ruthless corporations and their armies of drones.
• A time-traveling adventure sees a young woman from the year 2000 team up with the kids from the 1960s to prevent a catastrophic event that could change the course of history.
• In a world where the only way to get ahead is to work long hours in soulless office jobs, a rebellious youth must choose between conforming or fighting the system.
• When the legendary "Sesame Street" characters are threatened by a shadowy figure, a former cast member must use their knowledge of the past to save the future.

 
Again, none of these are stellar. But some of them could be. Some of them are not at all dissimilar from my original concepts that I posted on the CSI Strategy page.

Isn’t this cheating?

Not really and absolutely. I say “not really” in the sense that ideas cannot be copyrighted. And unless you’re already successful in Hollywood, nobody is likely going to pay you for a mere idea. I don't own the copyright to any of the movie concepts I posted in any of my articles. If they inspire you to see something worth pursuing, by all means, run with them.

I say “absolutely” in the sense that this strategy cheats yourself. Developing concepts on the spot is something successful writers need to do, and it is a skill you won’t develop if AI is your crutch. The point of these exercises is to develop that writer's muscle.

Do this for a week and have fun with it. First develop your own 5 – 10 concepts, and then see what the AI comes up with. Tweak your prompts as you go. If I try this again, I would be clearer that I want concepts that combine the different headlines. As is, the results suggest that the AI looked at each headline discretely.