if im making a movie on an island, is it best to use an island that is real on earth?
or can i make it up totally.?

like put an island say next to tasmania and name it what ever i want.

or is it best two use one that is really there and do research for the island and incorporate it in my movie?

It's a question about control. With a fictional island, the rules are created by you. If its an actual island, your limited on creativity room because of environment, tides, etc.

Gabe

so do you think its best to make up an island and mayb base it on a few that i know?

and put it off the coast of one of the real countrys on earth?

Where it is located is totally up to you. I agree that it is better to make up the island completely, but just place it somewhere on earth where it COULD actually exist.

IMO it really depends on what you are writing about actually. IMHO, it seems better to create new worlds since the writer is in control of his or her world. You put the limitations and guidleines on how the world works; but it seems difficult since it has to be believeable But, it all depends on the content matter.

Gabe

ok thanks for the help mate.

what about making up an island but locating it on earth, where a real island exists today.

do you think that is ok to do?

why is ok to create an island located on earth?

Gabe

Dude, you can do whatever you want as long as it somewhat makes sense.  I think I get what you're saying with creating an island but having it in the place of an already existing island.  Kind of like the Grand Theft Auto series, where Vice City is Miami, Liberty City is Chicago, San Andreas consists of Vegas, LA, and San Francisco...right?  I don't really know why you would want to create a fictional island off of a real island, but like I said, as long as you can make sense of it.  If you can't make sense of it, then chances are no one else can.  

Hope that helps!

yes i mean exactly like Grand Theif Auto.

so as long as it make sense it works.

Yes.  You can make up the name of the island and stick it wherever you like.

If your film is getting made, the director is going to know how to use camera angles and stock footage to make your imaginary island come to life.

"Lost" is set on a fictionalised island and look how well that's turned out. Except they've kind of lost a little bit of credibility with the whole cloud of black smoke that can pick people up and throw them around, uproot trees and make noises like a dinosaur. But, still, you get my point.


Cheers, Chismeister.

The novel "A simple story" by S.Y. Agnon, which I had to read for literature last year, takes place in the fictional city of "shvosh", even though it's clearly based on Agnon's birthplace.  Because he was criticizing the town, he decided to change the name.

If your piece is in the category of Jurassic Park or Treasure Island, you want a fictional island (Jurassic Park takes place on an anonymous island "near Costa Rica").  If you're doing say, a drama about one of the people of a different culture who lives there, a real island makes more sense.

Lets see what my good freind Vladimir Nabokov has to say about the matter at hand:

"To minor authors is left the ornamentation of the commonplace: these do not bother about any reinventing of the world; they merely try to squeeze the best they can out of a given order of things, out of traditional patterns of fiction. The various combinations these minor authors are able to produce within these set limits may be quite amusing in a mild ephemeral way because minor readers like to recognize their own ideas in a pleasing disguise. But the real writer, the fellow who sends planets spinning and models a man asleep and eagerly tampers with the sleeper’s rib, that kind of author has no given values at his disposal: he must create them himself. The art of writing is a very futile business if it does not imply first of all the art of seeing the world as the potentiality of fiction. The material of this world may be real enough (as far as reality goes) but does not exist at all as an accepted entirety: it is chaos, and to this chaos the author says "go!" allowing the world to flicker and to fuse. It is now recombined in its very atoms, not merely in its visible and superficial parts. The writer is the first man to mop it and to form the natural objects it contains. Those berries there are edible. That speckled creature that bolted across my path might be tamed. That lake between those trees will be called Lake Opal or, more artistically, Dishwater Lake. That mist is a mountain—and that mountain must be conquered."

If you don't want to take the time to read that (which I recommend you do, from a fabulous speech called 'Good Readers and Good Writers'), what he's basically saying is don't let the real world limit you.  Make up your own place, don't even be limited by the world at all, let your new location and story come alive.

-Tyler

i took the time to read what was said and thanks for replying. i guess thats another rule to remember, try not to limit my self to the real word.