Question 1 evaluation kayla

A.    The main task

At the very start of the course our task was to analyse a few short films and learn how they were shot and what forms they came in. I analysed a fair few and I picked up on a few techniques I thought we could work into our short film. Our short film is different to other short films, as it does not have the codes and conventions of any particular genre. When my group was planning what shots we would use for our film I did take the idea of panning old photos from a film called prisoners wives as it gave our film more depth showing that our character Elsa has a past which is a similar reason why it was done in prisoners wives, it gives the audience more insight into the characters life.

Another film we took ideas from was a film I analysed called ‘The little witch’ the film is about a little girl’s relationship with her dad and how she and him are very close. The genre of the film at first seems like a family friendly drama but as the film progresses it is revealed that the daughter is not actually his daughter and there is actually a witch running around with them impersonating his daughter so by the end, all of the conventions of this film used make it a horror. Similarly to our film where we start off showing a happy old lady talking about her life to a man and it is later revealed that the man in the suit she is talking to has actually come to take her life and this is the idea that her reminiscing her life with him is the last few minutes people get as their life flashes before their eyes. The differences between our film and The little witch is that by the end of The little witch it is very apparent to the viewer that this is a horror due to the non-diegetic soundtrack and slow tilt up from under the girls bed creating tension as the last character is almost revealed. Where as ours isn’t a horror.

We decided we would not reveal the man in the suits identity until the end as it made the overall 5 minutes enigmatic as the viewer would be questioning the man in the suits identity.

In our short film we decided we wanted to use a sand timer as a key prop as the grim reaper generically holds a scythe but we later found out he also held a sand timer but a sand timer is not normally associated to the grim reaper so we thought it would be a small clue as to who the man is without giving too much away. Most short films I analysed didn’t have any clues or hints towards the storyline, characters or plot but that’s most probably due to the genres.

All of the short films I analysed used mise en scene as a very important factor to create a lifelike portrayal of their characters. In our film we used mise en scene to create a middle class character. We used a tea set as a prop to show this was an important conversation for our character but also to show the main character owns a tea set as most lower class people wouldn’t. We chose a casual attire for her costume which was a brightly coloured t shirt and a white cardigan as our short film is set in present day and her costume is something the actual actor would have chosen to wear and as we based the character of off the actors age and some of her life we thought it would be best to keep her in something she would be comfortable to wear.

Most short films tend to have a non-diegetic soundtrack running through the film, which is parallel to the films genre as did ours. It is a lot easier to have a non-diegetic soundtrack playing throughout the whole film as it is short enough and only has one mood throughout. In our short film we decided to use restricted narration as it kept the identity of the man in the suit more hidden. The elderly lady knew his identity yet the audience did not.

B.

Each group member did his or her own poster design. We all took completely different approaches to it. For my poster design I decided to go against the generic film poster design of including loads of bulky writing with slogans and quotes from reviews and I decided I would let the image speak for itself. I included a 5 star rating with no quotes and no slogan to the film yet my poster had out bold title (the same exact font from the movie) running along side the main image of a man in a suit standing in dark and foggy wooded area. I included film festival logos just above the title. I decided to use this image to challenge the average forms and conventions of short film poster as the ones I looked at that had an image of characters all had the protagonist on the front as the main image, whereas on my poster I just have a dark image of the antagonist the man in the suit.