Friday, 20 September 2013

List of Potential Short Film Idea's and Genre's 1#

Psychological thriller - 

Example 1 - The Cleaner:

A single women, early to mid twenties, works as a part-time private cleaner in order to provide for her young son. Everyday after school she drops her son of at her Sisters to do job for any paying customers. She usually works till quite late so her son usually stays at her sisters house, and the mum picks him up in the morning. She normally works in the evening  people of whom want to go out in the evening. After working and coming home late one night, she opens the front door and notices a letter on the floor. The letter stats that an elderly women wants her to clean her house as she has overheard that she is the best in the area. She left a phone number, an address and a time and date. After a couple of days, she makes her way to this house, and is astonished that this women is waiting outside for her. She gives her the keys to the house and specifically tells her to do her room last. After cleaning every room in the house, and the time is reaching 11:00, she makes her way up to the final room. She notices that the door is adjacent though she hasn't been anywhere near there. She slowly creeps the door open and flicks the light on. When the light light's up the room, she notices that the room is full of photo's of her and her kid! She walks around a bit and notices a picture with her sister and her kid taken from this afternoon. She pulls her mobile out and attempts to call her sister, telling her to call the police. She doesn't hear to door open. She's whispering down the phone to tell her sister to get out and call the police. Then the door slams open but don't see who opened it. The last scene is of the mum, an extreme close-up of her face with an expression-less face. You hear the phone drop with her sister calling out. The phone cuts out and fade to black. DUH DUH DUHHHHH.



Planning and Research Checklist **In Progress**

Research 

  • Key concepts analysis (prompts on the blog hub)
  • Industry and Audience investigation (prompts on blog hubs)
  • Case Study of a short film maker (prompts on blog hubs)
  • Textual analysis of a short film (Camera, Editing, Sound, Mise En Scene)
  • Target Audience Research
  • Target Audience profile
  • Major Influences (collection of feature film extracts/short films/art/TV/Visual media with discussion of how they might influence your production work)
  • Short film analysis X2 (use key concepts)
  • Short Film magazine article/review X2
Planning/Progress

  • Pitch (made up of treatment, genre/narrative research, target audience research, major influences and any other sketches or drafts of key shots and film style)
  • Treatment (the whole idea written down)
  • Step outline (write down the narrative in shot by shot sections - prep for storyboard)
  • Location Recce (photos of each location with notes on how they'll be used)
  • Storyboard (digital photography - 20-30 panels)
  • Test Shots - edited and colour-corrected to experiment with various looks/style
  • Costume designs (can be photos/downloads)
  • Production Schedule 
  • Sound design - investigation into soundtracks and sound affects
  • Production notes and up-dates (if relent)
  • Paper edit - evidence of correctly logging and naming each clip
  • Editor's journal
  • Article script
  • Poster photo-shoot 
  • Poster drafts
  • Article layout 
  • Poster/Article production and post-production updates

Tuesday, 17 September 2013

Media Key Concept Analysis: Media Language Code and Conventions

Media Language Code and Conventions

Camera shots:

Cinematography is pretty much the same in short and feature length films. The same camera shoots and techniques that are primarily used in feature length films and used in short films. Basic camera shots consist of; Extreme wide angle (establishes the area), Wide angle (shows the entire person or area), Medium shot (shows the characters from the waste up or down. Most common shot used), Medium close up (shows characters in more detail and mostly shot between the shoulders and the head) Close Up (shows a specific part of the characters/objects in further detail than the Medium Close-up) and Extreme Close-up (close-ups in much, much more detail). 

Editing:




Friday, 13 September 2013

Media Key Concept Analysis: Representation.

1) Representation

Short films are distinctly different to feature length films. Other than the actual time of the films, there are still many more differences between the two. The narrative of a short film is not as descriptive and the movement between dates and time periods are very quickly. Short films usually have a specific thing that they mainly focus on, like a specific theme or message (alcoholism, drug use) or, they have a plot twist at the end. As shown in; 


Feature films are mostly mainstream. Obviously some aren't like Independent films and Art House films, put primarily they are. Short films aren't. They are often shown at film festivals and on online specific websites like Youtube and Vimeo. 

Stereotyping is something that is vastly used in short films. Because of the limited amount of time to show the narrative, stereotypes are used to emphasis characters. For example if the film wants to show 'Gangs in London', then all of the characters that are situated in the gangs will be wearing hoodies and speaking in slang. 

Short films in different countries are similar to feature films in different countries. They both vary from country to country. For example a Belgium film compared to an English film...