GWHS Short Film Festival

Now it was time to have our own mini 'Short film' festival to show off the films we had found. Out of the few films we had each chosen, we had to chose one in which we wished to enter into the film festival. This film had to be worthy (in our opinion) of winning the overall film festival including pitching the reasons behind choosing the film. 

As we watched each of the shorts, we had to rate the film out of 20, 10 for the actual film and 10 for the pitch given about the film. 

So without further ado here are the nominations for best film short at GWHS....

Dan Vidmar-

Film:Inside
Director: Trevor Sands

Fim: 8/10        Pitch: 4/10

Tilly Whitehouse-

Film:One Man's Loss
Director:Phillip Sanson 

Film: 9/10       Pitch: 4/10

Deanna Hopps

Film: Post it
Director: Michael Evans

Film:   8/10     Pitch: 7/10

Jack Parkes- 

Film: Writer's Block
Director: Tom Gran & Martin Woolley

Film: 9/10       Pitch:   7/10

Lucy Smith- 

Film: Dead Girl 
Director: Jack and Dean

Film:  8/10          Pitch:  7/10

Dan Springthorpe- 

Film: Awake
Director: Danny Blackstock, Stephanie Bourgeois, Glen Cheng, Melinda NG

Film: 8/10          Pitch: 3/10

Sam Lenton- 

Film: Knowing Too Much
Director: Matthew Morton

Film: 6/10         Pitch: 6/10

Tina Vidmar-

Film: Time
Director: Liam Connor

Film:  10/10     Pitch: 4/10

Tom Bentley-

Film: Perfect Life
Director: Jared Lee, Marianne Tan

Film: 6/10      Pitch: 4/10

Cameron Hargreaves: 

Film: Alone
Director: Brock Torunski

Film:  7/10          Pitch: 7/10

And the winner of the overall short film festival is.....POST IT by Michael Evans. And the prize is...well just to say that it won the film short at GWHS really!

So now we've had chance to watch some different shorts and get an idea of what types of shorts there are we now need to start thinking about our own short films and what will make our storyline follow the typical aspects of a short.

More Film Shorts Research

After being shown some examples of shorts and what they basically contain through evaluating certain features as mentioned in the previous post. Now it was my turn to research some film shorts and then evaluate them. Really it was wise for me to find some shorts that stick as close to my brief as possible to give me an idea of the layout of the type of short film I will be producing. There is however an example of an animated short just to show the concept of this way of producing a short film. 

So when researching the film shorts, I decided to follow the publisher of the fist 3 film shorts we watched to see the different examples they had to offer as many of these short films were award winning films. Therefore I presumed it would be wise to use them as examples for films to critically analyse.
One Man's Loss

The first film found was called One Man's Loss. The duration of this film is 6:02 so its roughly matching the 5 minute time limit our brief gives us. It is also live action which is also part of our brief. Heres the clip so why not take a look.



In this short we see the typical twist we have been referring to in the previous post of shorts. In this case, the poor male at the beginning of the short ends up becoming the better man out of the two male characters. The other twist is that the higher archy male ends up becoming the worse off character, losing everything he holds dearly also seen as Karma for his bad attitude towards the male at the beginning of this short. 
The use again of the sudden emotion path that this short takes us on is quick and fast pace so that we can reach the twist at the end of the clip and come to the conclusion that everyone got what they deserved (stolen clothes and no girlfriend for some so not always positive) 
The sound used throughout the clip including the songs matched the feelings and emotions in each phase of the clip ensuring that they audience clearly understand how each other characters is feeling or about to feel without actually telling them 'oh I really hate him so now I', going to walk out and then drive off in his car with a man I don't know...yay.' because that would just be boring. The music is what drives this clip and links each emotion to the next. 

The choice of camera shots also allow the emotions to be closely followed. Like when the male and female slap each other, by getting a close up of the female before she slaps the male represents this idea of there being a chance they get together. The moment he tells her the other woman he's with means nothing to him, the sensitivity goes and the fight breaks out. 

The audience would in a way see the humour at the end especially with the song and the way life turns out and changes for both the male characters. This idea of them swapping roles would show karma to the audience as well as giving them a surprising twist at the end. 


Waste
The next short found takes a different approach whereby it takes the life of an everyday bored male that doesn't look after himself (as do many males today) and showing the way in which his life changes when he meets the female in this short. The duration of this clip is 9;44 which is a little over but still following similar concepts.




Wasted shows this idea of us all having our secrets with the twist of the clean perfect female actually having a cupboard filled with a mess represented through animated monster pop up designs. By having this twist, it gives the audience the message that we aren't all clean perfect humans, we do make a mess once and a while. 

The idea of taking everyday situations and turning them into something out of the norm with the use of animated characters to represent the mess the male character makes in his flat and at work. By doing this it again takes the audience on this surprising emotional journey that goes through phases of shock, humour and surprise (or realisation of someone seeing themselves in this clip maybe!) 

The audience see the idea of the stereotypical male being the messy one and they aren't afraid to hide it. Then then show the stereotype that a female is always tidy and takes over and sorts out the males mess. This is the twisted, coming away from hegemonic ideas showing the hidden female messy side which would leave the audience with an unsuspected twist at the end. 


The Barberless Barber
This film short is a little different to the previous film shorts as it takes a different approach in the way it is set but still follows the same concept of there being a twist at the end of the clip. It also follows this humorous side though the onscreen action and strange sounds and music used throughout. 



This short take a slightly different approach to the other shorts we've seen in that it follows the Charlie Chaplin route with the comical over exaggerated movement and body language as well as the slightly jumpy  old fashioned setting to the short. 
The idea of a typical journey a male would take even in todays era (chances are they'll probably have money and jobs are all advertised and applied for online but you get the idea) and then taking us on the highs and lows of the journey with again THE TWIST!
By having this unusual element of the barber not actually being a barber surprises the audience a litre. It isn't really seen today so in the era this short is set it is even more peculiar. 
The music adds to this peculiar journey with the unusual chromatically key music used within the clip. This music gives it this circus idea which symbolises weird and wonderful things being discovered as the progress of the short journey continues.                          
The audience would find this humorous with the final outcome of the whole journey as we see it was all done for nothing really which would be funny to the audience watching this short.

Geri's Game
This may not be following the brief in which we were given with it being an animation, however this short does show that the same ideas can be applied to animations as well with the humour and twists. This is more around the length of the film we need including titles and credits.



This short is obviously aimed at children and so the humour of this short is aimed at their knowledge and abilities to understand concepts used in this short. 
The idea of the male playing chess on his own is humorous in itself (debatable but for children it would be) and so the audience would see this as a twist in that he's basically playing a game that will be lose win to him. 
The comedy elements such as him disappearing under the chair is quite humorous to the audience as they think he's joking around playing this game when in actual fact he really is playing as two different people. 
The idea of taking a genuine situation and making it humours like in this short where they get him to play by himself and him disappearing etc is funny to the audience choice as they'll understand the basics of the game chess. 
This clip shows that animations can follow the same concept of the shorts genre and basic layout. it has a twist, humour and an everyday or typical situation made unusual. 

So there you have 4 clips with some similar and different approaches to shorts. However they all follow the same concept of being unusual or humorous or even both or neither depends on your humour and sense of judgement probably. So these shorts will be shared with others to see if they have the same opinions and critical conclusion that I came to when watching the shorts.

Film Shorts

In class, as part of our research as to 'what a film short is' we watched 3 examples of film shorts to give us an idea of what we will be aiming for. As you will see some of the clips have different and similar approaches to achieving a successful film short. We watched each of the clips with three questions in mind to allow us to discuss what makes these shorts so successful. The questions were: 

• What was good about this short?
• Why would an audience find it appealing?
• Who would be the target audience for this short film?

The Black Hole

Here is the first example of a short film called The Black Hole we watched.



Evaluation

Here are the notes that were made individually and as a class about this short.

The title design at the beginning followed the idea of the film. Due to it being about a black hole and the title and film being revealed by a black hole was cleverly incorporating the whole idea of the film. 
The futuristic sound effects used for the black hole every time the male put his had in it emphasised the idea of this being abnormal to an everyday situation such as in an office. 

The use of low key lighting adds the dramatic effect upon the scenes unfolding in front of us. The idea that the male shouldn't be in that specific room is reflected through the flickering light at the beginning of his entrance to the room.

The fast pace editing when the male steals more and more money builds up the emotions in which we feel as we know he really should be doing this or the feeling he is going to get caught. It also emphasises his greed.

The audience will go through a range of emotions in this clip from a sense of surprise to shock to the satisfaction of the male getting what he deserved for his actions. This is done quickly through a series of events that come one after another. 

The idea of karma being given to the male at the end. The twist of him getting traps shows that your actions can lead to consequences. 

"Whats Virgin Mean?"



Evaluation

The film gives us that 'chuckle' comedy factor where by we find it humorous rather than a 'belly laugh' due to the clever use of double meanings. 
The symbolism throughout adds to the comedic value. When the woman is whisking for example it adds to the crude idea of how babies are made which amuses the audience and clearly shows the actions.
The audience would see the humorous side of the clip seen as though the twist at the end is rather far from the definition of virgin the girl was talking about. The twist of it being on about oil is rather funny to the audience and making them chuckle at the unexpected twist. 
The awkwardness of this situation also would make the audience cringe slightly which is typical for a situation such as this,again like The Black Hole, taking the audience though an emotional journey.  

Strangers



Evaluation

There is no real speech in this short a bit like the first film short. The music and sounds tell the story as well as the on screen action and facial features. 

The clever political aspect that subtly creep in to the short as we get more and more into the clip, revealing each of the characters political motives.

The audience would be again taken on an emotional journey going through fazes however they would be much more subtle than that of the first two. The other two are funny or abnormal where as this one is cleverly produced to show the serious aspect of the three parties. 
The subtle ways in which the politics are introduces wouldn't seem obvious at first but once clearly understood, the short is clever in the way in which it tells the story of two opposites coming together to fight a common enemy.



Similarities
Well all 3 of these shorts have a wide target audience range. The audience these film shorts are aimed at are aimed at vague audience types such as male, female, adult, child etc but not specifically an exact audience criteria. 

Between the 'Whats a Virgin?' and 'The Black Hole' this humorous element is clear with the double meanings in the 'Whats a Virgin?' and the karma humoured ending in 'The Black Hole'. This humour as found in the re search is a common theme of film shorts.

There is a twist at the end of all 3 of these film shorts. The take a situation, tell a story and then give it some form of comical or political twist to give the audience the element of surprise.

Differences
The 'Strangers' short makes use of political views with the idea of two opposites coming together to escape a common enemy. This short takes a different approach to the other two shorts which use humour throughout their story line. The 'Strangers' is a rather serious short where as the others are really just taking everyday situations and adapting them to turn them into something 'out of the norm'. Its not everyday you get attacked on a train really...well depending on where you are anyway!


So thats three examples of some short films. Now its my turn to find three more different shorts to critically analyse. Hopefully that shouldn't be too difficult to find 3 shorts...should it? 
These will be posted in the next post, until then.

What is a 'short film'?

So when we refer to a film as being a 'short', what exactly do we mean? 

Definition of a short:

A film that isn't long enough to be considered a full length feature film. The film comes under the 'shorts' category when it is 40 minutes or less in length. This includes the credits and the titles as if they ran over and made the film 41 minutes that wouldn't be a short film wouldn't be a short film. 
It sounds extremely professional to call it a 'short' which you may think is why we call it a short rather than a short film but lets be honest...its just because we're all too lazy to say short film!

Background shorts

Short films started to appear around 1910 in the USA where the films were animated (not real people, cgi and what not) or live action (people on screen acting). The films then were mostly made and developed to make people laugh (or at least try to). 




The shorts industry (no not the clothes) went through a rough patch where their popularity decreased but low and be hold things started to improve when the famous charlie Chaplin came about (the famous mime that walked like a penguin). He started the crazy of making short films again but after that short films again weren't that popular. 










Today the only film companies that have made a few shorts are Pixar, famous for its 'lamp' short and many more, and disney. Here is a short film animation created by Pixar called 'For the Birds' which is one of their most recent shorts.




Short films are usually created by small industries with a low budget but Pixar and Disney prove this isn't always the case. However most short films today are produced and published onto sites such as youtube.


Now we've distinguished what a short film actually is we could do with seeing what makes up a short film and seeing a few other real life examples of shorts, some of which are multi award winning!

A2 Brief

So in the A2 course, although there isn't as much research to do, the number of tasks we have to complete make up for it! 
Bellow you will see the course outline. This is the brief overview of what we all must achieve and complete in this course, then with the option of what route we take to achieve the course goal. 

This states that we have to create a media product along with two other forms of
media. Our technical abilities again will be highly assessed swell as the planning, creating and evaluation of each of the 3 tasks.

Here are the evaluation in which we be keeping in mind and answered at the end as
part of this course. There are only 4 but each question requires thorough critical analysis (basically it can't just say ' it was good' otherwise you're probably not going to get any better than an E).

Once the brief had been read it was time to chose the area in which we were going to create our media product. There were 14 choices ranging from a band video to magazine cover. In the end we decided to go for this brief.

The filming process is familiar to us and so thought it would be a good choice to go with this brief. As you can see there are 3 options for our ancillary task but we only have to chose 2...more decisions! 

After discussing the options this is what our final brief looks like

A short film in its entirety, lasting approximately five minutes, which is live action, together with the two options chosen bellow: 

• a poster for the film 

• a film magazine review page featuring the film

Even though we now have our brief it would be rather useful to know what exactly is the definition of a short film, so thats the next step.

Welcome

Hi all! Charlotte Billingham here. I'm a student at Great Wyrley High School who has completed her AS media course and is now moving on to A2. 
Here I will be posting my journey through my coursework process with its three sections (more about that later) chosen from the OCR course. 

Hope you continue to read on and follow the filming process. If so...enjoy!