Post 6: What makes a good short film ?

As this was our first ever making of a short film our school organised for Becky Knapp, a short film expert to attend a triple lesson we had and give us three lessons on what makes a good short film.



She began by showing us a variety of short films that she had worked on. After watching them we were told that short films vary depending on the length of them. If the films length is less than 5 minutes, it will normally have a 'jokey' plot and very stereotypical characters who don't elaborate on their character much if at all. Films that lasted between 5-12 minutes would have a more original plot and the characters would go through a journey of some sort. If the short film went from 12-30 minutes there would be more than one storyline and the characters would be unique and have multiple traits. We were told that directors, producers and script writers use short films as a stepping stone into to main feature length industry. To quote Becky Knapp- 'Short films are a show case of talent'.



She provided us with many scripts, some of which she herself has worked on. Two of the scripts she left were 'Donna' and 'Does God play football?'. When reading through these scripts I took a big liking to 'Does God play football?' as I liked the simplistic innocence to the main character and how his imagination and reality are quite different and how the voice over gives such a innocent insight into his character. By giving us these scripts we also had the layout for what our scripts should look like.
I was also very interested in 'On a life's edge'. I was really intrigued as to how you as an audience watching it make the assumption that the two main characters are police officers because of their behaviour. However the twist at the end makes the audience realise that they aren't police officers, but they are angels helping people through purgatory.



We were told that or target audience would be very narrow, as it is mainly film critics, short film festival audiences and media/ film students who watch short films therefore when creating our short film we were advised to try to appeal to that audience by making our genre of choice possibly one that is regularly viewed within that narrow audience. Becky also told us that when she reviews a script (especially first drafts) as well as many critics, they find that many of them try to put in too much information and have trouble conveying all that information in a short amount of time.




After Becky Knapps very helpful lesson I decided that I required a little bit more information as to what makes a good short film. I used the Internet and was amazed as to how much information there was on how to make a good short film.

The BBC at the time was doing a special review of short films and had written an article on what makes a good short film. http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/guide/introduction/what-makes-a-good-short
They broke what makes a good short film down into 8 different sections to which I will briefly explain:

1. An exciting and original idea: They advise that you should try to avoid cliche ideas and a way to get a original idea is to watch many more short films. They also talk about how you can draw inspiration from everyday things such as newspapers, television and even personal experiences.


2. A strong script: In this section they confirmed what Becky said in that many scripts are packed too much with information and that a way to get a condensed script is to get as much feedback as possible.


3. Good acting: This would be a vital piece of information as you don't want to cast someone who is terrible at acting as you want the acting to convey the messages you are trying to give across. If you have a bad actor it can ruin your perfectly good short film.


4. High production values: This is where you have to ensure that even though your filming a short film you need to make sure sound, camera work, lighting and editing are of the best quality. They go on to say that too many films are ruined by bad quality.


5. Keeping it short: This was basically a reminder that even though we are making short films the longer you make it the harder it is to keep the audiences attention.


6. Strong beginning: To grab your audiences attention you have to make the beginning as interesting and engaging as possible. There is very little point in making all the engaging parts of the film at the end as the audience wont grasp it and not be as interested as they could be.


7. Avoid repetition and punchline twists: They stressed that it is important not to become repetitive and that comedy is difficult to use in short films. I was then advised that if I was going to do comedy that I shouldn't leave the punchline until the end and that I should make them short and snappy.


8. Exciting techniques and style: By using exciting techniques and style I can give my script a more interesting twist as it will add effect to the story and make the overall story much more interesting.

By using Becky Knapps knowledge and the advice by the BBC I had a through understanding as to what makes a good short film and applied this knowledge to my own script writting.

Post 4- Genre as a media concept

http://klsmediadepartment.blogspot.com/2010/09/genre-as-media-concept.html

Task: Think about these questions in relation to your AS coursework opening sequence. Create a post on your blog reflecting on your thoughts.

The first slide revolves around Robert Altman and his theories into genre.

• Genres are defined by producers and are easily recognised by the audience.- We as a class agreed that it was the producers who make sure that certain conventions are portrayed in certain films, causing us the audience to recognise those conventions with that genre of film. However we also noticed that sometimes it is hard to establish what genre a film falls into, as many films are now 'hybrid' films (a film consisting of more than one genre). Personally I believe that audiences can recognise genres, however you can always find conventions of other genres in that film. For our opening sequence we mixed two genres, that we believed hadn't been mixed before- Teen drama and Psychological thriller. As a group we believed that because we mixed two popular genres, our target audience would also increase.
• That texts 'belong' clearly to a particular genre in each case.-We as a class agreed that yes in some films it is very easy to say that's an action film or that's a romcom. However, as many producers have realised that the incorperation of two or more genres can potentially bring you a larger target market, more and more films contain a mixture of genres, making it a bit more difficult for the audience to decide which genre that film belongs to. Our opening sequence consisted of two genres- teen drama and psychological thriller. Our genres overlapped each other allot during the opening sequence making it harder for the audience to determine which genre our film really came from.
• Genres develop in particular ways.- Yes some genres develop in particular ways. Sci-fi and animation for example will continue to grow with technology continually developing. A development for example is many animated films now becoming 3-D.
• Texts in a genre share key characteristics.- Our class agreed that you can recognise certain traits or conventions in certain genres, making them distinctive and separate from the rest. However as more and more genres get infused together, it becomes harder and harder to define the certain traits within the film as they become mixed up with the other genre. In our opening sequence we mixed the conventions of teen drama and psychological thriller together, which did confuse some audience members.
• Genres are ideological- we agreed that its the producers who decide what makes a genre a genre and that they as high powered individuals decide what they want us to associate with that genre. This could apply to our opening sequence as we were the people in charge of choosing the genres and how to portray the genres to the audience.
• They are not specifically located through history- As a class and personally, I belive that throughout modern history you can pin point when a genre was most successful. For example the Western genre was incredibly popular during the 1950-60's. Now a days cause there is next to no market for the genre hardly any wild westerns are produced any more.
• Genre critics are distanced from the practice of genre, or its workings- Because genre critics normally have next to nothing to do with films for example, then who are they to question genre.

Slide 2:

• Might ways in which we label and divide objects, texts and people be constructed in ways that serve particular interests, rather than in logical, natural patterns? (Mcdougall J)
  We established that it is the producers that define the genres, that label and divide the objects, people and text. They do this so they are easily recognisable for the audiences. However they are not always true depcitions of e.g a subculture of people, just a stereotype. However it is because it is a stereotype that we recognise it to be that subculture.
• Should we read genre as a noun or a adjective ? - (Altman R)

Slide 3: Tomato Puree- Where would you find it in the supermarket?

• In class we used the example of tomato puree, much to everyones confusion. We then went to understand that many, many supermarkets supply the product, however as we discussed we couldn't agree on an exact location for the product, with some people saying with the condiments and some saying world food aisle. We then linked this back to genre. We agreed that becasue something is somewhere else, does that change the object in itself ? In terms of films and genre, different people focus on different code and convetions they have associated with the genre. Other people will focus on different aspects of that genre, however the genre is still the same.

Slide 4: For you take as students when considering genre is NOT 'how does genre work? But why does genre work ?

Why does genre work? I believe that genre works beacuse of how we as an audience recognise the labelling that is put forward to us and serves the interests of the producers etc. Genres are labelledbecasue they help make it easy for the audience to recognise what codes and conventions they are putting forward, but also for the producers becasue it helps them identify a gap in the market. This then helps them establish which genre is at its peak of popularity.

Slide 5: According to Neale (1980)

Post 3- Skills table

We were set the task of analysing the skills that we had developed over the course of the As media tasks. We analysed these skills by putting them in a table.



This section was read out by Rachael Davis. She explained the cognitive skills that were developed.



This is my section. I explain the skills developed in our interpersonal skills.


This is Anthony's section. He explains how our skills developed technically.




I think that the skills level that I had at the beginning of the course have improved dramatically. However me and my group from the first task have agreed that within our interpersonal skills we could have been more creative.

Targets that I aim to achieve by next year:
1:Be more creative when thinking of how to break from conventions with the characters and storyline of the story.

2: The overall organisation of the project. When planning the project this year, we didn't realise how long we had intended the opening sequence to be. Therefore when given a time limit we must keep to the time limit.

3: Working on my interpersonal skills so that the group works efficiently and without problems. As i have

4:Developing my creativity skills in Photoshop, although I have some experience already, I aim to develop these further by using the programme to its full potential when relevant.

5: Making sure that my blog is in chronological order, kept up to date as regularly as possible and all blogs completed.

Post 2: Creatvity

As I am a media student, I have to deal with many problems such as being creative when developing a project, e.g. a short film. However we often find it difficult to define creativity. Is it just random ideas that come into our head or is it us actually making those ideas come to life ?

To create this image we played a game called Consequences. The game involves a group of people making a sentence that have no meaning at all. Our sentence was 'The incredible house hopped the dead Anthony'. The game involves a group of people writing words down. The first person writes 'the' plus an adjective. The person then folds the piece of paper over, so that no-one else can see. The second person writes a noun and folds the paper. The third writes a verb, then folds it over. The fourth gives the game another 'the' and an adjective. The fifth writes another noun. Going by these rules we created the sentence 'The incredible house hops over the dead Anthony'. I think this is a very creative take on our word, as I have taken each word quite literally and infused the images together so that it depicts the sentence.

I used Photoshop to create my image. I decided the best way for my image to represent the sentence would be by taking the sentence literally. The incredible hulk represents the word incredible. The bouncy castle is the house. The coffin and the man ( called Anthony) represent the dead Anthony. And the black lines represent the house hopping. I believe that the Game of Consequences was a enjoyable experience as not only did it give us some enjoyment and also tested our creativity as we each had to depict an image representing the sentence.


This is our video on creativity. We were given free reign on what we could do, however we must include a pen in there somewhere. We decided to make the pen human like and call it Penny. We thought that Penny should walk thought the school and interact with people along the way. Not being able to think of a way to end the clip, we thought that Penny should be run over by a car.


Personally I believe that this was creative as we changed the pen from an object to a humanistic character. Seeing as this was our second attempt at being creative, we had a much clearer idea on what we wanted to achieve and how to do it.




This was my own personal creative piece of work. I decided to create a poster to a sequel of an existing film Rock'n'Rolla. Following the storyline from the original film, I based several images such as the money and bullet holes on the poster. I also used images of actors who were in the original film such as Idris Elba. I manipulated the images to create the poster using photoplus. I believe that this is creative as I manipulated the images to get the desired effect. I also created my own catch line- A new type of western showdown in London. I believe this is creative as its original and has a essence of the old wild western showdowns, but in a modern day London.

My Defenition on creativity:
Creativity is the ability to generate ideas that are original and appropriate (Linda Naiman) . Creativity is also the ability to bring the ideas from an imaginary thought to reality.

post 1: Defining skills

need to define the term skills as it will help us understand the skills we already posses and which ones we need to develop.

A skill is the learned capacity to carry out pre-determined results often with the minimum outlay of time, energy, or both.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skills

Skills: The ability to do something well, usually gained through training or experience
http://encarta.msn.com/dictionary_/skill.html

Proficiency, facility, or dexterity that is acquired or developed through training or experience.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Skills

My definition:
A skill is a capability that we learn through many processes. Mainly the skill is learnt by being taught the specific skill. Most skills are used in day to day life and that we use these skills to cope with the modern world. Skills can be linked to the media industry because of the changing demands that media forces us to meet. This can be linked to our media production by myself learning how to use a piece of equipment, such as the edit suite or how to create something, such as an editied picture on the computer.