Poster Analysis

Bend It Like Backham


Alice in Wonderland Poster



Jennifers Body


Real Steel

SAMPLE QUESTIONAIRE

Here is our sample questionaire to help us establish our target audience is, what they think about short films and how they're film watching habits in general.

QUESTIONAIRE

Changing our original idea

After having watched and studied the short films ive realised that our storylines are to complicated for 5 minutes and having a short, interesting, simple storyline would be much better and would look good. For example, using a lot less characters, less locations and less narrative.
We therefore came up with this new idea which will be a hybrid documentary theme (mockumentary) in which we will make a fake student documentary taken in the aftermath of someones death. Over the course of filming, the interviews will unearth who his true friends are and the peer pressure youung people are under.

MYXOMATOSIS 13,704

OFF SEASON (on the BBC so must be very popular)




CRAZY HANDS 58,981

These three short films that i found have some differences but they also have a lot in common. For example:
They all have few locations, due to a low budget. Off season is a little different as they use two houses but that is all they use.
They averagely come to about 10 minutes in timing. Myxomatosis is 4.42. Crazy Hands is 7.25 and Off Season is 11.21. This is very short so usually all that the stories have is a moral story beneath the surface.
They all have an odd, comical story line.

What is a short film?

A short film is any film that is not long enough to be thought of as a feature film. But people can not decide what the boundary is for the length. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences define a short film as "an original motion picture that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits".
In North America a short film usually runs in 20-40 minutes and focuses mainly on character but in places including Europe and New Zealand a short film can be anything between 1 and 15 minutes and focuses mainly on story line and twists.

Genre Brain Storm

The Pitch , tittle tbc

Laura is from a middle class background but due to her fathers absence her and her mother are struggling to make ends meat. Her father left because the mother had an affair in which Laura now blames the mother for her fathers departure,
Her goal in life is to open her own tattoo parlour and for this there is in her eyes no need for any degree like qualifications. Therefore she does not want to go to university, but her mother disagrees and this is where there real conflict hits. It causes many a argument after argument. They both refuse to compromise with any ideas.
There is an alternative group of drop puts who go to lots of punk parties in random secret warehouses, Laura joins them and goes to one. In the moment, while high, they spontaneously decide to go away. She hurries home to grab some money and a few food supplies, knowing full well that her mother will not be happy with what she has done.
They arrive at this garage like building and everyone including Lauera is having a good time. Laura ends up kissing one of the guys, Jake, the one that is in charge and she has fallen for. But soon they run out of supplies and the guys go off to buy some more with the money that Laura took from her mum. While there goon the other girl, Hannah, admits to sleeping with Jake the night that Laura had kissed him.

Chosen idea

We have chosen to use Mehran's idea as we think it would be more practical. We decided that my idea had too much narrative and therefore would be much harder to shoot and Mehran had a good amount of narrative but a lot depended on the acting. We both felt that this would be the easier to accomplish with the short time we have being 5 minutes.


Mehran's Idea                                                                                Christabel's Idea

Good amount of narrative                                           Interesting narrative with twists and suprising elements
Dependent on script and acting.                                  Too much narrative is harder to shoot.

Interesting, fun                                                            Original idea
Plot to long for 5 minutes                                            Could be confusing and hard to understand storyline.
Relatable characters                                                   
Locations to hard to find.

Initial Ideas

Lucy and a group of friends go on holiday together, to get away after there exams. While on there way back Lucy talks to one of her friends about how difficult her parents can be and how she really doesn't get on with them. This conversation is so that the audience can get a small picture of her relationship with her parents before we get into the story. Lucy finally arrives home after a very long day of travelling to discover her parents don't know who she is. They allow her to stay one night in their house as it is late at night when she knocks on the door. The next morning they ask her to leave over breakfast. Obviously Lucy is extremely confused and doesn't quite understand what is happening. She knows as much as the audience does to why this is happening. After thinking for a while about what to do she decides that if she finds some photographs of her with her parents they may remember and everything will go back to normal but as she now cant get into the house she finds it a struggle to find this photos. Eventually she decides that maybe she should go to the police station and see if they may know something. As Lucy is over 16 they are allowed to give her her birth documents where Lucy finds out she is in fact adopted and these people she grew up with aren't in fact her real parents. At first she is worried and upset and confused, a mix of a lot of emotions but she knows the thing to do is to confront them. With birth certificate in hand and a strong want to meet her new parents she goes home, where her parents admit to everything and agree that maybe she should see her real birth parents. As soon as you see her birth parents you can tell instantly that these people are the people that Lucy looks like she grew up with. They sound like her, act like her and have that loud bubbly personality that lacked in her adopted parents.


For my initial idea i decided i wanted to do a teen thriller, the reason i wanted to do this was because it wasnt something that i had been interested in before and i thought that it would be a good change.

Narrative Revision

Every story has to have an equilibrium,a complication, a dis-equilibrium, a climax and then new equilibrium. They don't necessarily have to be in this order but a good plot will include each one somewhere.
Equilibrium - the introduction of the film where everything is normal.
Complication - disrupts the equilibrium, causing an unbalance.
Dis-Equilibrium - lack or loss of stability to equilibrium where the hero has to overcome obstacles.
Climax - The most intense, exciting or important point of the film. Either things will be the same as before or they will change.
New-Equilibrium - The equilibrium is balanced, but different to before. Usually better.

According to Propp, every story has to have several character types. A hero, a princess, a villain, a donor and a helper.
Hero - The hero has to overcome barriers which are presented in the dis equilibrium.
Princess - The princess is a distraction to the hero and a prize that the hero will get at the end of the story.
Villain - The villain will try and stop the hero by presenting barriers that the hero has to overcome.
Donor - The donor will help the hero by offering him or her something.
Helper - The helper is like the side kick to the Hero.