Reflective paragraph

In preperation for our short film production I anaylised a variety of short films through different genres. By doing this it showed me what I would need to put into our short film including; the plot, ideas around the film,

I also researched audeince theorys to know who our target audience are and how we can encaptulate them in our short film.

Joy Ride Analysis

The short we looked at today in class was called joy ride, this short film explores the concept of causality. this is when one sequence of events cause another sequence of events to happen and so on through out the film. the film is about a electrician who is sent out to fix a fault in a pylon but thinks its not worth bothering with so he decides to go home. then he finds a man in the road, gets kidnapped and and goes through a series of events through out he ordeal.  

I have made a flow chart of the causality concept and how it works in this video. 

The man doesn't fix the pylon >      

which causes him to drive home early >      

that causes him to come across a man in the road >     

that then in turn causes him to get kidnapped >    

when he is in the boot the cuts the brake light wire >       

which made the police to pull the kidnappers over on the side of the road >      

then that causes him to scream for help >      

which causes the kidnappers to kill the police >     

that then causes them to drive off again faster >      

he tries to escape again but gets petrol over him in the boot >      

which makes him disable the electrics for the lights >      

which then makes the kidnappers crash >     

the boot opens >     

kidnapper holds a knife to the mans throat >    

the man head buts the kidnapper >      

the man walks up to the road which happens to be next to the same pylon that he didn't fix >       its still sparking >     

sparks hit him  >     

which ignites the petrol which kills him.

This theory of causality is used in big block buster films, in most films this is what most story lines are made up of, but it is more subtle than the use of causality in this short film as they use it just as a frame for the story line, not the main point like they used it for in this short film as there is an element of irony because if he fixed the problem in the first place he wouldn't have died. 

Change in our idea

After looking into our idea and storyboarding it a few times we realised that it wasn't really going to hold out for a short film, because of this we decided to come up with a new idea.

Our new idea was about a small robot, who comes to life, and goes on an adventure, over the course of his adventure he becomes more and more curious of his surroundings, this, in the end, leads to his untimely demise by unforeseen circumstances.

The film is based around the saying 'curiosity killed the cat' and because of this the title of our new short film will be 'Curiosity'

The idea seems to be much better and shows allot more potential than the old one.

Genre theory.

Genre depends on the acceptance of generic conventions. The definition of a genre or genres is A set of types/groups which any medium may be classified.

•Western  Science-Fiction  Comedy

•Sitcom  Quiz Show  Soap

•Reggae  Drum n Base  Jazz

In each case the acknowledgement of genre depends on the acceptance of generic conventions   

 John Fiske - ‘Any one programme will bear the main characteristics of its genre, but is likely to include some from others: ascribing it to one genre or another involves deciding which set of characteristics are most important

Richard Maltby and Ian Craven- 'The success of Hollywood is reliant on the combination of predictable elements with variation'

Auteurs - A group of film makers that were considered to be particularly influential and artistic.

Edward Buscombe felt that iconography was the best way to achieve generic definitions.

Rick Altman-Genre theory presumes that viewers pre-read texts.

                        -Viewers become passive voyeurs

                        -Genres are therefore restrictive

                  -Does not acknowledge or allow for the hybrid - the blending of genres.

short films

We looked at some short films in class, the one that stood out to me and i decided to write about is called 'shelf life'

Shelf life shows a man undergoing a series of safety procedures before beginning to drill into his wall, a certificate that we see shows he is a health and safety officer and has been rewarded for his accomplishments.
Once the man begins to drill into the wall, we see another shot of an elderly man, his face drops and he falls as we notice his head has been penetrated by the safety mans drill. The credits roll and we see the man continuing to drill a series of holes. The film then ends.

The reason i chose to analyse this film is because of the unseen twist that happens towards the end, where the elderly man is killed. The twist really draws your attention into the film more, as it is very unexpected. What makes this so intriguing is the way the main character is set out to be very safety conscious, this leads us to believe he has taken every precaution and that the foreseeable events will run very smoothly, this is then completely changed as wee see the character accidentally kill a man, and not even know he has done it.
This adds a very comical yet cynical feel to the film and makes it very enjoyable to watch.

This short film is about mundane everyday things, and a lot of emphasis is shown on these simple everyday tasks, this links the short film to the one we were planning on making, as in the one we are planning on making would also emphasis everyday tasks that everyday people would undertake. Although in our short film it is going to give the viewer a view of the life of a standard person, with no twist, the short film we watched is still relevant for the fact of it being about everyday things.

Our short film idea.

When discussing ideas only one main idea presented its self as an achievable and interesting idea. The idea we have for our short film is an in site to a person life, to see what every person goes through in there life and to see what similarities everyone has in there life as there grow older, including the mundane tasks which need to be carried out every day. We will use a series of transitions to change the characters age as he gets older and goes through the key moments of his life. 

This is our idea at the moment and we are debating to film it in first person with hand held cameras or film it conventionally by following the person. We will experiment with both ideas and post our video that we have made and then make a final decision.