RESEARCH : Short Film Websites

I took the time to research on short film websites and how they appeal to their audiences. I viewed up to websites and noticed that they all had other media techniques such as music,articles,briefs and more in order to reach a larger audience. Everything that these websites have to offer is listed at the top of the home page so viewers know whether they are on the correct website or not
When viewing film websites there’s many things that users would expect there to be such as useful information and guidance on where specific information is this makes it useful for people to surf the website. It has to be readable and original. On most websites there is usually the company logo on each page which shows the consistency. Websites have to be reliable so there is usually a search bar somewhere in case viewers want a shorter way in to finding whatever it is that they are looking for.

The BBC is the largest broadcasting organisation in the world, its mission is to enrich peoples lives with programmes that inform, educate and entertain. This website is structured with links and titles easily to provide the user with easy navigation. All the pages offer a search option at the top of the page which effective to the user and also efficient. The use of grey background is effective towards the colour of the titles and font sizes.

The logo appears at the top of each page which shows consistency and it offers a link back to the main page. The website also offers users a chance to sign up and receive up to date information about film which links to a simple form and a newsletter and press release gets emailed to you directly. Whilst surfing the website I came to the conclusion that it’s easy to navigate  and all the required information was quick to get to.



Click here to Check out all the latest short films on BBC

RESEARCH : Short Films Concept

Today I watched and analysed five short films which were; A Cannes Film Festival Winner, The Black Hole, the wrong side of the bed, the last cookie and Light em up

These films showed me that short films can go without a dialogue but you would still be able to the storyline due to todorovs narrative structure. A Cannes Film Winner was a short film that lasted under one minute and it had enough concept in it to tell what the short was about and what type of theme it was from the use of close ups, sound and the expressions on the actors faces, although it was really short it still had a big impact.

Another film that I Viewed without any dialogue that I thought told alot was"The Wrong Side Of The Bed" which was a comedy and we could tell this by the image, lighting, the mise en scene of Location, Editing and Sound showed how both characters was reflected on each other even though it was the same person they had different stories that was put together and there was no dialogue used but it was still funny.

A Cannes Film Festival Winner

The use of non-diegetic in this particular short film coming from another source gives us as viewers the calm feeling and also the use of character. There is close up shots of the little girls hands and hair which makes the viewers think what is about to happen, this alone shows that in a short film without dialogue you can still be able to get an idea of what the film is going to about and how you can connect to it. The use of slow music indicates the little girl’s feelings and supports the meaning of the characters expression and movement.

The Black Hole

Looking at Todorovs theory the beginning, middle and end are not individual elements of a narrative but are defined the relationship to each other the beginning can only be defined by its position in relation to the middle and the end for example we cannot be sure of the signicance of events at the beginning of the plot until we know they are going to be disrupted.Todorov suggested a slightly more complicated description of narrative structure than the simple situation/problem/resolution using his five posited stages 1. A stage of equilibrium 2.A disruption of the equilibrium by some action 3. Recognition that there has been a disruption 4.An attempt to repair the disruption 5.A reinstatement of the equilibrium.

Our 'Black Hole' narratives translates:

Man doing his work

Man notices something unusual

Man interferes and realises the advantages

Man uses advantages in a bad way

Mans actions puts him in a difficult position.

This short film has a different concept to the other short film that I have been viewing as it looks at two different parts in the film although it’s the same person it makes the audience think. Looking at semiotics and audience readings   which are meanings that are encoded into a media text and how an audience may decode these meanings. So everyone could be watching this short film but half the audience could connect to the good part of the film and the other half of the audience could connect to the bad part of the film. Once you accept that people use the media or even connect to it in different ways then the text should study how this happens based on the idea that texts don’t only have one meaning. Each one of us is constructed in many different ways through family, education,peers,etc which has an effect on us on how we view the media in different ways.  

Audience has three responses towards the media which are: Dominant, Oppositional, and Negotiated. Dominant values of society are accepted by the audience. Negotiated is when the audience accepts most of the values but may be critical towards some of the aspects.Oppostional is where the audience ideally rejects the dominant values described within the text so therefore semiotics recognises both the power of the text but also the ability the audience has in order to deny it. So when we apply this to ‘The Wrong Side of the Bed’ it gives the audience to have two separate views on one film whether its Dominant, Negotiated or. oppositional

The Last Cookie


There is alot of close up shots of the characters and their actions. This is to show emotion of the characters to add an in depth view of their thoughts and feelings. Many of these close ups are of the characters reading or drawing about cookies as it is significant to the narrative. There are some mid shots used to signify how much the cookie means to the characters.


There are alot of fast paced movements used to connote the excitement and determination of recieving the cookie. Focus pulls are also used from character to character to show how one characters actions combines with the other characters actions such as the pull from when both characters are reaching for the same cookie. This type of music was used to create humour but changes at the end which connotes that the actions in the film has taken place and is ended with disappointment.

Light em up.

There are different types of close ups and long shots used to set the scene and show emotion of the characters and highlight the relaxation they feel which contrasts to the destruction ahead of them. Focus pulls used focuses on the skyline ahead of the characters to signify the viewer that  something that does not usually happen is about to happen. If you pay attention to the skyline you will notice it has been edited to a darker red which connotes evil and danger but also love, danger being the destruction and love being the feeling the characters have towards what they are smoking.

The film is set on a empty grass hill with a view of the destruction that’s happening to London city. There is a major contrast used between the teenagers sitting on the hill without a care in the world whereas just opposite them there is a big dangerous event occurring, this shows the stereotypical view on teenagers that have no worries. The sound of nature has been edited to appear louder and there has been some diagetic effects added to highlight the relaxation and peace of the teenagers.

RESEARCH : Audience

Films can connect with all different kinds of audiences. It tries to connect to you as an individual through the storyline with moving images. They are made up of a series of individual images called ‘frames’. When these are shown rapidly in success, the viewer has the illusion that motion is occurring. The audience is diverse & more complex Diversity in the way we identify & Recognise due to different backgrounds and experiences preferred reading .Ruling classes bombard audience it becomes difficult to ignore and retain a critical viewpoint this is not a direct process but has a slower process. Audiences are targeted by media institutions based on demographic variables such as gender, age, class, sexuality, occupation, hobbies, where they live, wealth etc. In terms of films, the more popular actors are the ones that have films charged more.

We all have different needs and some of these can be provided by the media. Therefore we make choices over what media we want to use in order to gratify these needs. 

There have been a number of theories over the years about how exactly the media work on the mass audience.

One of the most popular theories is the;

'The Hypodermic Syringe'. According to the theory the media is like a syringe which injects ideas, attitudes and beliefs into the audience who as a powerless mass have little choice but to be influenced- in other words, you watch something violent, you may go and do something violent, you see a woman washing up on T.V. and you will want to do the same yourself if you are a woman and if you are a man you will expect women to do the washing up for you.

The media is seen as a syringe which injects ideas attitudes and beliefs into the audience who are seen as passive sponge like junkies who are powerless to resist.

An example for this would be the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Before every one of his murders, he watched a clip from his favourite film in order to get himself excited. This is the kind of fact that might seem to prove 'The Hypodermic Syringe'

Because of the difficulty of proving the effects of individual media texts on their audience a more refined version of the theory has been created called the Culmination mode. According to this, while any one media text does not have too much effect, years and years of watching more violence will make you less sensitive to violence, years and years of watching women being mistreated in soaps will make you less bothered about it in real life. Many people have a general sense that the media do affect our behaviour and advertisers certainly justify their fees by working on this assumption, but it can be extraordinarily difficult to actually prove how much effect if any a text might have on an audience. Some of the critics of the idea of the mass audience have pointed out the many ways those individuals who watch programmes alone will then share their experience with others in conversations about what they have seen. One argument is that these kinds of conversations have much more influence on potential behaviour than the programme from which they may have sprung.

Two Step Theory:

The idea of this is that whatever our experience of the media we will be likely to discuss it with others and if we respect their opinion, the chances are that we will be more likely to be affected by it. We are all individuals with different views and opinions. Our interpretation of a media text is influenced by our individual world view. In other words viewers experience the same text in very different ways.

According to the Uses and Gratification theory, we all have different uses for the media and we make choices over what we want to watch. In other words, when we encounter a media text, it is not just some kind of mindless entertainment we are expecting to get something from it, some kind of gratification:

                            

Information

We want to find out about society and the world because we want to satisfy our curiosity. This would fit the news and documentaries which both give us a sense that we are learning about the world.

Personal Identity

We may watch the television in order to look for models for our behaviour. So, for example, we may identify with characters that we see in TV programme. The characters help us to decide what we feel about ourselves and if we agree with their actions and they succeed we feel better about ourselves.

Intergration & Social Interaction

We use the media in order to find out more about the circumstances of other people. Watching a show helps us to empathise and sympathise with the lives of others so that we may even end up thinking of the characters in programme as friends even though we might feel a bit sad admitting it, At the same time television may help us to get on with our real friends as we are able to talk about the media with them.

Entertainment

Sometimes we simply use the media for enjoyment, relaxation or just to fill time.

One of the difficulties of assessing uses and gratifications like this is that people won't often be aware of the real uses of a text in their lives- how many people would admit for example that they watched a certain program because they were lonely even if that were the truth.



Reception Analysis is based on the idea that no text has one simple meaning. Instead, reception analysis suggests that the audience themselves help to create the meaning of the text. We all decode the texts that we encounter in individual ways which may be a result of our upbringing, the mood that we are in, the place where we are at the time or in fact any combination of these and all kinds of other factors. So viewer 1 may watch a television programme and enjoy every minute of it and viewer 2 may hate the same show. Reception analysis is all about trying to look at these kinds of differences and to understand them. What reception analysts have found is that factors such as a gender, our place inside society, and the context of the time we are living in can be enormously important when we make the meaning or a text.

RESEARCH : What Is A Short Film?

In the early days of cinema all films were short films and after a hundred years of technical advances some of the characteristics and criteria that identified short film back then are still valid up until this day, short films are defined by its length.

What makes a short film interesting is not its reduction to an indistinguishable format but above all its hybrid variety elements of early cinema live into the present. It encompasses both black and white and hand coloured films, documentaries, fiction, experimental, animation, drama and melodramas, thriller and horror films, slapstick, and comedy as well as commercials, cultural, educational and artistic films. A short film preserves the early diversity of the cinema while history has increasingly forced big screen cinema into narrowly constricted boundaries. There is no room for short films as perhaps a sub category or genre under this very narrow idea of film which only defines are of myriad cinematic possibilities. Depending on ones perspective short films instead can be viewed as coming before or being situated above or outside this historical reduction of film and cinema.

Short film thus lives on outside standardised mainstream cinema and has evolved into a kind of great white hope for all that early cinema promised in terms of aesthetic complexity and plurality of content. It is rife with potential, potential that can also be tapped, however, by feature-length film. By no means do all short films realise this potential, since they likewise can be part of the mainstream. 

The feature-length fiction film with sound has dominated the movies since at least the 1920s. Standards and conventions were developed that encompass all possible aspects from artistic design to technical standards and commercial production methods, from screenplay development and shooting to distribution and modern marketing. This has all served to establish a single uniform concept of film that although it accounts for only a small excerpt of all possible options seems to stand for film as a whole. In the vernacular, the (marketing) success of this concept is revealed by expressions like true cinema or a real movie.

Short Films parades before us the broad panoply of life in every imaginable form: from boxing kangaroos, dancing cigarettes and flying hats, to trains arriving at the station and light reflected on wet asphalt, to magic tricks and fairytale journeys to the moon. It encompasses both black-and-white and hand-coloured films, documentaries, fiction, experimental films, animation, dramas and melodramas, thrillers and horror films, slapstick and comedy, as well as commercials, cultural and educational films and artist’s film.

The short form is also a medium for innovation, as

versatile as cinema itself. Looking at things from this historical perspective, we can perhaps succeed at circumventing some of the difficulties we face in defining what exactly short film is. In trying to define short film, we automatically face the dilemma that, apart from its running time, there are no precise criteria or unequivocal characteristics that apply to all short films. The definition of dilemma arises when we overlook the fact that short film is not a genre description or category but rather a generic term used ever since the early days of cinema to describe all possible forms and genres of film.

Short films can also be easily distributed via the internet. Certain websites which encourage the submission of user-created short films, such as YouTube, Openfilm, BritFilms and Newgrounds have attracted large communities of artists and viewers, whereas sites such as BBC Film Network focus on showcasing curated British shorts.

Openfilm.com is a fast-growing online community where filmmakers and film lovers around the globe discover and distribute short and independent films. Through its Advisory Board, which includes James Caan, Robert Duvall, Mark Rydell and Scott Caan, unique technology, live online chats, social network, extensive film festival database and unique member channels; Openfilm unites the best elements of the film industry in one place and provides unparalleled industry access and opportunities for short and independent filmmakers.

Short films can be classified based on storyline. There may be single, duo, triple or multi-version modes in picturizing a short film. Short films can be made to test new technologies and techniques.

RESEARCH : Narrative Theory

Narrative is the way stories are told meaning how its constructed so the audience can understand it, the voice of the narrator could vary from whose story is being told to whose constructive perspective its from.

Narrative plot however refers to everything within the sound and picture the story refers to all the events that are being presented.

Story-;

·        What has happened in Life

·        The chronicle order of events.

·        The report of an event.

Plot-;

·        How the author presents the story

·        Everything the text presents.

·        How everything is put together and presented to the audience.

I looked at different structuralisms such as Tzvetan Todorov, Vladimir Propp, and Christopher Volger. They all have diffrent theories on how stories are narrated and also how the audience responds to them.
 

Tzvetan Todorov  is a Bulgarian structuralise who had influential work on narrative from the 1960's he suggested that stories began with an equilibrium or status quo where any potentially opposing forces are in balance. Problems are solved so that order can be restored to the world of fiction.
I’ve learnt that it doesn’t matter what plot structure you come up with its just that all stories must require a Beginning, Middle & End. Todorov explained that narrative is in fact a casual transformation.
 Todorov argued that the basis of convention narrative structure consists of an initial situation.
All narrative texts deal with at least one of the following;
The Quest - (Shrek)
Redemption
Journey to another world
The beast transformed by love
The biter-bit
The stranger Saviour
The rise and fall
  

  
Vladimir Propp a Russian critic who examined 100's of examples of folk tales to see if they shared any structures, he concluded there is a maximum 0f 31 functions in folktales.
Although it is not necessary for a tale to include all the functions, the ones that do appear
are always given in order.


Characters can fulfil more than one sphere of action which can be made up of more than one character for example a princess could also be a helper and a text could have alot of villians. Propp examined that there are seven sphere's of Action or narrative functions where each character has a specific role that should be developed. The seven 'Sphere of Action' Propp suggested are;
The Villian - Who creates the complication
The Donor - Gives the hero something that could help which could be an object or even information.
The Helper - Helps the hero in order to finish the mission
The Princess - The character which is threatened by the villian and has to be saved by the hero (Usually ends with a connection between the hero and the princess)
The dispatcher - Sends the hero on their task
The Hero - The central character which is usually male who is sent on a quest by his community
The False Hero - Who gives the audience the idea that he is a good hero but is revealed at the narratives end to be bad.
 

                                                   

Christopher Volger  was a story analyst that was working for Disney he produced a memo which expanded into a book, in it he described the twelve steps of the hero journeys and it reportedly became very influential in Hollywood. 
These 12 steps applied to Star Wars;  






 

·        Ordinary World                                                               

          Restless teenager Luke skywalker is bored

          with life on an ant farm where he lives with

          his aunt and uncle.

·        Call To Adventure.

·        Accidently finds the princess who is

·        desperate for help.

·        3.Refusal Of Call

·        -Doesnt take up the challenge because

·        he did not want to leave his

·        aunt and uncle behind.

·        4.Meeting The Mentor

·        Finally meets his mentor 

·        and starts to learn the way of the force.

·        5.Crossing The First Threshold

·        -Takes up challenge when his

·        Aunt and Uncle gets killed.

·        6.Tests, Allies, and Enimies

·        -Goes out with his mentor

·        and makes an enemy

·        7.Aproach to the inmost cave.

·        Luke takes an adventure with

·        his team and attempts to save

·        the princess.

·        8. Supreme Ordeal

·        Made up of a series of adventures

·        that culminates in the attempt

·        to break the princess out.

·        9. Reward - Seizing the Sword

·        -Luke and team escape with saving

·        the princess and the information

·        needed to destroy deathstar but not

·        without sacrificing someone important

·        10.Roadback

·        There is still worse to come,

·        deathstar within range which

·        still has to be destroyed

·        11. Ressurection

·        Luke insists the force and

·        destroys deathstae by sacrificing

·        an old part of his personality

·        his dependance on the machine

·        12. Return with Elixir

·        Luke and team are decorated as heroes

·        in front of large crowd, lukes external elixir is

·        his new self-knowledge and control of the force.

Introduction To A2 Media.

Today I have been given the first part of my media coursework, where I have to research on other short films and make sure that i look at a list of things such as;
- Mis-en-scene         
(Setting and props, costume and make-up,the expression and movement of actors, lighting and colour)
- Mis-en-shot
(Camera Position, Camera Movement, Shot Scale, Duration, Place of Editing)
- Editing
(Continuity - Continuous action shown in sequence. Montage - Unrelated shots put together that audience must work to connect)
- Sound
(Diegetic, Non-Diegetic,Dialogue, Music)
- Narrative
(The human mind needs narrative to make sense of things, every sequence has a beginning, middle and an end)
- Media Texts
(Media texts are better organised; we need to be able to engage with them without too much effort. We have expectations of form, a foreknowledge of how that text will be constructed. Media texts can also be fictional constructs, with elements of prediction and fulfilment which are not present in reality. Basic elements of a narrative, according to Aristotle).and then compares them to the other films that I am analysing. I have looked at producers where I  been studying their work who are; Quay brothers named Stephen and timothy quay who were born in America but moved to England to study at Royal college of Art where they teamed up with another college student Keith Griffiths who produced all of their films in 1980 the trio formed konick studios in Southwark London.
Leah Meyer Hoff who is an American nominated director, producer and screenwriter who was a finalist in the student academy awards she received press coverage from The New York Times, Hollywood Reporter, Film Threat, Boston Globe, and numerous other publications.
Sam Raima who is an American film director,poducer,actor,writer his best known for directing the horror film Drag Me To Hell and is also a producer for successful TV series he is set to create the prequel of the wizard of Oz which will release in 2013.
Visual communications, Douglas Buck, and Elizabeth Sung.
I am going to look at many Short films that I feel is inspiring to me and what kind of short film that i want to do.


I have learnt that in order to have a good short film you must have an original idea something that connects with your experiences or something that has been an inspiration to you in any way.
Must have a good script you can do this by looking at resources and writing out drafts, making sure that you have good actors in your film because if you use people that cannot act then it will make a big impact towards your viewers. As a general rule, the longer your short film is, the harder it is to keep the viewer’s attention. This is especially true of online viewing – for instance on Film Network the average time that a viewer spends watching a film is 4 minutes.


Just so I know that everything i am doing is correct i am going to be looking at short film history, and identifying what a short film actually is, i am going to see how and why a short film is interesting, what sort of elements is used and how the film attracts the audiences attention.
The great thing about shorts is that they can be anything – the only limit beyond the cost of production is that i limit my own imagination. i have to let my imagination fly. Play with my ideas. Play with the form. Every short can and should be a unique vision.
Film is about telling stories in pictures, which is the most economical way of telling a story – and in the making of shorts, economy is everything. Remember the golden rule of filmmaking: show, don't tell. The idea and story can be focused enough in scope to exist entirely in the viewer's head, and so logic and time can play a much smaller role in the journey from beginning to end than in other formats