Film Coursework

Here are some links to Oscar short films that I've been watching to get inspiration for my coursework https://shorts.tv/theoscarshorts/ https://www.filmsshort.com/festival-winners/#.WzDNJ-S0UdU

Why Shorts & Convention Research Short films are important as they allow a film maker to experiment with ideas - usually with a very small budget. They also often do not require as much pre production work - as in nature they are shorter then feature length films; this means that often shorts can be used as proofs of concept or inspiration for feature length films. Research https://www.raindance.org/7-rules-for-writing-short-films/ “Film is a visual medium”. “Show, don’t tell.” Those are the golden rules" https://filmshortage.com/what-is-it-about-short-films/ "People can watch shorts whenever they have five minutes to spare, while surfing the web at night, on lunch break at work, during work hours when your boss isn’t looking, even in the bus on the way to work! But since we are competing with so many other distractions out there coming in every second, the shorter the film is the better it is" https://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/does-the-cinema...

To fulfil  the brief of creating a short film I will be conducted research on short films. This will help with my understanding of the conventions of short and feature films. I will also try and understand what makes a good or bad short film.   I watched Baby Driver, The Fly and Blue Song by Blue Mint (music video). These films inspired each other; and as they are different lengths allowed me to understand the difference in conventions between a feature film and a short film. Blue Song is a short music video and Baby Driver is a feature length film. Both were directed by Edgar Wright. The opening of Baby Driver and Blue Song are very similar; both of them featuring the main characters, who are getaway drivers acting comedically inside a car. The both also feature a gripping sound track which the getaway drivers dance to. Overall I found Blue Song to have much more exciting cinematography, with the rapid cutting, than...

One of my all time favourite shorts - it mixes standard western genre conventions with non conventional uses of sound. It uses the voice over as not only a way of giving information to the audience but as an essential plot element. I thought it was a very interesting way of using sound. Cinematography and mise-en-scene contrast the different use of voice over following the standard conventions. This creates an interesting contrast between the familiar western and the unique use of voice over.

After researching different short films, I thought I would share this one with you. It has a very touching simple narrative, features fantastic mise-en-scene, creative camera work and brilliant editing. It has extremely simple dialogue, only using six lines of dialogue as it was created for the electronics company Phillips as part of their Parallel Lines project (eight different films with the same six lines of dialogue). It was the Grand Prize Winner.        

Hello! I have been given the objective of apply knowledge and understanding of elements of film to production of a film or screenplay and applying knowledge and understanding of film to analyse and evaluate my own work in relation to other professionally produced work. I will use this blog to track my film A level Coursework. To complete this task I will have to: Research short films Complete pre production tasks Complete either the filming of the screenplay or a photographic storyboard.