Research Into Short Films

What is a short film?

A short film in North America is defined to generally last between 20 and 40 minutes which tend to have its focus point on its characters, whereas in Europe, the description short films durations are no shorter than one minute and shorter than 15 minutes and tend to focus on drama and its main plot.  

Depending on the story of the short film, many of them have a purpose. For instance; the short films that I have been analysing, most of them focused on real life situations. An example is “Deep skin”, this short film focuses on deeper problems of society. It concentrates on how a young boy suffers from the mental disorder; schizophrenia. Due to his illness, family problems and friends, he faces many issues; he is a witness of discrimination and racism towards the members that he lives with. I enjoyed watching this short movie, as it made its address very clear for the audience to understand it, it had a flowing sequence which made it very effective.

I also watched another short film which was different to this situation. “Different” was the second short film I watched, this one gives the audience a clear understanding of what it could be by the title. This short film has a similar sequence to the first one, it begins by introducing the main character; the middle of it introduces the problem and by the end it’s either resolved or not.

The final short film that we analysed was ‘The Black Hole’. This film was categorised as a comedy, therefore its main purpose was to entertain us. The duration of the film was shorter than the others, it lasted only three minutes. It followed a similar pattern as the other films, where it began with the introduction of the main character, followed by the problem and the solving of the issue at the end.

Short films in the media business industry are very popular and their market is growing, and festivals are in constant need for successful and entertaining short films. Through the process of my thorough research in to short films, I have gathered valid points of what could make our short film a success. A key feature which is needed for film is the length. It’s important to keep it simple because if you try to put to much information, it will stress your audience rather than entertain them, this is why a short film will only last up to one or more minutes.

Second point was to pick your focus point and make it as precise as possible. In my research, I found out that all short films have a particular pattern that they follow. For example; they need to have a balance of each point in the story. You need a circular pattern, since everything will happen rapidly. This creates a better flow and continuity to the story as the audience could understand the plot better. I also noticed that the particular short films that I watched did not have heavy drama, the middle part of every short film was where most of the action took place but I thought that it wasn’t a massive contrast between the beginning and the end.

Research and Planning

The ancillary tasks we decided to do for the short film are a radio trailer and a poster. We thought that a radio trailer is more suitable for the product, as it would be accessible to a wider population. We thought of factors which could have a positive influence in advertising our media products, these factors were costs, accessibility and our target audience. Our target audience will be between 17 to 25 years. We thought that this age group is more likely to have access to a radio, whether it being in a car, at work or even at home. The other reason was because a radio is free; therefore people are willing to listen to a radio rather than buying a magazine. We also chose to do a poster for our product as we thought of it to be somewhat exciting and challenging, as a poster would allow us to express the story and meaning about our film. We will use symbolic props and use of brighter colours which will represent our genre. A poster is more eye-catching and therefore would allow the audience to have a better interpretation of the film. The positive outcome of a poster rather than a magazine is that it is more attention grabbing and does not have any direct reading. A film magazine however requires audiences to put effort and time into reading it. Also, we thought it would be best not to do a film magazine as it has a limited audience. People aged over 25 are usually the main target audience for reading magazines and this would therefore limit our younger audience, as it is aged between 17-25 years.

Antigona

Research and Planning

Research and planning

The task we have chosen to do is a short film instead of a documentary. The reason we chose to do this was because for our AS media portfolio; we had to do a two minute opening sequence of a movie. This has therefore widened our knowledge of what it takes to make a successful short film. We are prepared due to previous experiences of our two minute sequence and as a result we are able to avoid any mistakes being made for our contemporary film. Two particular issues that we faced in our previous sequence were framing and continuity. To overcome this problem, we did thorough research by analysing various short films and notice what we were doing wrong. As a result; our understanding and skills are broadened of how a media product is produced. 

Silva and Antigona