Character Costumes

The costumes that the characters will be seen in are to establish the characteristics, roles and attitudes of these characters to our target audience. The costumes will also be clothing that the audience can relate to therefore they will not be expensive designer clothing.

Ashley's costume
As Ashley is a university student studying Geology, his clothing will be casual but still smart to show he is serious abbot his studies and serious about his goals and ambitions. Therefore he will be dressed in a casual shirt and jeans. To give the professional impression he will be wearing a smart coat and scarf to emphasise his serious characterisation.


Ruby's costume
Ruby's costume will be quite girly and feminine. It will portray her girlish attitude and her slight naivety. She will be seen in a flowery dress with tights because of the cold weather. She will also have a coat which will emphasise her good up bringing and how she takes care of herself. Her costume will be of bright feminine colours such as pinks, yellows, blues and so on.


Mat ts costume
Matt is the oldest character therefore his costume will convey his maturity. He will wear darker more neutral colours than the other characters. His costume will be casual showing his love for his children and how he is always ready for the life of a father, He will be seen wearing casual jeans, a casual t shirt, casual coat and casual shoes. Basically he will have a casual costume.

Roles and responsibilities

• Storyboard – Rory = Writing Up
Alana = Drawing Up

• Location details – Rory = Taking photos of Brick Lane/ Risk assesment
Maureen = Getting in contact with council
Alana = Reason for locations
• Actors - Rory and Maureen = Susan – Miss Palmerton’s friend
• Ashley = Chris
• Matt = Matthew
• Ruby = Rosa
• Release forms – Alana

• Props – Pram = Susan
 Bag/ boos (student) = Ashley
 Picture of dad = Ruby = Alana
 Cuddly toy = Matt

• Interviews – Father for justice = Rory
Mother = Rory/Alana/Maureen
Young person = Alana

• Presentation – Rory = Putting it all together
o Include – videos showing our stylistic technique – Jay z - Girls
Q Tip – Getting up
 Results from vox pops and questionnaire
 Character profiles
 Narrative outline
 Locations
 Storyboard
 Props
 Funding
 Target audience

Ruby's Script

I’m what they like to call a daddy’s girl. I love my dad to bits. He is actually the greatest man in the world. I hear all my friends talking about how their dad was never there and how some of them never even knew who their fathers were.

I could never imagine what life would be like without my daddy. He inspires me, comforts me and always gives me the confidence I need.

Lately though, all my relationships have been failing on me. None of these boys seem to understand my situation. I’m looking for my daddy’s love in them, but the only man who could give me that love died of cancer 2 years ago today. I don’t see how I can live without my daddy’s love.

Short Film planning - Locations

This short film will focus on 4 main characters all seen making their way to a certain place. These characters will not be intertwined and will not be related in the narrative of the film; however they will all be seen in the same location. For instance the camera will firstly focus on one main character as they tell their part of the narrative (as if talking to a friend whom the camera represents). The camera will then drift away from this character and onto another that walks past in this same location as the filming motif is repeated.

Considering this information and this style of filming we will need a very controlled, isolated environment that will make it easier to ensure continuity in our piece. We have chosen to use Brick Lane as our location as it is a central location to the crew and is easy to get to for all of us. Also the fact that there are many roads linked to each other this will be a good location for our characters to be able to walk past each other as complete strangers.

Also Brick Lane is an ideal location for our film as if we shoot between 10 am and 1 pm whilst people are at work, this area will be reasonably secluded. This will allow for easier crowd control and less risks and hazards.

This location is also quite urban and gritty looking which is ideal for our short film as it establishes the characters lifestyle and social situations. This will help set the realistic and serious tone to our film which our target audience will also find relatable and a place they can identify with.

Short Film Planning - Props required

This film is quite a simplistic piece therefore not many props will be required. We will however have at least one prop for each character which will help establish and develop that certain characters role, story and characteristics.

Susan’s prop

Susan’s character will have a pram as a prop. This will be used to establish her yearning for a child. She will be seen pushing an empty pram down the road emphasising her emptiness and lack of trust in men. The pram will also symbolise her psychological situation in the fact that she has been traumatised by her fatherless past.


Ashley’s prop

Ashley’s character will have a bag and school books as his prop showing he is a student. These props will help establish his situation and make his role as “the student who is about to become a father” clearer. We will see Ashley walking down the road holding his books and carrying his bag. These props will also make Ashley’s character more relatable to our target audience which ranges from 16 to 25 years of age as the target audience can relate to education and what this character may be experiencing in his life at this time with university work, his social life and family.

Ruby’s prop

Ruby is the typical “daddy’s girl” therefore her prop will be a picture of her dad or a picture of her and her dad. This prop establishes that she admires her father and is proud of him. The picture could be seen in her wallet as she gets out her money to pay for something, on her phone as her screen saver or in a locket.

Matt’s prop

Matt is a father who would like to be closer to his child but is kept away. To emphasie his character his prop will be a cuddly toy showing his sensitive side and how he wants to be able to give his child everything they need. He will be seen walking down the road holding the toy showing that his child is always on his mind and a big factor in his life.

Presentation of Inspiration week ideas

We then had to present two of our best ideas. We presented the Mr Tambourine Man idea and the Dirty Money idea. With the Mr Tambourine Man idea we discovered that it was too complex to be a short film as there was a lot of contextual information that the audience would need to understand beforehand to understand the film.

With the Dirty Money idea we were told that the idea of the narrative being told by the coins was original and interesting and that it could work as a short film as it was more straight forward than our first idea.

From this feedback I learnt that when generating ideas for our short film we have to be sure to make these ideas condensed and straight forward as the film is meant to be a documentation of a certain situation in one certain time.

Inspiration Day!

Song lyrics - Mr Tambourine Man

On this day we were put into our groups and given different stimuli to create ideas such as song lyrics, poems, news paper clips, art and pictures. Our first idea inspired by the song lyrics by Bob Dylan and Abba is titled Mr Tambourine Man. This idea focused on two central characters. One character is an average Joe, down on his luck living a depressing life. The other is an outcast angel trying to do his penance to get back into Heaven.

The idea of the film would focus on the Joe character being followed by the angel character wherever he goes, playing his tambourine. The disequilibrium of the film would be when Joe meets his lady friend and wants the angel to go away. After he gets his wish he realises he misses Mr Tambourine Man and wants him back.

The new equilibrium is that Joe gets a new Mr Tambourine man, who unfortunately cannot play as well as the old Tambourine man, and cannot play any of the songs Joe likes.

Second idea – Modern art

Our second idea was inspired by modern art. We looked at a picture of an empty table and chairs and another of a tent full of names of people that the artist had slept with. We came up with a film focusing on isolation, emptiness, child and domestic abuse and darkness as the white bulb in the picture of the table did not give off any light.
The film would focus on the names in the tent coming alive around the table as ghost like figures. Each of the names will have a story of abuse that has happened round the dining room table that will be acted out.

Third Idea – Newspaper

This idea focused one character of a one armed bandit and an emotional car crash. It would focus on the one armed bandit going around and robbing one of everything from all stores and his hatred of snow men.
It will then focus on this character running around and “murdering” all snow men he comes across.

Fourth Idea - Pictures

We then had to look at pictures and get an idea from them. We decided to make a film about interspecies relationships between a butterfly and a goldfish. It would be made in a butterfly on the wall style with the butterfly being Omni present and all seeing.

Fifth idea – Poetry – Dirty Money

Lastly we had to read poems and be inspired by them. We focused on a poem called Infidelities. We decided this film would focus on the perspective of the coins that the wife character collects from her unfaithful husband’s pockets and puts them on the window sill.

This film will show the guilt of “the coins collecting dust”. There will be shots of the wife cooking for her husband and footage of the happy couple that will be sped up emphasising lost times. The coins will be the only dialogue we hear. The film will end with the husband collecting all the coins and going to a phone box looking suspicious and weary.

Post Secret Activty - Class secrets!

The second activity was to write a secret down and pass it round the class. When you’ve received someone’s secret you have to write a synopsis of a short film for it. The secret I got was “I love popping other people’s puss spots.”

The synopsis

I’m on a mission to pop any spot in my sight. I don’t care who you are and weather or not you want me to. If I see it I’m popping it. Until… I notice I have one on my face. Who will pop it for me?
This will be a montage of a character walking up to random people and trying to pop their spots. There will be a close up of the characters looking in the mirror and then an extreme close up of the spot on their face. The film will end with the character on their knees screaming.

Post Secret Activity

In this activity we were given postcards with random secrets on them. We were then asked to write a synopsis on a short film for this secret. The secret I chose was “I am home less and no one (not even my family) knows about it.”

The synopsis

Tina is a teenage girl who hates her family. She leaves her house to go to college, meets her imaginary friend Jim and pretends she is Jacks girlfriend. She follows him home and hides outside his window pretending to be in his house. There is then a shot reverse shot and Tina is in Jacks house talking to him and behaving like his girlfriend but he doesn’t even realise she is there. The film ends with her looking behind him and noticing her and walking out of the door leaving her alone.

Folding Paper Game

Our first activity in Inspiration Week was to write a line each on a different piece of paper with prompts of what the line should be `about, for example “A mans name and his job.”. We then had to pass the piece of paper around and write another line on a different piece of paper. This is the narrative I ended up with.

His name is Barry, he is a bin man. Susan believes she is a fire truck. She is in fact a mental patient. The couple meet in a park because their dogs start fighting. They then drag them through the mud. “Do you want to take a ride on my horse?” And then a puddle of water appears on the floor, “Oh no! My waters broke.” They had 5 children and live in a forest.

The synopsis

Barry meets loony Susan one ordinary day of being a bin man and suddenly his whole life revolves around her and their bush babies. With Susan believing she’s a fire truck and Barry trying to support his newly found family and refugee wife who has just escaped from the mental home on his bin man wages what will happen when the millionaire Mindy comes into the picture?

Equilibrium = Barry picking up rubbish on a normal Monday morning when Susan drives up and beeps at him.

Disruption = Susan pretends to run Barry over which gives him the idea to ask her "Do you want to take a ride on my horse?" which she takes as a marriage proposal and gets pregnant.

New equilibrium = Barry is stuck with Susan and his five monkey children. Tom thinks he's an elephant and the other 4 believe they are mice.

Application of Levi Strauss

• Sanity vs Insanity
• Poverty vs Wealth

Structurelist Theorists

Tzvetan Todorov suggested that stories begin with an equilibrium or status quo where any potential opposing forces are in balance. This is then disrupted by some event setting off a chain reaction of other events causing a different equilibrium or status quo. This is the form of the classic mainstream text.

Claude Levi –Strauss argued that all narratives and stories contained binary oppositions or a conflict between two qualities of pairs of differences to create meaning and convey moral messages. For example in Cinderella, there is Cinderella who is the good character who is opposed to her step mother and ugly step sisters who are the bad characters. This binary opposition creates a moral message that it will all end happily for the good character Cinderella as this is an aspect of fairytales.

Vladimir Propp argues that whatever the narrative difference in a film or story there are always eight character functions which are the villain, the hero, the donor, the helper, the princess, the father, the dispatcher and the false hero. This indicates how inseparable characters and action are.

Example of the eight character groups in Disney’s Mulan

Villain - Shan Yu

Hero - Mulan
Donor - Mushu
Helper- Mushu
Princess - Mulan
Father - Her father
Dispatcher - The army
False Hero - Shang



Roland Bathes indentified the five codes of narrative which can be used to analyse the way in which a story is constructed. These are the action code, enigma code, semic code, referential code and symbolic code.

Short film Inspiration Week

Definition of story

· Structure
· Started with drawings on caves
· Can be fiction, fantasy, fairytale, horror, real life drama etc ...
· Characters
· “Once upon a time”
· Stories are used to educate and entertain from generation to generation
· Biblical stories- Bible = first book ever published
· Illustrations
· Poetry
· Greek mythology
· Folk tales used to warn and scare little children – Fables – Myths – Legends
· Can be any length

Narrative

· Stories we tell ourselves about ourselves
· Are referenced to culture
· Give us comfort

The distribution and exhibition of short film

Short films tend to reach a more niche audience as feature film took over back when Hollywood came about, therefore the mainstream audience are drawn to these films and don't really take much notice of short film. this fact makes the distribution and exhibition of short film harder than the distribution of feature films but not impossible.

Short films are exhibited in many ways. From festivals, specific short film channels to Internet sites and short film production companies. A lot of them are exhibited to showcase up and coming directors work, Some are exhibited as commercials for charities, products or political groups publicizing certain views or issues. Others are exhibited as music videos establishing artists showing their acting skills.

The distribution of short films takes place through festivals and exhibitions of these films. these films are also distributed through the Internet with sites such as YouTube, Coffee Shorts, Silver Films and many more. Convergence is also a reason that the distribution of short films is getting simpler. For example with the mobiles merging with the Internet in which users can watch and send these films anywhere at any time. Also with the Xbox and PS3 having the Internet these films can be distributed this way.

Short Film Textual Analysis - Greed

Greed is a short animated film that focuses on an individual character in a public looking toilet. The genre of this animation could be seen as drama but as it is animated and imaginative it is quite humorous too. "A superbly animated, clever and funny short film from Swedish character animator Alli Sadegiani. Through the simplest of plot lines, a single character, a single setting and a little comedy we see human greed laid bare for the idiotic and dangerous thing it is, something we all know is a part of us bubbling beneath the surface, that some keep in check and others fail to with disastrous implications for themselves and the people around them. "
http://www.blip.tv/file/1769725

The mise en scene of this animation conveys the imaginative creativity of the film. It also conveys the ideology and message of the film and why it is called Greed. For example the character is seen i a public toilet with graffiti all over the walls. This emphasises the poverty and ill morals of the character. The character is seen to be wearing nothing but a vest and underwear adding to the humour of the film and also to the theme of poverty. The lighting is high key and bright which allows the audience to see all of the action. This also creates tension as the audience understand from the ideology of the dramatic music that this is a dramatic piece, therefore the high key lighting gives the audience a false sense of security. The sounds in this film are exaggerated as is a common code and condition of drama. Sounds such as the characters heavy breathing,the characters screams, the money around the character dropping all over, a slow heartbeat and the terrifying scream at the end of the film all help convey the message of the film and create tension and interest for the audience throughout the film. Many dreary sound effects are also used to further emphasise the genres and the atmosphere created in the film.

The camera work also conveys the message of greed as we see many close ups of the characters facial expressions and fear. We also see closeups of the money around the character emphasising its importance in the film. There are also voyeuristic shots in this film that add to the tension of the film as it seems as if we are witnessing this characters pain and demise without him knowing.

Short Film Codes and Conventions

Short films have been seen as experimental and low budget ways to create creative unique little pieces of work since the early 50s. As short film had to make its mark in the film industry as Avant Garde and experimental after being dominated by the introduction of Hollywood, there has never really been any specific codes and conventions except that the film must be short (under an hour).

Short films are made in many different genres therefore different genres will have different codes and conventions, for example drama has codes and conventions such as exaggerated sounds, close ups, eerie silences and dramatic music and documentary have codes and conventions such as an interviewer asking questions, mid shots used when filming interviewees and relative music to the topic of the documentary. But short film as an art has no specific codes and conventions.

Short Film Production company - Silver Film Productions

"We’re Silver Films, founded in 1996 by producer Janey de Nordwall, with commercials director Richard Oliver joining in 2006.
Our work has always been noted for its high production value as well as its ability to touch an audience." http://www.silverfilms.co.uk/about

"Silver films not only create TV commercials but films too. Richard Oliver, the director of this company also focuses on Automotive.
Innovative films have a significant impact on the success of launching cars and concepts. These films need to generate desire in target audiences whilst also being versatile enough to be used across territories and mediums to achieve maximum return on investment.
BAFTA winning Silver Films has an impressive track record of producing the highest quality running footage and creative mood films for some of the most premium automotive brands. We pride ourselves on delivering films that exceed expectation on time and on budget." http://www.silverfilms.co.uk/automotive.

This company make films as advertisements, for example the commercials for Umbro and Toyota that they have created. One of the films created by this company "Garden with red roses" is now being used by a major charity to increase awareness showing how short films are used, exhibited and distributed in many ways.
"We love making films and telling stories. It’s our passion and over the last ten years we have produced five award winning shorts including the BAFTA winning About a Girl. Our latest short, Gardens With Red Roses, is currently on the international festival circuit and being used by a major charity to raise awareness.
We believe that a short film can now become a powerful marketing tool for charities; helping to raise funding and affect change as well as fulfilling criteria for socially responsible brands."
http://www.silverfilms.co.uk/films/shorts

For aspiring short film directors this company would be a good company to get in contact with to produce and exhibit work. On the site there is a phone number and email address for Janey de Nordwall so any one who wants this companies assistance can get into contact with them easily.

Short Film Directors

Two directors that interested me were Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv the directors of Strangers and Offside. They interested me because of their ability to captivate an audience with tension, drama and suspense whilst exploring issues of religion, culture and the divide that people experience through these aspects.

They are two young writer directors from Tel- Aviv Israel who graduated together from “Camera Obscurs Film School”. This explains the themes they explore through their films and why they direct together. They created Strangers, the short film in 2003 for 20th Century Fox, which got accepted into the Sundance film festival in 2004 and won the award for Best Short. Offside that they directed also won the award for Best Short in the Manhattan International Short Film Festival in 2006. Strangers went on to win many more awards such as the BAFTA LA Award for excellence at the Aspen Shorts fest, Buster’s Youth Jury Award at the Buster International Children’s Film festival, Wolgin Award – special mention at the Jerusalem Film Festival and Jury award at Palm Springs International Short Fest.

They have just finished writing their personal feature film “Son of God” which is the story of a 78 year old Holocaust survivor that goes on a “root journey” with his religious Jewish son to Poland in search of a magician.
Their film Offside also won many awards such as the Short Film Award at the German short Film Awards, the Grand Prize at the Manhattan Short Film Festival, the Jury Award at the Palm springs International Short Fest 2004 and the Reelworld award at Toronto Reelworld Film Festival.

Erez Tadmor and Guy Nattiv are inspirational award winning writer directors that utilise their views and culture as inspiration for their films. Not only do they specialise in short film but their short film Strangers was then expanded into a feature length film in 2007.

Filmography:

Moosh (2001)(short film)
The Little Prince (2001) (short documentary)
Mabul (2002) (short film)
Strangers (2003) (short film)
All well by me (2005) (feature documentary)
Offside (2006) (short film)
Strangers (2007) (feature film)