Looking at some short films this is what i have seen for the fonts.

 The fly 

This has the most simple font with the header being the same font only smaller. This has a very simple look which suits the film because the plot of the film is very simple but effective. The film also being 4 minutes long adds to the more simple effect.

Prosopagnosia

This short film has two types of font. The header complements the other font. They both help gives off

a more sophisticated but cold connotation which fits in very well with the films crime thriller genre.

 The black hole

This film has a more cartoony feel to it. This font is also simple but the connotation gives a more

comedy feel to it which again suits the genre.

Get off my land

This has a very small font that suits the simplicity of this short film. The film ends without any drama or

big fight scenes despite the built up of tension during the film so this font which displays after the last scene helps to continue this.

All of these fonts use a simple white font with a style that has connotations to fit with the style of film, however, these are very subtle. 

I looked at the short film Prosopagnosia as this film had a police and crime genre. The short's plot was told mainly my dialogue and this is how we are basing out film off so it was good to look at how a short film has done so successfully. 

The main setting for this short film is in an interrogation room. This is identical to my short film. Here low key lighting is used to create a dark background with the character's faces illuminated. This creates a serious connotation. It also helps the audience to focus on the character's faces and helps to define the emotions.

The other main character in this short film is the DCI. This is characterised by the officers costume and near by props. He is wearing a suit and has a file open which suggests that he has information has displays a typical modern inspector theme. 

Another point is that the two characters have very different postures. Here the witness is sitting forward and has a very tense body language where as the DCI is leaning backwards and is more relaxed.

The use of the low key lighting helps to emphasise the character's facial expressions. Having the contrast puts the audiences attention straight onto the face. This is useful in this film because there is a lot of dialogue so seeing the character's expressions helps to understand how the character feels about what is being said. This can also help the audience to decide themselves if he is guilty or not.


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Looking at the short film The Fly this is what I have seen that is effective and would like to include in my own short film:

The Fly:
The short film has a similar setting to my short film. The film looks like it is set in the 80s. This is mainly shown by the costume and other mise en scene. Here you can clearly see three main aspects. This is one of the first scenes that the audience sees so they first impressions of the genre and setting will be made here.

1. The first aspect is the use of costume. Here the character is wearing a leather jacket which was very common during the 80s. The character takes up most of the shot so the costume is clearly shown to the audience and the connotations this gives is very clear to the audience that this character is from the 80s or a similar time. 
2. The second aspect is the car. The car is is both the foreground and the middle ground. This car is used to help put the setting into context. Here an old car is shown but the car looks used but not old. This really helps the audience to make the connections that this short film is set in the 80s as a car that age would look more rundown in this day.
3. The last is slightly more hidden. This scene uses conventions of other 80s films. The background is blurred out as the depth of feild is shallow so the wall behind doesn't stand out but it does add to cthe connotations  

The setting of the film takes place in only one area. This is shown above. Shots of the door with diagetic sounds suggest that the other characters are inside but the inside is not shown. This use of one scene works because three areas are shown as individual areas. This is the car, inside the building and the surrounding area. All are used in different places during the short film but only this area is used for the whole 6 minutes. 

The camera shots and movements are varied these include an extreme close up, a crane shot, and a panning shot. The variety of shots help to keep the viewer interested as each shot is in the same setting so having a different angle or movement stops each shot from being repetitive. This is important because most of my film will take place in one room and has heavy dialogue. 

When creating my own film I will be using these ideas as these are effective and use similar concepts to my own film. 

When doing research into conventions of short films Here I realised a list of things that I need to make sure to include or change about our short film.

1. Short films are part of a niche market. We need to be aware of this as the audience for our short film will be precise. This is useful to us as it help to know who exactly our audience is going to be but we need to make sure that our film will appeal to those audience members. Here is a link to a post explaining who are audience is
2. One consideration we looked at was characters. Our film uses a number of characters and normally there is only one or two characters. In our film only two characters have line as the other five characters are more mentioned and therefore don't add anything much to the role by knowing their background. Here is a link to the posts I made explaining who are characters are. 
3. As we are students our film doesn't have a budget. To make sure that we can make the film Jess and I had to think carefully about all the resources we could use. In the end the only thing that will cost us is filming in The Island which is £35 and hour.

Outline of a short film

Short films are usually 5-10 minuets in length with only a few characters. In terms of culture short films are very widespread. In the US short films aren't popular but in the UK there is market for them and there a film festivals about short films. Voice overs are a common feature as having a voice over can help to explain how or where the characters are. Also some short films don't have any dialogue and as the films are short and simple lengthy dialogue is not needed.

Characters

The characters are either main characters or a background character. This is because short films don't have time to fully develop a story into the history or mindset of a character and if there are too many characters they will each feel superficial and hard for the audience to relate and understand the characters.

Budget

Most short films have either a very short film or no budget at all. To keep budgets low directing and filming and writing are usually done by the same people. Actors are amateurs and there isn't a big soundtrack. Very locations are used and not much CGI if any is used.

Good example is The Black Hole which is based in one location - an office, with only one character.

Concept

Most films are about normal events or are realistic. This helps with the budgeting but it also appeals to audiences well as they can easily relate to the characters or situations. Usually short films will have a single problem that the characters will overcome.

Twist

Most short films include a 'twist'. This could be a super power, something abnormal or a plot twist. This helps to keep the film interesting as most short films have a very normal or basic setting. Unlike Feature length films short films are more likely to end in a cliffhanger or not fully explaining what happens and is left either ambiguous or up to the audience to decide what happened afterwards.

This idea of a twist can be applied to Todorov. His theory of Equilibrium follows: Equilibrium; Disequilibrium; New Equilibrium.

In short films the equilibrium the start shows everything as normal. The twist in the film or the problem encountered is the disequilibrium; and the new equilibrium is when the problem is solved or the character accepts the new equilibrium.

Examples

Sites such as shortoftheweek.com show a whole list of short films.

Short films with similar genre to ours include:

The Fly

Prosopagnosia

The offering

We have auditioned 10 girls for the role of goldilocks from year 8 & 9. We were pleased with the overall level of acting and of which three stood out. Here are the ratings that I made during the casting:

The original story about the three bears is about three sized bears and an old woman. Unlike the Brothers Grimm tales this has an open and less twisted ending.

"Out the little old Woman jumped; and whether she broke her neck in the fall; or ran into the wood and was lost there; or found her way out of the wood, and was taken up by the constable and sent to the House of Correction for a vagrant as she was, I cannot tell. But the Three Bears never saw anything more of her."

We are using the idea that she was caught by the police but incorporating the Brothers Grimm style fairytales as well as the modern version where the old woman is a young girl called goldilocks.

Click Here to read the original story.

This is the original script that we are going to use. This is a monologue that Jess wrote and the two of us are going to edit this to work as a short film as well as adding in new scenes and other ideas as well as camera angles. This full script and story board will be posted at a later date.

Here are the fonts that we are looking at. These four all look slightly similar and have similar connotations and we like that they have a vague creepy look. This is good as the fonts match the traditional three bears story.

When looking at these fonts we feel that they look like they portray the character of Goldilocks as they are handwritten and have that fairytale look but they gauge creepiness coming from our psychopathic killer.

Click Here to see our choice in the fonts and a preview of the fonts on screen.

When thinking about a song for the opening of our film one of the choices was this. We chose this song  because we like the contrapuntal feel that this song gives and the lyrics would be good for goldilocks to hum in the opening as the song fades out to the diagetic sounds in the interrogation room. 

This is a list of ideas that Jess and I have discussed and want to include in our film:

Coffee splatter
DC runs out

Little Red Riding hood picking up fur


Year 8 goldilocks

Security camera shot

Outside shots

Voice over

Footsteps and entering warehouse

Elvis