Post 3 - Charecterisation

annotate images that help reveal more about your protagonist

Protagonist - The main character or joint main with antagonist, often good. The person at the centre of the action, can be shown to be the character of authority, a leader of the group.

Antagonist - Opposite to the protagonist, and the film revolves around the protagonist and antagonist clashing.

'A man is the last person on earth as zombies take over'

Post 2 - How to write a good short film script

How to make a good short film

After looking at the short film 'Gasman' along with an abundance of other short films, I have been able to pick out several factors that determine factors that make a short film a success.

An Exiting unique script - since it is a short film, it is important for it to be a quick and exiting plot that engages the audience from the go since you don't have much time to play with. And of-course the idea has to be unique or people aren't going to be attracted to the idea of watching something they have seen before, so this is a must.

Engaging Opening - Since this is a short film we don't have time to waste with a disinteresting introduction that will put off the audience from the word go, with short films its advisable to start midway through a scene and even skip what would be considered a typical opening i.e skip the characters names and simply start mid sequence through the scene.

Comedy Film - short comedy films are the most popular genre for short films and they are for an obvious reason, since the film can be no more than 5 minutes, the audience need something memorable to remember the film by to make it stand out and comedy can do this for the film!

A Good Storyline - Any storyline needs to be good in order to grasp the audience  the principle stays the same for short films, the storyline needs to be able to be developed and explained in under 5 minutes however...

2013 Post 1 - Researching Existing Short Films Part A

Gasman (1998)

 

Gasman was an award winning short film directed by lynne ramsay, here is the films sypnosis below.

 

"It's the Christmas season. With her mom's help, Lynne, a girl of perhaps eight, dresses up; her younger brother Steven plays with a toy car. The children leave with their dad, who's affectionate with them. They walk down a railroad track where an unkempt woman waits with two children, about the same age as Lynne and Steven. The children go with them. They're all headed to a holiday party at a pub. Lynne notices that the girl acts all too familiar with her dad. What's going on?

 

In the Film Short "Gasman" the director lynne uses a range of effects in the films Camera, Sound, Editing, and Mise-en-scene. The most obvious effect from the ofset is the use of the camera to make it seam like a flashback/dream from the girls POV, the camera only very vividly shows charecters faces panning up and down frequently mainly showing a POV view of everything that it looks at this paired with the camera effect of adding a black faded border around the edge gives the effect as if the onlooker is asleep/dreeming as seen in the pictures below......

(Happy Scene = Well Light)

 

(Sad Scene = Dull Lighting)

 

Here the faded outer rim and the lighting effects being very dull and poorly lit help to create this effect very well. The film is also edited into scences of split happiness and sadness, the scenes with a happy "Memory" are usualy well light and fast paced scenes weres ass the scenes that are shown as being sad are the poorly lit ones and have been edited to have a slow pace.  Also in the mis en scene it is clear of the loactaion because of the background pictures, i.e a poorly industialised city and the strong scotish accent that the location is glasgow, yet another clue to the charecters social situation and class is the time period which is given to be the 1970s as given away by the style of the wallpaper and the style of the clothes they wear. this lets the onlooker know that they are viewing a working class family in the middle of the 1970s when there was an economic depression in certain industrial towns such as glasgow featured in this film.