P1: Features of short films report

 

Research into genre and conventions

 Short films can be around 50 minutes and they hold different conventions compared to full feature Hollywood films. You can find short films online and on some streaming services such as Disney +. For this report, I have researched different short films and I will write about different conventions of short films and how I can use these conventions in my own short film.

Short films have lots of different conventions. First of all the cast is smaller, since short films are usually not created by big conglomerate companies and don't have a large budget they use less actors. This isn't a bad thing however as we can see their character progressions and we feel connected to them. Another convention of short films is they only have one or two locations. These locations set the scene and atmosphere for the short film, this helps the viewers capture the theme or genre of the short film too. Furthermore, short films usually end on a cliffhanger that can shock, sadden, anger or evoke some kind of emtion from the audience. This creates suspense and makes the short film more memorable. Another convention of short films is they have some text or a graphic of the title at the end of the short film to remind the viewers the name and to help them compare their emotions/views of the short film from the beginning. They use different lighting based on the type of genre they are and they take mise en scène into consideration. I have watched several short films to help demonstrate the different conventions in short films. These are The Detective, Finely and About a Girl.

                                        

                                        The Detective

The Detective is a detective drama film noir short film. For our short film, we are going to go for a detective drama film noir short film with some comedy. Our short film is going to be called Newspaper but it will be set in modern times, however we are going to draw on conventions of black and white detective films and the genre.

              First of all, we see establishing low angle camera shots of the building (location).

 The whole short film is in black and white. There is a monologue where the detective is talking about the day and the case. The lighting is dark, we can't really see the detective's face until he turns the light on, we can see the light is coming from the lamp because the short film is lighter on that side of his face. The detective is smoking, using a typewriter (with a slow zoom in, the background is more out of focus with the detective in focus) and you can see a bottle of alcohol on the left. This is mise en scéne, because of the lighting we can see the shadow of the blinds in the background and the detective has a shadow on half of his face.

  Throughout this short film, we can hear dramatic jazz music. We hear a knock on the door and the detective gets a gun out of the draw in a close up camera shot. He switches the lamp off, the light from the window lightens up his eyes to give suspense. 

The short film cuts to the table with the typewriter and other items that detectives would use in older times and the text: Now introducing a film noir short The "Detective" fades into view. The background is very slowly zooming in and you can see the smoke from the cigarette. The text is in a serif slanted font that would fit with the detective drama style and the time period where serif fonts were used more frequently. The background fades to black and then the text fades out of view.

From this short film, the conventions of short films are clear: They only used one location of the detective's apartment, it ends on a cliffhanger with the detective holding a gun after someone knocked on the door, only one actor is used for the detective character, the short film introduces itself at the end with text graphic. You can also see conventions of a detective drama here that I will mention later in the report; my group is also going to make a black and white detective drama/comedy short film based in modern times so we will consider some of these conventions.

                                               Finely

Finley is a horror comedy short film about an evil murdering ventriloquist doll that was found in the attic.

 Finely is a murderous ventriloquist doll that tries but fails to kill Alexandra, Chris and Jennifer, the owners of the house. The main characters find Finely in the attic in a nailed shut box. When Finley comes to life, he tries to stab Jennifer with a knife but she kicked him instead. While Alexandra is in the bath, Finley tries to electricute her by throwing the toaster in the bath but he forgot to plug it in. We find Finley hitting his head against the wall when he fails his attempts. The doll also tries to hit Chris with a bat and misses. To add to the comedy, Finley still keeps failing his attempts three months later when he tries putting rat posion in their food again and suffocate Chris with plastic when he gets in his car. Afterwards he tries to hurt Alexandra with marbles on the floor and nails in the rug, light the house on fire by spraying aerosol (which is higly flamable) at the birthday candles on the cake only to spray an aerosol it in his eyes, shoot an arrow at Chris, he even tried to take the blame for the cat. Chris says "Can't you tell no one wants you here, why don't you just go to the attic and stay there you worthless dummy" to Finely as he throws the crossbow. Finley goes back to the attic and stays in the box.

 

 

 

However, near the end the short film, the college students are in danger, intruders get into the house and they tie up the college students. Finley rescues them by killing the robbers with the same techniques he failed with earlier on. However, the twist is right at the end of the short film is when Finely poisoned the people by putting rat poison in their eggnog at Christmas. Although this isn't spoken, we know this is the case because earlier on in the short film Finely tried to poison their food with rat poison but was caught so he failed.

 We can see short film contentions here. There are only five actors altogether in the short film, the three people who live in the house and the two robbers. It is set in different rooms of the house, the short film ends on a cliffhanger when they think the eggnog tastes weird and we infer Finlely poisoned them. 

Some horror comedy conventions are: Making scary things funny, using creepy music, building up suspense by making us expect that Finely was at the door when it was just Chris for example, using darker lighting.

                                           About a Girl

About a girl is a comedy drama short film about a seemingly normal teenage girl who has a poor relationship with her parents.

 

 

 

At the start of the short film, the girl sings and dances to Britany Spears, we only see her silhouette. The weather is dark and gloomy and this is a full body shot. The short film then switches when the girl starts to talk to us through the camera about funny things that happened in her life and she takes the mess out of her family with jokes. These are some conventions of the genre. We learn that her parents are split, her dad is looking for work and treats her like a child, she gets forced to watch him play football most Saturdays. We find out more about the girl's life and this gets us invested in the character which is a convention of short films, she want to be in a famous girl group with her friends. She talks about how her mum never lets her have anything because she is a cigarette addict. She talks about running away to her dad. She talks about how good she has gotten hiding things from her mum since then. We see a convention of a short film, a cliffhanger/twist at the end when the girl throws what looked like a normal plastic bag into the river that had her mum's newborn baby with the cord still attatched with it, this makes the audience feel uneasy and shocked. The short film gets quiet when she gets to the river to create suspense.

 

  About a Girl follows short film conventions: We see text of the title in an old text message styled font, It ends on a cliffhanger when she killed her mum's baby, there aren't many actors, not many locations are used and they make us feel connected/invensted in the character by letting us into her life.

Conventions used for the drama comedy genre are: The girl talks to the camera and everytime she talks about something it cuts to what happened in the past, they use lots of jokes, the short film uses relatability for example lots of people love Britany Spears, there isn't much silence to show how she has a loud and talkative personality.

 

In my short film I will draw on some of these conventions. We chose the name Newspaper for the name of our short film because we are going to create a black and white short film and newspapers are black and white. In our detective drama comedy, we are going to have cutaways with a newspaper that would have riddles, writing or symbols in red marker pen to foreshadow/hint at the events later on in the short film. We can also include red herrings this way. Furthermore, the murder victim is going to be covered in newspapers. The Detective is the best short film for me to draw conventions from because we want to make a similar styled short film.

The Detective film shows the detective drama genre conventions: Black and white, monologue, it uses mise en scène with the objects (we know he is a detective from his personal belongings) and dramatic jazz music. There are also other conventions in this genre that The Detective didn't use like clues, red herrings, a twist at the end.

So in my own short film, I will use the following short film conventions: I won't use many actors (only four of us will be acting), we will only use one or a few locations, we will end our short film on a cliffhanger and use some character progression. We will also follow black and white detective drama conventions such as using Jazz music, monologues, shadows and highlights, red herrings and clues.