Prior short film reviews

 

This image is a review on 2 short films we watched "Orphanage" and "Note to self". I am now going to review them both.

Orphanage

I thought this short film had a clear narrative in parts however there was a scene where a fire started with no clear idea of how it started to the audience. The genre was pretty clear from the start and the sound at the beginning revealed it was a horror. I felt the camera work was most professional out of both short films, the use of the variety of shots showed clearly it was a horror.

All the scenes were relevant but one slight mistake was the fact we see the orphanage building from the start and it is burnt and derelict. Then later on in the film we see the actual fire happen so the settings muddled the order up. This then made the short film difficult to follow.
There was sound throughout and I felt it was slightly unneeded at points. An example is when the girl is walking over the rubble and the sound of her feet on the ground was not in sync with the actual sound effect. I liked the non-diegetic sounds as it really did create a weary, scary effect.
Finally, the use of using a series of match cuts of the diary worked really well to create suspense.

From watching this short film I feel I have gained a wider knowledge of what works well in a short film and what doesn't. As a group we will learn from this and ensure our short film doesn't make the same mistakes. It has made me realise the importance of editing and making sure we do a final check to secure we have made no major mistakes. 

Note to self

I found the short film "note to self" clear at the start but wasn't consistent with enticing the audience. It was rather boring at times and when it was all beginning to reveal, it didn't quite all add up. The setting was pretty standard and lacked any creativity as it was all filmed in one home. It was clear that they had not thought everything through as where were the parents?. 

The camerawork was not amazing and it lacked any wow factor. However the use of the flashbacks worked really well with the storyline. The music used was very basic which I felt was unneeded, and it  didn't fit in at all with the scene. Also there wasn't much editing involved which sadly made it look like it could have been filmed on a phone for example. This made the short film amateur with no climax to it.

Overall I feel I have learnt that using camera techniques and good use of editing is key to a good short film. Acting is also important and I felt they lacked real effort. It was an eye opener to watch as it reminded me how realistic, strong and professional I wish ours to be. 

Voice-over Andrew Thompson

This is a video of a voiceover Andrew Thompson kindly did for us. It is played when the stalker is writing the letter and getting the gifts.

Filming for 'AWAY'

This is a prezi showing you the different filming we have for our short film and the planning of which ones we feel will work well with our short film.

Filming montage scene

This video is explaining our current situation on filming as we filmed the montage scene.

Risk assessment

These are a risk assessment sheet and a consent form. We have these to ensure everyone's safety and care when filming. 

Moodboard-'AWAY'

This is my mood board showing the ideas behind our short film 'AWAY'.

Audience Research - AWAY

Audience Research

In order to get an idea of what audience we were appealing to with our psychological thriller short film, we did a questionnaire.

This is our questionnaire we asked our class to fill out:

Media Short Film Questionnaire

Name:
Age:
Gender:

1. What do you think of our idea?

2. What did you find positive?

3. What did you find negative?

4. Where would you watch the film?

5. What do you think of the characters?

6. Would it meet the genre expectations?

 

The questionnaire made us think about:

1.whether our short film can work?
2.If it could ever be made into a film?3. What our class mates thought of the idea good/bad?
4.If it meets the target audience of 15-30?
5.Finally, if we had included the main parts of the genre; Psychological Thriller 

Why we chose the target audience to be 15-30 was because younger children would find the concept difficult to grasp and some scenes they may find disturbing.

Overall, we feel the questionnaire helped us to improve our short film idea and personally made me feel much more motivated and proud of our research.