Finished Evaluation(Text Only)

Evaluation:

For my short film I made a comedy. I took inspiration from the several short films I had studied but two of the biggest influences for me were “Tight Jeans” (2008) by Destiny Ekaragha and “The Fly” (2014) by Olly Williams. Similar to “The Fly”, I tried to make the humour in my film come from the cinematography, editing and performance rather than the dialogue itself. In “The Fly” Olly Williams slowly increases the intensity of  the cinematography, editing and performance throughout the film in accordance to how angry the main character has gotten, I believe that this is responsible for a large proportion of the humour in the short film as every micro-element becomes so extreme and exaggerated it can no longer be taken seriously. I tried to achieve something similar in my film as, instead of having the exaggeration of the micro-elements slowly build up, I tried to create the exaggeration by having a large juxtaposition between the scenes where my main character is attempting to escape from the rocking horse and when he isn’t. I created this contrast by having a slow pace of editing, basic cinematography and no or little non-diegetic sound most of the time but in the scenes where the main character is trying to get out of the rocking horse I used very fast editing, a multitude of camera angles and shot types and an exaggerated sound track and performance. I believe this exaggeration can be shown most clearly in the scene after the flashback where the main character can be seen trying to escape from the rocking horse for the second time. I used rapid cuts to create a montage feel, music with a fast tempo to heighten the feeling of speed and the panic the main character was feeling and I continuedly jumped the camera around to further the effect of the music. All of this is very different to what the scene prior to it was like. In that scene the main character is on his phone messaging his friends and so I tried to emphasize the calmness in this part by keeping all the micro-elements very simple and only using diegetic noise. And by doing all this I believe I created a large enough contrast that I achieved the extreme exaggeration like in “The Fly”. However, one problem with the contrast I created is that it can feel quite jarring when my film quickly switches from one of the calmer scenes to one of the more exaggerated ones which could easily hamper the audience’s viewing experience. If I were to remake my film, I would probably try to make the transition between the two types of scenes less jarring by trying to blend the transition from each extreme a bit better just like in “The Fly”.

The second film I took large influence from was “Tight Jeans”. Although I wasn’t the biggest fan of the film as I personally didn’t find the humour to be all that funny, I liked how the film was relatively simple and inexpensive unlike some of the other films I studied which had relatively larger budget. In “Tight Jeans” the film is set in the parking area of an apartment complex and there aren’t really any props of notable interest. Not only does this keep the costs down I also felt like it meant there wasn’t anything to distract the audience from the conversation of the characters. I liked this idea and so, I tried to do something similar. To keep costs down I decided to use the play area near my house as the setting of my film as it was very close and there was a lot, I could do there. Just like in “Tight Jeans” I kept the number of props used to a bare minimum, with a mobile phone being the only prop of any importance. However, one problem with my filming location was the weather which ended up being a bigger issue than I had thought it would be because I filmed outside and wasn’t able to finish in one day as my friend who was playing the main character had to leave before we were done. This meant I was reliant on the weather being fairly consist and, unfortunately for me, it wasn’t and as a result my filming schedule become quite messed up as I would have to wait till the weather was the same, if not similar, as the previous time I had filmed. This, unfortunately, resulted in my film having some minor discrepancy depending on what day I filmed because although I filmed at the same time each day to keep the lighting the same the weather wasn’t always identical. This is why in my film the ground around the rocking horse is sometimes wet and sometimes not. If I were to make another short film, I would consider devising a story which would enable me to film more scenes inside and so I would be less dependent on the weather dedicating when I can and cannot film. Another issue with the setting was that the rocking horse was actual too small for the person I had playing the main character. Although this might sound like a benefit as this was the plot of my script it was actually a bit of a problem as he couldn’t get in or out of the rocking horse without help. To counter this problem, I decided not to film the scene where the main character actually gets into the rocking horse by cutting to black just as he is about to get in and ending the film just as he begins to get out.

One thing I did in my short film which I didn’t see done in any of the short films I studied was that I used some point of view shots from the perspective of the main character. I used these P.O.V. shots to help show the characters intentions without the use of words and to align the audience with the main character by showing what he is seeing. For example, I used a P.O.V. shot for when the main character was looking around the park before walking to the rocking horse. This way both the audience and the main character see the rocking horse together for what would be the main character’s first time. I also used another P.O.V. shot when the main character walks over to look at the rocking horse. This was to allow the audience to get into the mind of the main character an come to the decision themselves as to whether or not the rocking horse was too small or not.

I also decide not to follow the standard three act structure as I believed it would allow me to be more creative when it came to my short film’s narrative. In my short film what would normally be considered the ‘first act’ actually begins a bit over a minute into the film. I started my short film with my main character already in the rocking chair as I felt it would add a more humorous twist to the start as the camera slowly pulls out and also the audience would already know what was going to happen him when there is the flashback to earlier on in the day. The biggest issue I had with ignore the standard three act structure was letting the audience know it was a flashback. I tried various methods but, in the end, I decide to stick with the text at the top of the screen. Even then I wasn’t very happy with it as I feel like it is out of place and poorly implemented. If I were to reshoot my short film, I would probably stick with using a non-standard narrative but try to find a better way to introduce a flashback to the audience.

One of the biggest problems I encountered when making my short film was that half of my footage didn’t have sound and that the other half had quite a lot of background noise from all the wind during film. This was a big problem as it meant that lots of my footage didn’t have any usable diegetic sound like footsteps or people talking in it. This resulted in almost all of the diegetic noise in my finished short film being added in after the filming and during my editing. I also didn’t have any usable audio of people talking which is why I decided to have the conversations in my film take place through text messages. This resulted in me focusing more on the diegetic audio for my film during my editing phase then on almost any other part. If I were to make another film I would make sure to check if my clips have audio and also to make sure I only film in conditions where the camera will be able to record the audio in a decent manner.