1) ‘I Am Butterfly’ – Carlos Florez (2012)
This is a heart-felt short film which I found on www.youtube.com, about a mother and a daughter in America. The story starts of as a happy family and the voiceover on top of the daughter and policeman indicates that the child’s mother abandoned her in a busy city.
I chose this film because it is very recent and grabs at your heart strings, I was also very intrigued about the way it is set out and how the narrative progresses the story until the climax at the end. I think Carlos Florez was very creative when making the short film as he takes a different approach to telling the story compared to other short films.
Representation
- The mother and daughter seem to be from a middle class social group because they are wearing nice clothes and appear wealthy. However, the voice over from the little girl says they have no money and ‘mummy wants to be a model’ which makes you realise that they are from a working class background and probably on minimum wage or benefits as the mother hasn’t become a model. The little girl also mentions that they rely on the mother’s horrible boyfriend for money.
- This is a positive stereotype for the working class because you can’t see it through mise en scene, you’re just told through voice over narration.
 |
| This is a still from the short film, showing the closeness between mother and daughter. |
- The expected audience of the film, being mainly females probably think about the representation in a different way. The mother is wearing a nice dress, in a nice clean city and is with her young daughter. You wouldn’t think by eye that she is a working class mother, and if you watched it on mute you wouldn’t associate her at all with the working class.
- The short film definitely deals with issues, as it is a mother struggling with what she wants to do (model) and having a young daughter who she appears to adore. She abandons her child in a busy place, which happens a lot more than we think in the modern world, however maybe not in this way. I think he chose this scenario because we would never guess it and it is there to shock the spectator.
Narrative
- The narrative is progressed by the voice over of the police man and ‘Butterfly’ the little girl and make the film make sense. We don’t know what’s happened to her mother, although we know something has, and it’s only when we see her mother leave then the whole voice over and short film movement make sense.
- The moving image is linear in the narrative although it uses ellipsis to get rid of the unimportant parts of the narrative. This technique is even more important in short films as they have a limited time to get it all in.
- The chronology is linear because they don’t start with the ending and progress the story on until the climax right at the end.
Genre
- The genre for this short film seems unidentifiable as nothing scary or funny happens in it to determine it as a comedy or horror film. However, because of the cliff-hanging ending, I suppose it has an element of thriller in it. The piece is very dramatic and plays with your emotion but doesn’t really belong to a certain genre.
- Short films typically use genre to determine what you are going to get in sometimes less than five minutes. There are thousands of short films they each don’t all share the same genre, and some are even hybrids, and they all take different routes in telling their stories.
- Genre is very helpful in short films because it cuts out all the unimportant parts of film which are used to establish the genre, such as a thriller opening of a crime that has been committed etc.
Audience
- Here, the director of the short film actually gets involved and writes the audience about the film.
- I think the audience for the film are middle aged parents, who can relate to the film. One of the people comment about having no father around and it being ‘just another modern day family’ which suggests that the person who commented is older and more aware of the rising amounts of single parent families. This isn’t an issue that teenagers and children think about.
- The short film is shown and spoken about across Flickr, which shows that maybe he’s trying to reach a younger target audience, as many people of the older generations don’t know this exists or don’t use it.
- Carlos Florez has won an EMMY award for his work, which is a big achievement, especially for a short film director.
Media Language
- I find the last sequence very interesting because when the mother leaves the daughter in a weird tunnel thing in the middle of a street, you get point of view shots of the daughter looking out and watching her mother abandon her. Florez has used this to put yourself in a young girl of about 4’s eyes and make you feel sympathy for her.
- Also in this scene, the most heart-breaking part of it all, the point of view shot of the girl looking through the glass is distorted, to show the grooves in the glass, but also to show the distortion of what is happening and how unnatural it is for a mother to just leave her young daughter on the street. I find this particularly interesting because it is clever use of camera work and this position and place has been used purposely. This generates a response from the audience because it’s so gripping and shocking that it grabs your attention.
2) ‘Bitch’ (Dom Bridges 2009)
I chose this comedic short film because it is so funny and I find it particularly creative because of the narrative, and well written. It involves a middle aged man in a super market queuing up to pay for a few bits when he’s approached by an old African lady in front of him in the que. She asks him to call her mum after selling him a story of her dead son, and because he does, she cons him into paying for her shopping. The short film is very intriguing and grabs your attention from just the title.
Representation
- I think the lower/working class are represented in this short film. This is shown by them shopping in a cheap supermarket such as ALDI or LIDL. We know this because as the camera is focused on the conveyor belt, all the packaging looks cheap and it seems unsaturated. They are also wearing average clothes instead of suits etc which would show us that they’re middle class.
- Because it’s comedy, the characters don’t really need to be posh, especially for this setting. This makes genre important to the audience so that they can see their favourite genre and relate to the characters, instead of looking at a different class to them.
- The male is represented as a stereotypical middle aged man who’s just popping into his local supermarket to get a few bits. He looks tired and scruffy which represents his social class. However, although he is not admirable, he is represented positively, but still maybe an easy target for this old woman.
- I also think the representations are a bit backward and unexpected. It is usually portrayed as middle aged men scamming old women, but in this instance, it’s the other way around.This makes us off guard, and because the roles are reversed, we aren’t expecting the final outcome.
Narrative
- The chronology of the narrative is linear, as there is no use of flash-backs for example, and it doesn’t start at the end etc. This is typical for short films as being under 5 minutes, there isn’t a lot of time for them to be jumping around time and it would confuse the spectator.
- The short film ends on its climax, with the man realising that he’s been conned and says the title of the short film ‘bitch’ this is to make us link between the title and the film as it could be unclear.
- Ending on the climax is good because it leaves us on the edge of our seat and we don’t know whether he’s going to pay for her shopping or if he’s going to run after her. This is typical of short films as they don’t have a lot of time to show us the extent of what happens.
Genre
- The genre is definitely comedy but we don’t really know this until the ending, when it climax’s. After the short film, the genre is clearly identified because it will make you laugh and everything will make sense.
- Short films typically use genre to cut out the introduction and typical conventions of short films. In this example, genre is hard to tell from the title, because ‘bitch’ isn’t a very nice word, making you think of violence or crime, but it turns out to be funny. Bitch is no longer such a bad word, but used in the right context it is.
- The genre is shown also through mise en scene, as the setting is in a supermarket, which although is not funny, is not a typical place to have a thriller or a horror film. All the conventions add up to show the genre, such as the items on the conveyor belt are a bit random, such as dog food and baked beans, and we know it’s not going to be 100% serious.
Audience
- You can see the difference in audience feedback from the two short films. These comments seem to be from younger, teenage audience who seem to have stumbled across this short film by accident. This is probably one of the reasons this short film was called Bitch, to gain the right target audience, because teenagers are more engaged with comedies etc.
- I think the audience would be pleased by the film because it swears, which is still relatively new for younger teenage audiences, and it is very funny and unexpected. This attracts them to these type of short film.
Media Language
- The best part of the film is the ending, but the part in the middle when this crazy old lady is showing a picture of her dead ‘son’ is very interesting and creative. She shows a picture of an oriental man who looks nothing like him. This generates a response of comedic values, whereas the audience or spectator will probably laugh, but be more indulged to as where this woman is going with her madness. A close up of the picture shows us that he does in fact look nothing like him and we start to feel sympathy (like the character) for this woman who has probably gone mental.
3) Blush
I chose this short film becuase it really intrigued me and confused me, which is a good thing when it comes to short films. I also chose it because our group are thinking about having a silent short film, and this one only has music over the top and a few foley effects, no dialogue. This is also interesting because the team ISO Pictures has decided to use a plain white background behind, and just the two actors on props. This whole short film is filled with suspense, and the five key concepts make it really thrilling.
Representation
- We don't learn anything about the characters because the sequence seems to happen over time, yet we don't really know anything about them due to their being no dialogue. However, we can guess what their like with what happens in the sequence and the mise en scene.
-Red is the prodominant colour, which signals love, lust, blood and danger. This makes us suspect something is going on, however we think it may just be love and lust when the woman is in her underwear and they are having an intimate moment.
-The male is obviously dangerous as we see him lure her into his studio, sleeps with her and then killers her. This makes us realise that first impressions are often wrong as he just seemed like a man who wanted to hit on her at a party.
-The two characters are represented differently throughout the film, because we assume she is a high class woman while she's drinking a cocktail at the party, then she seems very easy when she takes the mans invitation at a photo shoot then sleeps with him, then we feel sympathy when she is the victim of murder, and these are all conveyed to us in 5 minutes.
-The woman seems to be in control of the situaution because it is always the man moving around her, with her as the main subject, until the very end when he becomes the dominant character.
-The silence of the piece makes sure we don't know too much about the piece, and cannot form too much character representations through what they say etc.
Narrative
- The piece seems to follow a linear, chronological narrative, except from when we see the man running at the begginning and we don't really know what that is about, but all becomes clear in the end.
-We don't know too much of what is happeneing, and we can only assume, but we don't know if the narrative and short film is taking place over the same day, in only a few hours, or if it's throughout the course of a few years. The characters are wearing the same clothes, but this could be because of their character traits and because it's a short film we have to be careful not to confuse the spectator.
-I think the narrative covers a few hours, as this all happens too quick and we dont get an idea of whats actually happened to make the story turn so bad. When the woman picks up the lamp to through it at the man, we would assume that they have ahad a fight, and have maybe been together a while to get this intamatly angry with each other, however when he shoots her, we assume that she was trying to protect herself.
-There is no voice over or any dialogue to progress the story on, however there is a heartbeat and a dodgy tune in the background which suggest that it is a thriller piece and something bad is going to happen.
Genre
- The genre of the piece is obviously a thriller because of what happens at the way, and the audience is left guessing all the way through it.
-At the beginning of the short film we suspect that the film is a romance, because of the connotations of red and the scenes of the only two characters, however we don't really know until the end when we see that the red colour means danger, blood and horror.
-Genre is used in short films to determine what is going to happen and what it's all about, and sometimes to define certification. While I was finding a short film, I searched up thrillers as I think it would be important to research if we decide to make a thriller short film (which we're thinking about) so I already knew that the film was a thriller, however it was made clear in the film.
Audience
-Audiences are very important to all film makers, and especially short film makers as they have a much narrower audience and not as many people have access to them. The audience for this particular short film is probably male and females (but mostly males becuase of the genre and themes and issues raised) from late teens to middle aged people. This would be because the story is still quite shocking and not suitable for a younger audience and they probably wouldn't be intrested in it, and stories such as these are not common for elderly people to watch.
- I think the audience would enjoy this film because the climax of it is very unexpected and almost frightening which shocks the audience.
-The short film was in the running of a competetion to become the Best New Short Film USA so it obviously stands out to a wide audience who are interested in the genre and short movies like these.
Media Language
-I think the short film was very successful because of the use of mise en scene, lighting and colour. The colour red connotes a lot of different things, and in this film we realise that it's representing all the connotations. However the most common use for it is blood and danger, which we find out at the end that this is the main reason it's been used.
-The themes and issues of the piece are very unique and leaves us with a thought in our minds, which is very good for a short film to have. The issues of sex with strangers, and danger in what people tell us is evident in this piece and makes the spectators shocked.
- The silence in the short film, with only foley effects and music in the back ground is very effective because we don't get a sense of what is happeneing until we see it happen. These are very effective and it will be something we consider doing when it comes to our short film
4) Dream Girl
I chose this short film because it was interesting in the fact that it only involved two characters, and was silent throughout. This is an idea which our group are interested in. I found the short film on Virgin Media Shorts and I watched it in the first place because it was a Tivo Award Winner. This made me expect lots of things to happen within it, but it didn't which is suprising and shocking to the spectator because you don't get a storyline, just a piece or start of a story. It's only two minutes long so the rest of what happens is left to you.
Representation
-Because there is no dialogue between the only two characters, we have to assume things about the people. We can obviously see their gender, and the age can be guessed. The female seems to be about 18 years old, of caucasian ethnicity and of the middle or working class. We know this because she is using public transport but looks respectable.
-The male in the short film seems slightly older, maybe 22 years old, and is from possibly African decent. He seems to be in a lower class as the female, though probably high working class. We can make these assumptions through their costume and location.
-It's quite touching that the characters are from different backgrounds, because it shows to us that two complete strangers can share an intimate moment on a very normal occasion, where as 50 yuears ago, it would have been a totally different story. The director has chosen these characters for a purpose and I think this may be one of the reasons why.
Genre
-Although the genre of the piece is said to be 'other' on virgin media shorts, I would argue that it is a romance, and this short film seems to be only part of a story which could be carried on in a sequel.
-It isnt a regular occurance that two complete strangers share an intimate moment on public transport such as this, and when the male character gets off the tube train, he then changes his mind and goes back to sit with the girl.
-That seems to be connotations of a love story, so I would argue that it's a romance.
-If we didn't get the beginnning of the story when the girl enters the train, we would assume that they already know each other and are possible boyfriend and girlfriend.
Narrative
-There is no voice over to direct the scene, which would propell the story on and give us a clear sense of the narrative, however we do get an understanding that this short film is set over just a couple of minutes. In other films, such as Blush, we don't know if the events are chronological. Here we understand through mise en scene and other aspects that it is.
-The sequence follows a linear path, in which we get all the information we need. The short film is only just over 2 minutes long, so there is not a lot of time there for the directors to add in flash backs, or make it a circular narrative.
-I personally do not belive that the short film Dream Girl follows any of the narrative theories, such as Todorov or Volgler, as there is no journey, or disequilibrium. However I could see Todorov's theory being argued here, and it could work if the scene wasn't so simple and something bad actually did happen, but the man exiting the train and getting back on seems to normal to be called a disequilibrum and resolution.
Audience
-I think the audience for this short film would be anyone who has an intrest in films, and in particular short films.
-The film won the Tivo Award, which shows that there is an audience for the short films, and people do vote to see people with talent get recognised.
-I think the main audience for these films are people who create short films themselves too, as this whole website was created for people making short films.
-At the beginning of the short film, the advert said 'Virgin Media Shorts, Champoining Undiscovered Talent' Which shows there are people behind this who watch all these short films to find people who are capable of making good films.
-I think the main audience would be females, from tenaged to about mid twenties because the title is 'Dream Girl' and this is typically a thing which females find cute and desirable. I don't think older people would enjoy it as much, as they're not as much into romance and finding love in everyday situations.
Media Language
- I think that the film is very interesting because it targets an audience of people without even considering itself having a genre (which I would argue it would) and it has a particular theme running all the way through it. I would say the film is finding love, or an unexpected encounter, in a common place.
-The location was particulary chosen to reach out to millions of people nationwide who get the tube to work or anywhere everyday, and so many people felt like they could relate to things like this happening.
-I loved the short film because I felt it was so simple and yet so nice that it made me smile when I found that nothing really does happen to suprise or shock you, it just makes you feel happy.
Some good analysis here more application of theory would help as would some more images to re-enforce your analysis. You may wish to go back and improve this
ReplyDelete