Continued Planning

We have developed our films idea more thouroughly.

We have found we may not have the technology to have the whole film in split-screen, so instead we may have continually editting shots, moving backwards and forwards between the POV shots of the central characters ( the killer and the man chasing him).

Narratively, the film will follow the two characters through the initial event (murder), the middle (chase) and resolution.

We have decided to make the Mis-En-Scene fairly dark and urban to give the film a dark, gritty and chlaustrophobic feel.

- Alex

New Idea

We have now been looking at the idea of a split-screen narrative. We were thinking of using this to tell a romantic story, or more likley, to tell a crime story.

Possibly, one screen could follow a killer, while the other follows the man pursuing him.


References.
Timecode:
Film uses four continuous shots to put the story together.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0220100/

24
Uses split screens frequently to tell the narrative.

Reading and Viewing

For our short film, we will seek inspiration from various books and films:
Books:
Anything by Dashiell Hammet or Raymond Chandler. We believe these will help us perfect the mood and narrative style of the piece.


Films:
Sin City: Dark story telling and a bleak, bold visual style.

Brick: Contemporary story-telling, with a film noir Chandler-esque slant.

Memento: Non-Linear story telling, with a dark centre


Any classic Film Noirs from the 40's or 50's, to help us create a classic mood or visual style.

Short film festivals

Festivals are what filmmakers thrive on; a chance to get their work not only noticed, but accredited and possibly even funded-who's going to miss an opportunity like that!?

Most successful film directors use short film festivals as spring boards into the feature length film industry and heavily encourage them to be as controversial and original as they wish.

Continuing on from the distribution post, here is a more comprehensive list of all the film festivals that we have found...

Films that are exactly one minute in length-
http://www.filminute.com/2007/vote/index.php

Kino Film Festival-
http://www.kinofilm.org.uk/

Encounter Short Film Festival-
http://www.encounters-festival.org.uk/

Bang! Film festival (non-competitive)-
http://www.bangshortfilmfestival.com/

Media that matter festival-
http://www.mediathatmattersfest.org/

Hull Short film festival-
http://www.hullfilm.co.uk/

Super Shorts film festival-
http://www.supershorts.org.uk/

Halloween film festival-
http://www.shortfilms.org.uk/

- Dan

Funding your short film

Although we will be creating a film that doesn't require funding, we wanted to know how short film directors dealt with the financial issues.

Channel four has a list of many websites that prospective film makers can check out, whether they are looking for private funding, film festival cash awards or simply looking how to go it alone. http://www.channel4.com/film/reviews/feature.jsp?id=113742

http://www.britfilms.com/resources/fundinginformation/ gives details of all of the publicly funded production companies who offer a budget amount to offer short filmmakers each year. One of the better known sites is http://www.ukfilmcouncil.org.uk/filmmaking/shorts/

The BBC film network website has a very handy guide to making the most out of your application to the film companies: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/filmmakersguidefunding#application

Short film script writing

To get some help for writing our script we looked on BBC's film network which gave us an idea's platform from which we could start scripting from:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/filmmakersguidewriting

We then found some example scripts to look at the layouts

Film Style and genre

In our group we have been especially taken with the idea of a film noir. "Noir" films are usually dark moody films, often focussing on crime and detectives. Most prominent in the 40's and 50's, film noir employed dark cinematography, usually using black and white film.

Recent films such as 'Brick' and 'Sin City' have also employed film noir with a more modern slant.

www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir
- Alex

1960's Nouvelle Vague films have also captured our interest because of their intimist psychological approach and because of their aim of creating films predominently for their style. Such films include À bout de souffle and Bande à part amongst others. A satorical short film that is stylized to appear like a nouvelle vague film is Je t'aime John Wayne: http://youtube.com/watch?v=dIkvl8dzvc0
This idea of stylizing our film to appear like another subgenre may appeal to us when we come to creating our own film.


A black comedy short called 'Stiffy';http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A10838045 also attracted our attention because of it's use of sepia tone and low flickering lighting to convey innocent romance, whilst it actually details human need, desire and fetish in its sinister entirety. This has opened new windows about how to include subliminal messages and duplicitious meanings in our film.

To gain some varied knowledge of other common genres of short films we searched the internet and have picked out what we feel are some of the best examples...

Comedy
Oedipus-told in comic verse!: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A7490685

Sweet:http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A18573753

Goodbye to the normals:

Music

Gorillaz-Feel Good Inc:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01C4RPEinM4

Unkle-Burn My Shadow: http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A24064274

Differences in Long and Short Films

• Firstly the obvious: actual film length
• The narrative will differ: short films rely less on coherent plot structure, and prefer to use the viewers imagination to fill in a story The film will merely present some ideas to the viewer.
• Distribution and audience: a typical short film is not commercially minded, as it does not need to be due to its budget. A short film does not appeal as much to a mainstream audience, as it requires more work on their part to enjoy, usually.
• Cast size: a short film has a very small cast, and usually almost no extras.
• Short films can seem much more rough and unpolished, due to the budget on most.

Why make a Short Film?

Film makers may choose to make a short film if:
- They are starting out and want to showcase their skills, without needing a large budget.
- They want to tackle a difficult subject, which more commercially minded films may choose to avoid.
- They want to make a film, but choose a subject which only needs a small amount of screen time.
- They want a short film to accompany a larger film or TV show ie. pixar short films.
- Directors prefer avante garde, abstract or arthouse films which would not suit a full film.

More information:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Short_film#Short_subjects_in_the_modern_era
Pixar:
http://www.pixar.com/shorts/index.html

Producing short films

To get an idea of the timescale and different aspects of the production of short films we have searched the internet and found some interesting and helpful webpages.

UCL's website has a production log of an intended short film, detailing the casting process, a shooting schedule and a camera log as well as giving a brief introduction to producing a film.
http://www.homepages.ucl.ac.uk/~uczxflm/productions/producing_a_short_film.html

We have found an ebook called Producing and Directing the Short Film and Video By David K. Irving, Peter W. Rea which has what must be the best section on pre and post production of short films on the internet:
http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=7iRJDMCOpRsC&dq=&pg=PP1&ots=PQGtL-zAhL&sig=lG7FvkWEgZ03ZEpiHwZ79bX8M0o&prev=http://www.google.co.uk/search%3Fhl%3Den%26safe%3Doff%26ie%3DISO-8859-1%26q%3D%2BProducing%2Band%2BDirecting%2Bthe%2BShort%2BFilm%2Band%2BVideo%26btnG%3DSearch%26meta%3Dcr%253DcountryUK%257CcountryGB&sa=X&oi=print&ct=title#PPA25,M1

Both of these sites, especially the last one, will be extremely useful when we're trying to get our heads around our own production schedule!

Distributing a short film

We were keen to find out how short films made it out of the editing suite and onto the big screen so we looked on various websites, starting with ehow's guide on to where to send them:
http://www.ehow.com/how_2077624_distribute-short-film.html

We then looked on BBC's film network webpage to find out a little more detail about the distribution process.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/rights

Aside from the obvious choice of entering short films into film festivals; some of which we found out about on these sites;
http://www.kinofilm.org.uk/, http://www.britfilms.com/festivals/browse/?s=short&c, http://www.supershorts.org.uk/, http://www.shortfilms.org.uk/
we also found a site called Lux that gives film makers a comprehensive directory of independant 'short friendly' cinemas throughout the UK, as an alternative to the festival scene: http://distribution.lux.org.uk/cinema/cinemas.htm
Their home page also gives extra information on other places to distribute short films to such as galleries, film agencies, television companies and the internet.

The internet is easily the most straight forward and beneficial way of getting a short film seen and heard, even if it isn't financially rewarding. Sites such as http://www.filminute.com/2007/vote/index.php, http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/A25578372, www.youtube.com, www.video.google.com and www.myspace.com (which auditions users for the sites own short films) have a good selection of short films of all genres and plenty of links to the film companies' websites.