In this post I am going to be talking about the GWHS film festival. The GWHS film festival allows people to nominate their favourite short films and then the best ones get shown in the film festival. People can come along to the film festival and see the best short films that have been nominated. Here are the short films that have been nominated for the GWHS film festival;
For this part of the nominations, we all each had to nominate our favourite short film and then we all had to watch each others. We then had to rate on a scale of 1-10 how good the camerawork, soundtrack, editing and narrative was.
Below I am going to put a link to all of the nominations so you can watch them if you want to;
Grace - Waste of Time
Mine - Too Quick To Judge
Brad - Fired on Mars
Nareece - Hallucination
Josh - The Most Beautiful Thing
Joe - Wanderers
Sara - Room 8
Ben - Life in Grey
Tam - Awake
Sarah - Alone
Elisa's - Wrapped
After entering all of the nominations and scoring them all from 1-10, here are the scores for all of our nominated short films and the winners;
You can see from the table which films scored the highest for camerawork, which film scored the highest for soundtrack, which films scored the highest for editing, which film scored highest for the narrative and then finally the films that scored the highest in total. Below are the top three scoring short films from all of our nominations;
The winner of best camerawork is Emily with Real Gone.
The winner of best soundtrack is Emily with Real Gone.
The winner of best editing is Sara with Room 8.
The winner of best narrative is Emily with Real Gone.
The winner of the short film nominations is Emily with Real Gone. Second place is Sara with Room 8. Third place is Elisa with Wrapped.
For our A2 Media course we are going to create our very own short film, to do this I will need to do some research on existing short films. There are some areas that I am going to be focusing on including; camerawork, soundtrack, narrative and editing.
Here are the three of the best short films that I am going to be reviewing;
Too Quick to Judge
This short film portrays the message that some people are too quick to judge and that there might be other explanations to a persons behaviour.
There were some editing techniques in this short film that made it very effective. There were a lot of transitions from scene to scene, some of these transitions were to portray the passing of time.
There was also a lot of camerawork in this short film. At the start there was an establishing shot of the girl sitting on the bench which portrayed loneliness and the fact that the girl might be different which foreshadows what happens later on in the short film.
We then see a two shot of the scene when the girl and the boy are both sitting on the bench. The boy looks at the girl but the girl doesn't look at the boy. The scene then follows with a close up shot of the boys face following his dialogue. The girl takes no notice of the boy after he speaks. We can see that the boy is very annoyed at this with the use of the close up shot. We then realise at the end of the short film that the girl is deaf and she wasn't just ignoring him. The sort film is trying to portray the message that some people are too quick to judge and they shouldn't be.
Identity
This short film shows us that a lot of people cover up their true identity and true personality because of what society tells people how to look and how to behave.
In this short film there is a lot of camerawork such as close up shots, point of view shots, tracking shots etc. The camerawork was used effectively in this short film to show the fact that the girl is feeling isolated ad alone, the use of the tracking shot allows us as the viewers to feel and see what she is seeing, for example, when she gets pushed over by the girls the use of the tracking shot allows us to be a part of that and make the viewers empathise with the girl as so many people can relate to the situation.
The zoom also allows us as the viewers to see how alone the girl is because she can't be herself and she is hiding behind a mask which is isolating her from the rest of the world which the use of camerawork does effectively.
The use of editing is good in the short film as well when the action is seen to be played backwards, this gives the effect that the girl wants to go back in time and change her identity and the way she has behaved and she no longer wants to listen to how society tells her t behave.
Hallucination
This short film is letting people know about mental illnesses such as schizophrenia.
There is very good use of camerawork at the start of the short film, first we see the camera panning and focusing on all of the tablets that are on the shelf. This shows the viewers how hard and distressing it must be to take all kinds of medication when you have a mental illness.
We then see multiple clos ups of the woman's face, this shows the viewers the expression on her face when she is crying, when she is upset and when she feels distressed or on edge which is most of the time which shows viewers how hard and tiring it must be to live with a mental illness.
The use of editing is effective in this short film. We see the woman slowly disappear like she is some sort of ghost, this portrays how it must feel to have a mental illness, like you are different from everyone else, like you don't exist which is portrayed effectively through the use of editing.
The soundtrack in this short film is very effective. We hear throughout the short film a ringing sound, it's as if the woman is hearing the ringing sound, this sound effect makes the viewers feel like the woman is isolated because of her mental illness.
In this post I will be talking about what a short film is and the generic conventions of a short film. For our A2 Media course we need to create a short film, so I'm going to do some research as to what a short film is.
Here is a definition I found of a short film; "A short film is ant film not long enough to be considered a feature film. Although no consensus exists as to where that boundary is drawn, the academy of motion picture arts and sciences defines a short film as an original motion picture, that has a running time of 40 minutes or less, including all credits."
Short films are often screened at local, national and international film festivals and made by independent film makers for non-profit. Short films are generally used by filmmakers to gain experience and/or prove their talent in order to gain funding for future films.
Generic conventions of a short film Characters - characters are an obvious convention of any short film. They tend to stick to 2 or 3 main characters. short films don't have time to create deep back story or history for the characters, therefore character numbers are kept low to allow the viewers to relate to the character in a short amount of time.
Twist - Short films nearly always have a twist. This is done to make the short film more interesting as they are so short. Without a twist in a short film the storyline would be uninteresting.
Here is an example of a short film I found that has a twist at the end;
Budget - Short films typically have a low budget. This is based on the fact that most short film directors are independent without the backing in terms of funding. They keep their budget down by sticking to one or two locations and only using one or two actors.
Length - Short films typically have a length of up to 35 minutes, they are typically around 5-10 minutes in length. If they were any longer they wouldn't be classed as short and would be classed as a feature film.
Situation - Short films usually take an everyday situation that we can all relate to ad then flip it on its head in some way, This allows the viewer to relate to the short film in some way, but at the same time intriguing them.
In this post I will be talking about the requirements for the A2 Media course.
For the A2 Media course we are required to create a short film in its entirety. It has to last approximately five minutes and has to be live action, animated or both. Together with two of the following three options;
A poster for the film
A radio trailer for the film
A film magazine review page featuring the film
The two options we will be using in creating our film is a poster for the film and a film magazine review page featuring the film.
Click here to see my AS Media blog from last year.
In my next post I will be talking about what a short film is.
Hello, my name is Emma Lawley. I am in year 13 at Great Wyrley High School and currently studying A-Level Media with the OCR exam board. Over the year I will be documenting and sharing all of my work throughout the Media course. I hope you enjoy coming on this journey with me. In my next post I will be talking about the requirements for the A2 Media course.
