Distribution

Short film is a primary way for a director to showcase their talents and to be recognized for their techniques and visual style, therefore distribution is a major final part of short film and needs to be done correctly, after all it is pointless creating a masterpiece that nobody can view. Where to distribute the short film is the most important thing to keep in mind, as nearly all cinemas don’t exhibit short film internet would be the best option for distribution especially for Confined, there is also the option of film festivals but submitting a school project with almost no budget to some of the major ones such as Rain dance or Encounters would almost certainly be rejected and therefore pointless as well as submitting to a festival set to a specific genre which your short film does not fall in to.

The first a most obvious way to distribute Confined was by uploading to sites such as you tube and Vimeo, this way we could showcase the short to a mass audience and also send the link to friends for feedback. We are also submitting the Confined to short film competitions and festivals such as Exposures, the UK’s leading student moving image festival and SFFA. We are also hoping to upload onto BBC network and to be nominated for next years golden Obies at the Brit awards.

Audience

We had no specific target audience in mind when creating our short film, we just contributed ideas that attracted us with an understanding that other students aged 16- 20 would also be attracted to the film. No short film has a real target audience that they aim towards as its such a niche format of media and primarily people interested in media or art are the audience for short film. However by content of our short film i.e. characters, choice of music, costumes, location and storyline we are able to give some demographic of an audience being around teenage years, I also personally believe that males would be more attracted to Confined due to the fast paced ‘fear’ scenes which are underlined with horror themes, the mugging scene which carries conventions of action and the overall story of being a male who has been mugged who faces the after math different to how females would primarily react.

After showing our short film to a group of year 12 media students we received feedback indicating that they all enjoyed the short film and majority of the students commented that they would watch the piece again, this showed that we delivered to a target audience successfully and appealed to them mainly through characters age and situation all of the answers to the question ‘do you think the character was portrait well’ was yes. I also believe that majority of teenagers living in inner London, or other major cities have been victims of or witnessed violent attacks such as mugging where as an audience from more quiet areas where crime percentage is a lot lower might not be able to relate as strongly to the situation as it has never had any real effect on their child hood or early adult life.

Influences

Although we put together a unique storyline it didn’t just come out of nowhere, each individual piece of story was influenced from other sources each other member of the group had seen or heard , most of these were short films we had been researching whilst others were from other aspects of media. The shorts films I felt influenced me to contribute what I did to Confined where from titles such as ‘Cubs’, I felt the short film portrayed every emotion from the protagonist really well, not just through script but through expressions and movement especially with the last shot when the forth wall is broken and the protagonist stares straight at the camera, I used this same shot in confined in a different way but it also gave the same effect. A connection between characters and audience.





Another title ‘enough’ also shares the same cuts between shots as we used back and forth from fears and reality and it also influenced me when it came to the mugging scene, although edited slightly different the structure around that particular scene in our short film was influenced from the fighting scenes in ‘enough’. Enough was also the short film that showed just how important it is to make every shot count. Apart from short films I also got a lot of influence from other pieces of media, firstly the connection between the fear scenes and reality started through my eyes from the editing used to show peoples secrets in the feature length film unbreakable, when Bruce Willis was to touch a stranger in the film it would cut to a scene of that strangers darkest secrets using very different colour and atmosphere to the reality showing a clear contrast between the two.

Completed Short Film

In review of our final video project ‘short film’ I felt it was quite clear that we manage to create a strong piece that we set out to do from the very beginning but with clear areas which needed improving. I understood that for a short film project uniqueness for a storyline was key and therefore in pre production we settled on an ambitious storyline that the whole group felt was slightly out of our comfort zone.

Fortunately the group brought each of their key skills together which resulted in many strong factors to our final pieces. The strengths we felt our final short film had was firstly good use of edit and transitions between real time scenes of our protagonist confined to his room and the fear scenes of the strangers outside of his bedroom. We created this transition by split second cuts back and forth between shots to give it a glitchy feel, the effect was also enhanced along with the much different sounds of each shot jumping back and forth in a very unsmooth manner; the cuts were uncomfortably quick keeping the audience alert and on edge, we felt this would be the best way to deliver the common fears to the audience.

Another strong factor with editing was the way we portrayed time. By using jump shots of Sean around his room we was able to display the effect that he had been there for a lengthy amount of time and with the pace of the shots he was beginning to get bored, therefore asking the question why doesn’t he just leave his room and getting the message across that he can’t.

With filming I felt that majority of our shots were pretty strong, for instance the opening shots of the room showing Sean’s belongings lined up neatly portrayed the protagonists personality before the audience were even introduced to him, we also managed to explain the storyline through a flash back and a very well used voice message from a police officer to Sean, a backing story that may have taken a completely different scene and structure to explain was done in a time saving and more effective way by using this technique. Also strong shots such as the silhouette of Sean sitting on his bed and the sped up shot of the mugger punching him were set up well and memorable to the audience, we found this to be proven from fed back received from a questionnaire given to our target audience.

However as said before there are clear areas within our short film that needed improving. The most obvious of these when watching the short film back was the lighting in some key scenes, although nothing could have been done at the time it will be remembered that monitor screens show darker scenes to be brighter before exporting to projectors or televisions. The only other major flaw our short film had was storyline, not so much the storyline we had come up with but how we portrayed the story to the audience, after looking at fed back it was clear that up to a quarter of the audience didn’t understand the storyline and I believe with a change of structure this problem could have been solved, however as said from the beginning this was overall and ambitious storyline to go for which we felt in most parts we managed to reach.

Through pre production researched it was clear that short films have no real codes and conventions apart from duration, and our short film defiantly managed to stay under the allowed 50 minutes. We did however follow many codes and conventions of the genre of short film, drama. Firstly our protagonist, Sean was made so that the audience can relate to him and understand his state of mind, we also wanted the audience to feel the emotions he felt, this was done through the most obvious, acting and also music. The soft dramatic piano music throughout the piece (although arguably to long and continues) created the mood and atmosphere we was hoping for. The structure of the short film also followed convention of most film, short and feature length of equilibrium, disequilibrium followed by equilibrium, the beginning being slow and calm to then quick cuts between fear scenes and concluding with a calm decision of the protagonist to finally leave the room. One thing i also picked up on when studying short films was that due to the restrictions on time as much of the story as possible had to be told in each shot, i feel we also used this pattern with shots such as the opening panning shots to portray the protagonists personality as well as the flash back to the mugging scene.

I felt that each group member pulled their own weight in this project, maybe not in all the same areas but undoubtedly though out the whole project. My own individual contribution started in pre production by firstly concentrating on our protagonist and his personality, i started by giving his name and appearance by putting together clothes his would wear and a short paragraph on his background i also thought it would contrast to the weird and messy storyline that he has strange obsessions with neatness and clear signs of OCD. I then went on to create a short video with Niall on fears by interviewing members of the college, we edited the video together and it proved to be quite useful in our presentation to the class. Throughout the filming stages of the project I found myself doing a lot of organizing based on actors and props I also drove to collect members of the group, actors, props and taking us all to each individual location, although not a major part in media it was a necessity to our schedule for filming. When filming I took on board major shots that we needed for our short film such as filming, opening scenes, shots that were later used for jump cuts to show passing of time, close ups of Sean and mugging shots such as sped up punch from me punching the camera. I was also the actor for our mugger in the short film. During editing I structured the opening shots as well as our title, music was left to other members of the group so i made sure i edited some of our keys shots, for instance I put together majority of the shots which portrayed Sean being bored in the room (jump cuts) and not being able to leave the room, I also tweak speed in the shot of me punching Sean and contributed in bringing together the overall structure.

Convergene of technology

Short films are now using convergence of technology, gadgets such as Xbox 360, sky player and smart phones to showcase films. This is because majority of modern gadgets have the ability to access internet, use video players and have enough memory to store and play films. The company apple in particular are used to distribute short films on their products that use convergence of technology for instance a user of an IPhone is able to access Itunes where a number of short films are now being distributed via the use of WIFI internet connection, they can then use an online subscribed account to stream or download the video and exhibit the footage by the use of apple player. many other modern gadgets are now converging technology which s proving a useful way todistribute short films, they are eaier to access adbecome avalible to a diffrent audience eachtime those who may have no nerstanding or intrestin short films.

This way up

This way up from javier cuello on Vimeo.

This way up is a short sweet 8 minute film about two funeral directors from different generations. The entire film uses no dialogue just sound and music to go with the situation and the expressions of the characters, the narrative is comedy based mainly surrounding slap stick and dark comedy with themes of death and hell portrayed in a humorous way. The two characters are father and son and the characteristic and personalities of each are delivered to the audience quite quickly, the father is very serious about his company and is a text book grumpy old man the son on the other half is very laid back, bored with his job and trying his hardest to make things more interesting. After collecting the coffin of an elderly woman the journey to the grave yard becomes problematic, firstly the car breaks down then the coffin is continuously swept away causing breaks and cracks on the coffin and exhausting the funeral directors, each situation is humorous in its own way but it is clear that each situation requires more team work which brings the pair closer and closer together, after the journey continues through hell and finally concludes with the pair successfully laying the body to rest the father looks to the son in what first seems to be disappointment but ends up to be with happiness, it is clear that even though this was the hardest and most exhausting day of work for the man it was also the most eventful and enjoyable, a job that can be considered depressing was ironically shown to be joyful and humorous and this was all down to his son, he hugs his son and smiles concluding the film with a feel good and happy ending. It is no surprise that the film is nominated for an Oscar, I found the film creative and like no other with an imaginative narrative.

Free cinema

Six short film documentaries were released in the 1950’s under the title of free cinema, a movement which was initially put together when founders Anderson and his friends Karel Reisz, Tony Richardson and Lorenza Mazzett attempted and failed to broadcast there films into the mainstream and decided to release there work in an alternative exhibition, a showcase at the t national film theatre. The documentaries were hugely popular with each showcase selling out and with a considerable amount of media attention, this proved that Anderson’s initial publicity stunt had paid off and resulted with an additional 5 films being released over the course of three years.

The movement titled ‘free cinema’ was described by the creator Anderson as “a reference to the films having been made free from the pressures of the box-office or the demands of propaganda”. I believe that Andersons movement was a brave step taken that allows short film to have the exhibition and distribution it has today, the step broadcasted the message that directing film should not be given to just those willing to follow the industries demands or follow the steps to assure box office figures, it should be a chance for all aspiring directors to showcase the work they are capable of, it is not fair that a piece of film doesn’t get the exhibition and recognition it deserves due to it not be allowed to showcase at industry owned cinemas.