Distribution

Now we have created a short film, we have the chance to distribute it, for example upload it onto video sharing websites and enter it into competitions. Ideally, I would like the tale of the lady and the cake to be a link or actually put onto a website of a food writer like Nigella Lawson or maybe a quirky food forum. This would be appropriate, not because we show any good recipes or any successful home cooking, but because its target audience is for food lovers, and they may appreciate the film. The video is already uploaded onto face book, YouTube and video, allowing the general public to view them and the option for them to leave their feedback.
The London short film festival is a local short film festival. It holds their nominees for the best short film at various venues across London for example the Roxy bar, the shortwave cinema in Bermondsey and the Camden roundhouse. This would be a great opportunity to enter the lady and the cake into, possibly after a few small tweaks to the editing. The show is held in the middle of January every year, and the deadline for entering the films for the 2011 awards is September 2010.
No Limits Student Film festival is a student film festival held in sheffield and ran by univeristy students. There is no limits on the lengths, genre, or content of the films, leaving any student film being able to submit. The competion is held in april each year and entries for the 2011 competion will be able to be submitted later in the year. All we would have to do would be fill in the application film and send either a dvd, video tape or usb key holding our video to the address. You don’t win any money from this competion, it is a way of exhibiting your work and seeing what other people think about it.

Completed Short Film

After watching the final piece of the lady and the cake, I think the things I would like to go back and change would be the transitions between the music as it is sometimes to sudden, and I would of liked to of had more shots of Bethan when she was eating the cake as we only have three different shots of her doing this. I think the narrative to the story is quite strong and I like the simplicity of it, making people not really have to think about it, also I think the acting worked very well and the effect that was put onto it. I’m glad we chose to make it a silent film as I think dialogue would have maybe ruined, especially as we sped the film up. When it came to editing our piece we had mixed feeling to whether we should leave it in colour or put it in black and white, but I’m glad we found the effect we used, this also helped with making all the lighting seem similar and making it all seem more short film like and brighter.

The only code and convention for short film is the length of it and our film falls under this, but as a silent film it also fits into most of the more obvious codes and conventions, it uses music instead of dialogue and it’s sped up and all the acting is exaggerated. Although many silent films are in black and white, this is likely that when silent film was the mainstream, this was because the technology was not yet that developed, allowing our film to still fall under the genre of short film.

As we made this film as a pair I believe we both equally contributed to the making and pre production of this film. We came up with the idea as a pair during inspiration week and it spiralled off from there. I created the storyboards and the majority of the PowerPoint presentation that we showed the class. We both filmed together and edited together both coming up with different ideas of what to do, although we already had decided upon the outcome of what we wanted our piece to look like.

I think this was the most successful video project I have ever created at this school because it was half my say and I was working with someone who has a similar way to working as me. Most of the ideas we came up with both of us liked and we were both very happy with our final idea, leaving no negativity towards it. Also, I think because the tale of the lady and the cake was something we both enjoyed making as it was something we had produced on our own, we were a lot happier about actually filming it and editing it.

Target Audience

As we have discovered, short films aren’t for the mainstream and only have quite a small target audience, in the case of the lady and the cake, the target audience would be for people interested in silent film, and possibly food lovers. Although it’s not in black and white, it still works well as a silent film as the story is told with the music and it’s sped up. The film is quite quirky and colourful, making it appear happy, and the music is quite upbeat, also adding to the happy atmosphere. The title sequence is in pale pink making it quite girly; probably making the audience tell from straight away that it is quite a feminine film.

We made questionnaires to give to a year 12 media class to get their feedback about our short film once they had watched it, they had never studied short film before and it isn’t likely that they knew much about it. When we asked them what works the least in our short film the majority said it was the contrast of the modern and old fashioned environment as we were going for a 1950’s theme and then would have a big flat screen TV in the background for example, although this was the effect we were going for with the clash between past and present, it probably would have been better in a 1950’s environment. Also the cuts between music as often it was really sudden and they weren’t faded well together, leaving a sudden change of music.

Positive points that were given from the feedback were that it made everyone happy; this was our main aim when making the film. Also that the acting worked well and it was humorous.

I agree with most of the feedback that was made, although if I had the chance to go back and change something it would definitely be the editing between the music.

Our film was uploaded onto facebook so that the general public could view the film, the feedback was all positive, saying people liked it and the dog was a very popular actor from both the facebook feedback and the year 12’s.

Influences

The idea of the lady and the cake origionally came from the poem “infedelities” by Moyra Donaldson, we found this on inspiration week and our idea spiralled off from there. Most of the poem dosent relate to our story at all, but we used the idea of finding loose change. Our origional idea was of a woman that woke up and ran to the shop with the loose change she found to buy cakes and her husband catches her but we changed this when we decided upon the 1950’s theme, to having a typical housewife that stuffs her face, that then leads to her husband being dissapointed.
When thinking about having the short film as if it was set in the 1950’s came from trying to make the wife seem like a typical housewife, doing the cooking and cleanign while her husband is at work. We knew we wouldnt be able to use a 1950’s enviroment, but we could edit it as if it was made in the 1950’s. Instead of using a black and white effect on the film, we decided coulor would be more effective as when we think of the 50’s we think of very brightly coloured things such as crockery and clothing. We dressed our actress in a bright flowery dress to also go with this theme, also with a apron so it exaggerated the fact that she was a housewife.
Charlie chaplin was the main idea behind the silent film, we decided our film would ahve a much bigger effect if it was sped up and in silence as the music would do all of the “talking”. By speeding up the film we were able to make all the actions a lot more exciting and exaggerated.
From all the short films we studied before deciding on our own, tour eiffel by Sylvain Chomet from the Paris je t’aime collection influenced us the most just in the way that it puts a smile on your face. This is what we wanted from our short film as apposed to lots of hidden meanings, we just aimed for a happy lighthearted narrative. This film is a silent film and uses the clash of modern and old fashioned which is the stlye we went for in the lady and the cake.
Nigella Lawson also influenced our piece, the idea of the "domestic goddess" was very important to our film, the idea of being a good cook and cleaner contribute to being a perfect housewife.

The tale of the lady and the cake - After thoughts

After watching back the short film after not seeing it for a while, I thought it could of been improved if we changed the following...

1. cross faded the music better as it was sometimes a very sudden change

2. got more shots of her eating the cake so there is a more interesting variation of shots

I would say the strongest elements of the film is the acting, as it is very over the top and enthusiastic, it also adds to the comical feel. Also I think the music works very well, it is always in tone with what is happening and i like the way some of the songs are repeated. I think we made a good choice using a colored grainy effect on the film as apposed to black and white as the overall film looks a lot brighter and happier.

The tale of the lady and the cake - Editing

Thankfully, we had film enough footage for us to play around with editing our short film. We created a sequence and cut the footage to how we wanted and played around with effects and titles until we were happy with what we had. Music was probably the hardest part of editing our short film as we had to find music that cut well with it and that went along with the different moods of the film.

The tale of the lady and the cake - Filming

We did our filming at laurens house to take advantage of the modern kitchen and dogs. We used Bethan and Niall as our actors. Overall the filming went quite well, and the dogs were ecspecially very well behaved. It would have been useful though if we had more shots of the cake being eaten, as we didnt have much to work with when it came to the editing process. We filmed lots of footage this day to ensure we had enough to make our short film.

Poems - The tale of the lady and the cake

From the poem infidelities, we used the idea of the loose change from the mans trousers to create this story.

Sheila woke up one morning when the dog jumped on her to find her husband had gone to work. She found a pile of coins in the bed where her husband sleeps. She looks at the dog for his opinion of what she should do with the money, baring in mind she is meant to be on a diet and her husband would be very disappointed if she broke it as he is very strict about it. She runs to the shop and comes back armed with cream cakes. She then starts ramming her mouth with the cakes and her dog is looking at her in disappointment and then her husband walks in and shakes her head and she gives a guilty little smile with her face covered in food.

I really liked this idea, and if it was in black and white, silent film, that was sped up it would be quite comical like a Charlie Chaplin film. Most of the story is told through expression. It is quite a light hearted story that doesn't need much background behind it.

Song Lyrics-Pranker

We looked at the song banana pancakes by jack johnson and chose these lines:

"The telephone is singing
Ringing it's too early
Don't pick it up
We don't need to we got everything"

to inspire our short story.

The film is about a random girl who doesn't have much to do with her life so she just prank calls people to entertain herself. She carries out a series of prank calls until someone doesn't answer and she becomes bored and then she just carries on with the rest of her day.

The reason we don't see the people at the other end of the phone pick up is because they are happy with each-other and are enjoying having time without anyone else interfering with their life's so think its best to ignore the phone-call.

Modern Art- Creep

As part of inspiration week we got into groups and looked at different forms of media and created ideas for short stories. The pice of modern art we looked at was of a tent that included the names of everyone they had ever slept with. From this we created this short story:

Peter and Melanie were best friends when they were growing up, but after high school they drifted apart. Melanie went on to become a prostitute and peter was obsessed with her but she didn't know. He would stalk her and take pictures of her with all of her clients and had documented every client she had ever had. In his basement he had a room that only had a tent that had hundred of pictures of melanie, her clients and some artifacts of Melanie's for example her underwear. The story ends with Peter going to sleep.

Peter going to sleep symbolizes that his obsession with melanie is part of his everyday life. Even though Peter stalks Melanie, the audience never get the idea that he wants to hurt her.

Postcards

I looked at postcards of secrets from a book as a way to find inspiration for a short story. The postcard i chose to look at said "I don't want to go to college, i want to grow shit" and had pictures of vegetables.

From this i wrote the outline to a short story:

Henry was a hungry caterpillar who hated school. Henry couldn't wait to become a butterfly and didn't see the point in school. He found a special recipe to make a potion to help him evolve into a butterfly quicker. He had to grow the ingredients himself and live at the bottom of a tree. Henry left school and made the potion, but when he drank it nothing happened, so he had left school for no reason and had no chance of becoming a butterfly now.

In my opinion this story carries quite a strong moral, that cheating with things doesn't get you anywhere and you should do things properly. This story would be unrealistic to create as it is based on insects.

What is a story?

As a class we brainstormed what we thought a story was, here is what we came up with:

• Equilibrium/Disequilibrium
• Non fictional/Fictional
• Biblical, myths, fables, fairy-tales, legends, cultural, folk..
• Used for education and entertainment
• Setting, plot, characters, structure
• Beginning, middle and end
• Told in books, songs, music, newspapers, poetry, fashion, film, television
• Series of events
• Passed down throughout generations
• Different stories with same morals told in different cultures.

Inspiration Week- Story Game

As a class, we wrote a story by writing a sentence and passing it along and then being given back your original story. Each sentence was given a theme, for example "write the name and occupation of a woman", this gave the story some structure.

Here is the story that i was given back:

Gregory is a baker.

Marie was a 80 year old pensioner in the hustler club.

They met online and have only ever seen each other through webcam, from below the waist.

She said "Mum, i've had enough, you don't give me enough freedom. I'm 80 and i still live with you, I'm moving out to live with Gregory and you can't stop me"

He looks at her slaps her and walks away saying "Trees are free"

She finally agreed to shave her underarms and legs and they lived happily after.

From this i wrote a synopsis:

Marie was a very hairy lady and Gregory was a tree saving baker. Marie was getting on a bit, but where they meant to be? Will the 80 year old stripper ever find happiness with her dirty webcam lover or will her hair issues and obsessive mother stop her?

This story was very random, mainly because everyone was just writing random sentences not knowing what had previously been wrote, but from this i made some sense to create a short story.

Bibliograhy

http://www.divamedia.ie/
http://www.bfi.org.uk/education/teaching/movingshorts/films/film7.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page
http://festival.sundance.org/2010/
http://www.edfilmfest.org.uk/

DivaMedia

Diva media is a film company that produces short films, music videos and commercials based in ireland. It includes some awards winning shorts such as the busker that is based on a a young irish busker and a young romanion busker both fighting for the same spot, its won awards at the London film festival, galway film festival, cor film festival and foyle film festival. Another one of diva medias most successful shorts is teeth, that isof two old men on a boat who lose their teeth, there is no dialogue in this short, just laughter. Teeth has won many awards all over the world including japan.
Diva medias shorts are quite quirky and all apprear to be quite different to eachother, they all have different meanings, whether it be about happiness or immigration.

Sundance

The sundance film festival is held in utah and was founded in 1978. IT was originally made to show only American films both short and feature length and started out in a low profile venue with a small budget. It soon grew to become one of the biggest film festivals in the world. It is held in june every year and anyone can submit their films, all they have to do is fill out a application, pay a fee and then send the video by post.

Two cars, one night

Two cars, one night was directed by Taika Waititi in 2004. It is based on 3 children, two of which are brother, who have all been left in their car while their parents are in the bar. One of the brothers is more interested in his book but the other brother is more interested in insulting the girl in the other car of whom he does not know. Soon after they make friends and she lets him sit in the car with her. She is wearing a plastic ring and she says that it is diamond, she later gives this to him. The purpose of this short film is it shows that happyness can be found in the most uncommon of places.
The film is based on the directors personal expericances of being left on herown to sit in a car while he would wait for her parents.
The film is an Oscar nominee for Best Short Film, 2005 and has won several awards, including:
2004 Best Short Film Berlin Film Festival (Panorama);
2004 Best Short Film Aspen Shortsfest;
2004 Best Short Film AFI Los Angeles.

The Big Shave

Martin Scorsese directed the big shave at the start of his career in 1967. It is a very simple short film, that includes no dialogue, and the whole film is taken place in the bathroom.
The film is of a man who is shaving his facial hair, but then applies more shaving cream and carries on shaving until he has cut his whole face. The concept behind the short is that its representing the Vietnamese war, in the sense that it is pointless what he is doing and there is no need for it, and the self destruction of the mans face, represents the self destruction of the country. Also people don’t understand really why he is doing it.
The Bathroom appears to be very white and clinical, and he has just made a mess of it by getting blood everywhere, like the war.

About a girl

About a girl is a short film that was directed by Brian Percival, it won a BAFTA award for best short film and awards at the Raindance festival, the London film festival and Edinburgh film festival.
The film is about a young girl, who has quite a strong mancunian accent. We watch and listen to her as she walks through her estate and down a canal and we see flashbacks about her life, we are then later revealed that she was carrying a baby the whole time she was walking as we see her throw it in the canal. There is no mention of a baby throughout the film of about the babies father. The girl talks about random things, ranging from family life to dental floss.
The girl aspires to be a singer, like Britney spears and the film opens with her alone on a hill singing to Britney’s spears song stronger. We get the image that the girl is quite naïve throughout the film as she is so sure that she’s going to be famous but she is sometimes patronizing, for example she says “bless” about her dad.
We get the impression that she doesn’t have a great family life, as her mum and dad have broken up and her dad often ignores her when hes in her company.
The ending to this film is a very big shock, as the audience realize she has been carrying the baby down the whole canal in a plastic bag, and her mum didn’t know she was pregnant.

Rubber Johnny

Rubber Johnny was directed by Chris Cunningham in 2005. It was used as a music video for the apex twin’s song “afx237 v7”. The film is about a disabled boy who is in a wheelchair locked in a room with his dog who then morphs into a “raver”. It is a trance track and themes of drugs are shown within the video where we see Johnny snort a white powder.
The name rubber Johnny is taken from the British slang that means condom, this is appropriate because the characters skin is like elastic. Towards the end of the video when the character is slamming his face against the glass, and it bounces back to its original form, we get the idea that he is made out of elastic.
Rubber Johnny is quite a weird short film, as it doesn’t really make sense and the audience doesn’t always know what is happening. We get the feeling that the character isn’t very loved as he is locked in a room and we see someone shouting at him.
Rubber Johnny was released on DVD and has its own website, this is rare for a short film, it was used originally as a music video but the director then decided to extend it into a longer film making it roughly 6 minutes long.

Video Activism

Video activism is a way to influence people’s minds, it often includes real footage, sometimes undercover footage, that is shown to make people think certain things. Many charities such as greenpeace and rspca use video activism to compose videos to show an audience what really happens and aim for them to help, or stop doing what they are against. Animal cruelty is a popular topic within video activism, taking footage from animal testing labs then showing the videos. Music is often added to the videos to give off a certain mood as are words.
Video activism isn’t always used to give off a negative impact, both positive and negative videos can be classed as video activism as long as they influence.

Avante Garde

As there was no longer any room left for short film in the main stream, it found a home as avante garde. Avante garde is forms of experimental art and this can be shown as a form of film. Short avante garde films are mainly shown at avante garde cinemas or modern art galleries.
Avante garde films don’t always make sense and are not always seen as films, but it’s the meaning behind them that makes them art. A good example of this is Berlin horse which repeatedly shows a horse running around in many different colours, after watching it for a while it starts to become hypnotic.

History Of Short Film

The first films ever made were short films, this was due to technology as it was not yet advanced enough to make films of a longer length. Sound was restricted with short film, so usually at a viewing of a short film there would be someone playing the music. These where known as silent films. Stars such as Charlie Chaplin and laurel and hardy gained their fame from these.
As technology became more advanced, films became longer, making short film less popular. Feature length films where longer, and were more worth the money, leading to the death of short film in the mainstream.
As short film can take any genre as long as it is les than 50 minutes, short film is still see everywhere, for example as forms of art, music videos or documentaries. Often directors use short film as a way to showcase their work when they start off their careers, as short films often have a small budget and cast, and it allows them to show what they can do in a short space of time, an example of this is the big shave by Michael Scorsese, this was a very simple film and have been imitated by many people.

Scummy Man

Scummy Man
Scummy man is based on the arctic monkey song when the sun goes down, taking from the verse
“And what a scummy man
Just give him half a chance, I bet he'll rob you if he can
You can see it in his eyes, yeah, that he's got a nasty plan
I hope you're not involved at all”
It was released on DVD in April 2006 and footage from the film was used in the arctic monkeys video. It was awarded the best music DVD award at the 2007 Nme awards.
Scummy man shows a night in Nina’s life, played by Lauren socha, a 15 year old prostitute who is addicted to drugs. The story is based around an industrial estate in Sheffield. Stephen Graham plays George, also known in the film as scummy man. He is abusive, intimidating and controlling. George is one of Nina’s main clients; he always knows where to find her in the film.
Other characters from the film are the taxi driver and the magician who both try to help Nina, but she assumes they both want something in return. The cab driver takes pity on Nina, as she reminds him of his daughter who was a similar age to Nina but sadly died young, he drives her around and gives her money, but she still assumes he is after something.
Scummy man is a very British, very gritty short film, with themes such as drugs and prostitution. The setting is very dark and being based in a industrial estate, doesn’t show the idea that the characters are going to be wealthy.
You very quickly engaged in al of the different characters life, making you understand what’s going on quicker to how you would in a feature length film. It is very easy to make up your mind on what you think of the characters in scummy man as their personality’s are all portrayed really quickly, for example, we are told straight away that George isn’t a nice man, and we learn to feel sorry for Nina.

Edinburgh Film Festival

The Edinburgh film festival was founded in 1947 in Edinburgh Scotland. It consists of 12 days in the month of June, hosting premieres, special events and parties. Films are chosen for awards, and some of the award categories are purely for short films, for example UK film council award for best British short, and best international short film. Being one of the biggest film festivals in Britain, it would be quite an accomplishment for any short film director to have their work shown. Some of the previous short film winners at the Edinburgh film festival are “After tomorrow directed by Emma Sullivan” and “Princess Margaret BLVD directed Kazik Radwanski”. To submit your work to the festival, all you have to do is fill in an online form and pay a fee and then post your DVD to hit one of the deadlines. This means that anyone can have a chance of being up for an award at the festival.

Short film and Mainstream

Although the main difference between short films and mainstream films is the length of them, there are some other aspects that usually differ but doesn’t define what category they fall under

Here is a list of comparisons..

Mainstream Short

50+ minutes -50 minutes

Large production cost Low production cost

Large audience Niche audience

Well known cast Ameteur cast

Large cost Small cast

Sometimes a sequel Closed narrative

Marketing None or hardly any marketing

Shown in cinema Mainly online or film festivals

What is short film?

A short film is a film that is defined by its length, it holds no codes or conventions and can be any genre it likes as long as it is under 50 minuites in length. Short film doesn’t generally come under the mainstream, so aren’t shown at many cinemas. They are mainly viewed at film festivals, online, DVD compilations and sometimes on the television.
Many aspiring directors use short film as a way to showcase their work and what they can do, they usually have a low cost budget making them more accesable to make.