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.