Post 11: Script Influences

What has influenced our short film
Over the course of pre production, I have looked at many different types of  films, included those of the BBC, the UK Film Council and New French Wave.  Through this analysis, it has become apparent that there are a vast majority of films that differ from the conventional narrative whereby Todorov introduced Equilibruim, to disequilibrium, ending in restored equilibrium.  Films that the UK Film Council have produced represent this through films such as Jade and Tender.

 

Following the insight into different structures of films whereby the pattern of equilibruim does not exist, we decided in our group to follow this and have a social realist film rather than one that a producer for Hollywood 'Rom Coms' may produce.

Lighting also differs between production companies.



Teenage comedy 'Mean Girls', distributed by Paramount Pictures uses strong artifical lighting.

  

UK Film Council's 'Whore' uses more natural lighting to create social realism.

Editing is often conventional in films produced by large budget companies, using 'shot reverse shot' techniques when communication is shown between characters.  They also usually follow a strategic order in order for the narrative to be clear.  Through my research, it has become clear that a large selection of short films differ from conventional editing and are more 'edgy' through their editing, using jump and hard cuts.  This may be due to the fact that they know their target audience and know that they want something different from the mainstream.

Particular films distributed by the UK Film Council has influences my group largley in deciding the type of lighting we want to recreate through our own short film.  We are aiming to use primarily natural lighting throughout in order to create a sense of realism and the prefered reading of sympathising with our male protagonist. The film 'Tender' used breaks in sound of natural noise in between scenes, often used whilst following their main character whilst walking along on his own.  I found this very effective as emphasis was upon him and it presented how alone the character felt as no others around him was heared, just the sound of air.  We have choosen to create something similar in order to reemphasis how isolated our main character will be.

French New Wave's  Francois Traffaut's film '400 Blows' is a film following a young boy who is in a insitution.  We was particuarly influenced by the final scenes, whereby the young boy breaks out from the institution and the camera follows him on a long and slow paced shot of him running until he reaches a empty beach, where he continues to run until he hits the sea water and realises theres no where else to run. Here, the boy begins to slow down and then walk back round into the cameras vision, the boy then stops and the camera zooms into the boys face who looks straight back.  The film then ends on a freeze frame of the boys face.  We found this particuarly effective as it follows a boy who cannot cope anymore and breaks out away from them.  The element of realisation whereby the boy cannot run away from his problems any further is portrayed through the barrier of the sea where the boy has to begin to turn back.  The zoom into the boys face reemphasises the realisation and the freeze frame juxaposes with this to finalise the importance of the boy coming to terms with being trapped from running any further.  At the end of our short film, we are planning to recreate something similar to this by running away from a teacher telling our character some bad news, and track him running through corridors and breaking out onto his school field, whereby he continues to run until he reaches the bushes closing off the field.  Here, the boy too will realise that he has no further place to run and will turn and end on a similar zoom and freeze frame.  We would like to create this as we felt it constructed the same effect upon the audience as we would like.

long tracking shot of main boy running.

The boy continues to run, onto the beach.

The final shot ending on a zoomed freeze frame of the boys face, which creates a final connection with the audience.