Existing Examples Conclusions

After analysing 3 existing examples of A level short films and watching a number of others I have a solid idea of what is popular and what is not when it comes to the low budget short. With this in mind I can begin to plan my own short film and use the knowledge I have gained to avoid making bad decisions when creating and also to incorporate some aspects of shorts I like into my own.

First are the things I will want to avoid when making my own short, most importantly to me, is to avoid bad writing, while this may seem like a difficult thing to avoid since writing is both very subjective and difficult to change without changing other aspects of a production, by having others proof read or by experimenting with different lines or even different writers I can avoid producing a short film with ineffective or possibly worse, bad dialogue.

I've also seen more than a fair share of camera moves and angles that I want to avoid due to them either being difficult to pull off or just simply bad looking, the most glaringly bad shot type I could use is the 'cupboard' shot, where the camera is placed inside a cupboard or on the other side of a door and the door is opened to reveal the character/subject of the scene. I mostly want to avoid this shot simply because it looks bad, it is incredibly difficult to make it look even decent and it often sullies the tone if not outright making a scene look silly by having a badly made shot.

Another shot I want to avoid is the moving car shot, which seems to be a pinnacle of A level film making, almost every short I watched had this shot and it quickly became tedious as despite many different genres the shot was always incredibly similar, I believe that if I too were to include this shot it would seriously lower the tone of my production.

However I did see aspects I wish to emulate in my own short, for one, the snappy editing of a tense situation in a thriller or action short which heightened tension effectively and kept the pace of a scene up, this could be used effectively in my own short for a similar effect. Secondly the use or angle to portray characters of different levels of power, this clearly signposts the different dynamics between characters and can be a good indication of a characters relative power in a seen and can also help the audience to differentiate between characters and decide who the hero and villain is in a scene.

While the list of positive things I took away from the examples is limited compared to what I want to avoid, it will all contribute towards my own short film as with these notes I can both avoid negative traits and incorporate good traits to create an effective and well made short film that will emulate the best of other short films.