How representation will effect our genre

Our short film is mainly based around the teenager range as this will be the age of the actors we get to participate in the making of our short film. We will have to make sure that we represent our characters well and as typical stereotypes as it is essential in a short film that the characters are established as quickly as possible. Our short film will be a hybrid of both comedy and realism this means that establishing the character is particularly important as the audience need to be able to relate to our character.

The common stereotype within our genre is a typical teenage boy. This means dressing our character in fashionable clothes for example a branded top, jeans, and fashionable shoes. It is also important that we ensure that the hair of our character is also done to the high standard of a teenage boy trying to impress the girl which he inevitably cannot get.

Our representation will be quite modernt as its the story of the boy trying to impress and get the girl. Whereas a more traditional approach would be having our character hanging around on street corners with his friends drinking and taking drugs. Our character however will be a boy that's trying to impress a girl and his friends but instead finds he's being ignored. This is different from the traditional stereotype as in traditional views the teenage boy would be very confident and be able to get any girl he wants.

There has been many changes within our society that has effected our view of typical teenagers. For example the binge drinking culture our society has makes the typical stereotype change into drunken yobs that walk the street. The whole "hoody" culture also make teenagers look very intimidating as it looks as if they are hiding something, it also make young people look scruffy and as if they don't care about there appearance. There has been a lot of bad press towards teenagers over the past few years which build a negative stereotype however this isn't the case for all young people. So although our character is going against all the typical stereotypes our short film is aimed at people from the age 13-19 and i believe that they will relate to our character despite not following these conventions.

Target Audience Questionnaire Results

After collected all of our results we took the most important sets of results and put these into graphs. This will help us to understand how our target audience think and the type of short films they are looking for.

This graph makes it clear that people watch short films to relax as the majority of people said they look for comedies. This allows us to see that we need to ensure that there is a funny element to our short film in order to get the best possible results.

As the majority of people liked the black hole short film it shows that our target audience want to see something lighthearted but also with a meaning. The black hole was also the same length that most people said they thought was the best length of time.

This graph shows that people like to watch short films that range from 3-5 minutes, this is because it keeps them drawn into the film but doesn't last too long either. This is a very important result to us as it allows us to produce a short film to a good length.

The type genre that most people are interested in is comedy. We found that this is because people watch short films to relax and as they are so short you don't get enough time to establish a hard hitting story line. This question will ensure that we appeal to our target audience via the best genre.

Target Audience Research

We posted 3 viedos on our main production blog we have asked our target audience to watch, we have also posted this on facebook.
Video Post

We then followed this on by posting a questionnaire using google docs to get some audience feedback, this again was posted aswell on facebook.
Questionnaire Link

Further Genre Research

After looking at some more short films we found that most of them are not only based on an emotion but also a hybrid, meaning that they follow more that one genre. We will be looking at basing our short film around the age group 11-16, which is basically school year 7-11. We will therefore be combining the stress of being at school, along with social realism. As we are not far off this age ourself we feel than we could achieve very realistic results along this line.

Concluded Research From Short Films

After looking at short films presented on the bbc website i have found some very useful points i must take into account. These are:

- The characters must be introduced very quickly if introduced at all

- Short films reach a climax very quickly and then the rest of the film is used for solving this.

- The plot has to be very simple yet effective but being too complicated will cause the short film to come to a sudden end.

-The location is very important to quickly establish the setting

Although these are very little points it is essential that we take all of this into account to ensure that we follow the proper conventions of a short film.

Existing Short Films

There are many different types of short films around that portray a different message.

This short film in particular is showing how a man wants to get rid of his "evil" cat before his girlfriend returns home. The thing i like in particular in this short film is how the view changes from the man to the woman to show both of there different opinions of the cat. I think that the way that the editor has put the shots together works very well to give the impression that the man and woman are both seeing very different things. I also think that's due to the simplicity it also makes it very easy to draw the viewer in and bring the short film to an end without it feeling rushed. The way in which the characters are dressed helps to portray the story as the man is dressed slighlty scruffy as he is the "bad guy" whereas when the girlfriend comes in she has a very innocent look about her to show that she is caring and loving. Also whilst the man is in charge there is a lot of high angle shots which shows that the man is looking down on the cat and is much more superier. However when the roles change round this is enforced by the girlfriend picking up the cat and bringing it to eye line level showing that the man is now longer in charge. All of these shots work very well in ensuring that the audience knows exactly whats going on and gets a feel of the shots is it not just watching them.




The Black Hole
This short film is very quite at getting to the point however has a sense of humour to it to draw the audience in. I like how it shows a man that gets himself into an abnormal situation but then lets greed get the better of him and leave him in an even worse situation. I am most interested in how the editors were able to make it look as if the black circle on the paper was a black hole and allow the man to put his hand through the paper but it not to appear the other side. I also really like the way that at the end the camera pans backwards with the noise of the photocopier getting louder but the banging through the safe getting quieter. The lighting and the clothing the man is wearing makes it all look as if this man has had a very hard day at work and is counting down the minutes to get home. So when the black whole appears it looks as if it will change the way in which we view the character. However this doesnt change as it is clear that even when he is picking out all the money that he is gettin greedy and so will go that one step too far.



Safety Procedures
This short film is taking the safety speech made on a airplane and turning it into a comedy clip. I like the way this clip has used the characters of a "poster" and put them in the situation of a crash landing into water. This clip doesn't use many camera shots or angles however it is very useful to look at for ideas of how to take something simple and turn it into a short film. As this is different to the other short films I have looked at in the sense of it being an animation it has helped me to understand the importance of a good story line and to not solely concentrate on getting the camera shots perfect.


All of these short films will influence me in the sense that I will be looking to look different editing skills to achieve different results. For example the mans hand going through the black hole and the changing in the appearance of the cat to allow the viewer to see the different perception of the cat. It has also allowed me to see how something simple can be changed into a short film that can be made humorous. Although I didn't think "safety procedures" was that funny it allowed me to look at the different ways in which humour can be put across. Each of these short films put across a different type of emotion to the viewer and this is essential when looking to produce a short film. It also helped me to understand the importance of a good story line as it is essential to keep the audience drawn in throughout the whole of the short film.

Previous work research

After looking at some previous short film works i have learnt what's important to create a successful short film. It is essential that the characters are introduced quickly and effectively. Also due to the reason that a short film is only five minutes long there can only be one climax in the film, which has to be introduced and solved fairly quickly. The characters are shown to the audience very quickly so it is vital that they are introduced as quickly as possible so that the audience has a good idea of how the characters lives. The shot types used in a short film are very clever as they insure that the audience has a clear view of what's going on as well as being creative. This then results in the piece of work not feeling like a film but feeling like a snippet of your own life that you could relate to.


I believe that with enough research our group can make a very effective short film. We will be looking at different examples and analysing them to get an idea of the types of camera shots, sound, editing and general setting. This will all also be based around our genre which we have chose to base around emotion. We will have to look at a number of different emotions to get an idea of which one will be best for us to use and the most effective one.

Short Film Genre Research

We have decided that creating a short film would be a best option for our group as it allows us to explore the process much more. However although this is not final we started researching to get an idea of some of the genres available.

After looking at a large variety of short films it is quite obvious the route they all go down. This is first started off by very quickly introducing the characters usually by entering us into their lives very quickly. This is because there simply isn't enough time to spend a large amount of time letting the audience get to know the characters. I also found that there is only one, is any, problem to overcome and a short film and once this is sorted this will almost be the end of the clip.

I believe that short films are a kind of genre within itself, after watching many examples i have found that they don't try and create a horror, or comedy or any other genre. Instead its all based around a specific emotion and how this is portrayed in the characters life. So i believe that to ensure that we create a successful short film it will be very important to choose a strong emotion that can be drawn to the audience.

We used Youtube and the LG film fest website to explore previous shortfilms made.
http://www.lgfilmfest.com/