Fourth Post

Research Task;

Lovefield, Mathieu Katthe
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4meeZifCVro)


I found a very interesting short film through searching around on Youtube, that I thought was very cleverly crafted with a unique storyline. Directed by Mathieu Katthe, ‘Lovefield’ is a thought to be horror film but with a twisted ending. The basic storyline involves the audience believing that the man has murdered a woman in a middle of a wheat field in a remote area, and how he reacts and runs to his car to retrieve a bag/blanket, as if to bury her, when in fact she has actually just given birth to a child.
Many conventions of a horror are involved and the related atmosphere is created in a number of ways. In the beginning, through the subtle but important, usually singular non digetic music notes and the added digetic sound of the wisps of wind create the basis of the horror atmosphere ambience. Low key lighting is used, emphasising the overcast bleak climate. The emblematic components of the settings, such as the location of a field, which is a common location associated with murders/horrors, gives the audience a sense of what genre the film is also. Symbolism is used, as a black crow appears throughout the film repeatedly – usually as close ups - and seems to symbolise death/negative activity. There is a mid shot at a slight high angle of the long stretch of road, with the sign swinging back and forth. This shot is very typical of a horror film and has occurred in some before; it stresses how deserted the area is and the lack of civilisation/activity. There is a slow build up of montages of the same wheat field location, which if you analysis carefully you see the camera is gradually tilting down to ground level.
Representations of characters are a key element to this film. The male character, first thought to be an antagonist, has many features to suggest he is a bad person. Such as his big build, skull tattoo, dark eyes and guilty expressions. You would be confused and surprised to see either - for example - a little boy or a teenaged girl stand up from the incident instead of this man.
This short film highlights just how much importance and significance all the elements of film have in how the audience perceives the situation and relations to characters etc. It can distort the wrong impression and the real meaning into what’s occurring in a clever and unique way. An example of how this film altered the perception of the situation is through the low key lighting, eerie music and the way the camera moved at a ground level showing the objects (dead phone, crushed wheat, blooded material, fallen handbag etc) and finally the struggling dirty/injured foot, and the sudden placement of the blooded knife in the ground. An example some of the ways elements of film contributed to the distortion of the judgement of character is the shadows and lighting cast upon the man’s face which portrayed an evil and angry expression, and furthermore the way the camera tilted up slowly showing his whole body posture and language, highlighting his status and actions. The sudden turn around of both lighting (turned into natural light to show good weather), music (transformed into most uplifting music) and mise en scene at the end scene twisted the story to show a positive and happy occasion of his wife giving birth, allowing the audience to understand he is actually a protagonist and his actions were in fact, caring and constructive.
I really liked the way this film constructed there storyline and unique twist and if our group decide to create a horror, this would be very good inspiration to create something with a similar effective ending, and would give us a range of ideas in order to craft many techniques to establish the correct specific atmosphere and genre.

Third Post

Research task;

Mixed Tape, Luke Snellin 2009.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exFWurXtsU4)

‘Mixed Tape’, written and directed by Luke Snellin, is a short film adapted into the genre of social realism, and is evolved around the connection between a neighbouring girl and boy. It is clear the genre is social realism due to some of the conventions used which creates the ‘illusion of reality‘, such as the realistic settings - a neighbouring house/flat in a urbanised area/children’s bedrooms, unobtrusive mise en scene and camerawork and use of naturalistic lighting and digetic/non digetic sound. The main character is a young boy in his early teens, and alongside there are only two other small part characters - the girl and her mother - so overall the characterisation is minimal.

This short film uses the style conventions of social realism in a number of unique ways. The mixed tape he gives to the girl seems to be an important symbolism for his affection, and is shown to be significant through the obvious
fact that it is the title, and the opening shot of a running mixed tape.
Another unique element to this short film is how little dialogue is used and how they use the music, body language and expressions to represent the characters actions, feelings and personality instead. A few ways of how they do this so well is through the slow motion and loud non digetic music during the ‘daunting walk’ to the house. This shot shows and emphasises his nervous expression well, but also portrays a quiet confidence through the overwhelming music playing. Another distinctive aspect of the film used to create uniqueness is both the long shot used to establish the neighbouring characters as he walks to her house and the end shot of their adjacent rooms with the wall division, with both the children parallel to each other and showing both their emotions and contentment. All these unique components have been very inspiring and will be hopefully somehow incorporated into our short film.

The film uses the short film format very well, as it uses a very basic scenario with no particularly amazing storyline, but manages to use a range of techniques to make it interesting and worth watching. It doesn’t leave much for the audience to guess, as it establishes factors such as characters personas quite directly, for example it is obvious that the girl’s mum is the girl’s mother, just through her very ‘mumsy’ stereotypical role, clothing and polite manners.
The use of sound in this short film may be one of the most important elements which makes the film, as the story is pretty much told through the music. The switching between the music being non digetic and digetic seem to divide fantasy from reality. For example, the change from the non digetic loud music played during the walk up to the house as he dreams about the girl, to the sudden switch as they dance to the same music but shown as digetic in their adjacent bedrooms. Furthermore, the lyrics of the music seem to transfer messages to each other, almost like a replacement for dialogue.

The theme of the film is realistic - young love. Although realistic, you could argue it is not such a common occurrence in the modern world, as it uses the old school innocent exchange of a mixed tape. Therefore it may be going against the stereotyped norms of what happens between relationships in today’s society. Furthermore, young teenagers are known to have bad reputations and negative stereotypical traits, but in this film it breaks this representation and focuses on the positive and innocent factors of childhood. It is a situation the audience can easily relate and empathise with, and manages to position the audience into taking a positive and appealing view towards the children through the innocent and naive portrayal of them both in both entertaining and ‘cute’ ways. Therefore creating a interesting and high-quality short film.

Second Post

Research Tasks;

Joyride Gillespie 1995

Joyride is a clear thriller based short film about a male electrician who is tricked and then held hostage by two male characters. The film shows this man’s battle against time and struggle for survival through a constant action filled tense encounter which keeps the audience in suspense and on edge right through until the end. The film uses lots of typical thriller conventions throughout, as from the establishing shot you can clearly already see it is set at night time in the middle of a secluded wooded area. As a result of the night time settings, It also uses very low key lighting. Furthermore, it uses pathetic fallacy to emphasise the anxious deserted atmosphere. This is also shown through the long shot of his car in the middle of the empty road. It uses iconography, with the sparks being a constant icon of danger and being a significant factor in the film. There are many conventions of characterisation through opposing contrasting elements between the characters, for example it is shown that the electrician man is the protagonist, as he is wearing a white shirt and the two other men are the antagonists as they are both in black. The music at the very beginning of the film set the mood with a unnerving yet subtle tone, setting the audience up and allowing them to anticipate the thriller action that’s about to occur.

This short film is extremely unique in how it constructs its storyline, as it is all based around irony. It goes in a huge circle, as he starts in the same place and ends in the same place, also shown through the same music being started at the identical scenes and the same two shots being used - birds and worms eye view of him looking at the electricity pole. As a result of being lazy/time constricted and not getting the job of fixing the electricity post done, it resulted in him being burnt to death, therefore maybe portraying unlucky karma. Many lines are used to reinforce this irony, such as the policeman at the end saying “You won’t be wanting that cigarette I was about to offer you then” after realising he was covered in petrol. Furthermore, when the police car was chasing the two antagonists, the passenger male says to the driver “I hope you have your license on you”, as if this is the biggest worry on their hands. If our group were to do a thriller, I hope we can somehow use a ironic twist, as I think this is a really clever and unique idea. Another thing this thriller seems to frequently do, is use numerous amounts of close up shots throughout, as these intensify and focus in more on the little details of actions. Especially throughout the scenes when he is in the boot of the car, focusing a lot of his hand movements and actions and also his facial expressions/reactions.
Through using this short film format, the characters are developed enough for the audience to realise their roles and whether we should sympathise or dislike them. With so much action and events happening constantly throughout the film, I could imagine this being made into a full length feature quite easily. But with the continuous quick shots from all ranges of perspectives it seems a lot longer than it actually is. Again, if our group do create a thriller, a lot of inspiration from the quick montages of close up action could be used.

On a small budget, this film made very good use of its sound and music. There is always some form of music or sound, either loud or quiet, throughout the whole film. The non digetic music used is connected well to the thriller, as it frequently connects a action, expression or movement with a note or pitch within the music. For example, when the protagonist is hit with the axe, a long deep dark note is played.
As mentioned before, the film is all linked to being a ironic situation. The film allows the audience to easily connect with the characters, especially the protagonist. Although you feel sympathetic towards him and his awful situation, at the same time you feel a sense of wanting to say to him “well you shouldn’t of been so stupid and cocky in the first place“. Furthermore, although a very remorseful end, you can’t help but feel a sense of hilarity at the outcome.

First Post

Lessons learnt from the Foundation Portfolio;


• Organisation is a key factor in the creation of a production.
Our group didn’t anticipate some of the accidents that occurred throughout our production due to a lack of organisation and not setting a logical timescale to complete everything in. We’ve learnt to check all the equipment before the filming day, as one of our lights ran out of battery whilst filming outside, and as a consequent we couldn’t film the outside sequences and had to organise another day to shoot. This produced another problem, because the mise en scene (e.g. settings – positioning of furniture, costumes – Keira’s hair and makeup) had to be exactly the same as the first filming day so continuity is constant and sustained; this was proven difficult, but luckily possible.

• Film a wide variety of shots and as many as possible.
Another reason we had to schedule another day to film was due to the lack of shots we produced for each scene. We either didn’t do enough varied angles of the same shot or redo shots of the same positions so sometimes we didn’t like the only one produced or something wasn’t right – for example in one of the shots we accidently didn’t see the headlight in the background shown through a hidden mirror. Furthermore, we learnt to experiment well with the camera and be creative, because on many occasions we changed and tweaked little aspects of a shot, which unintentionally made it more interesting and unique.


• When filming at night time, lighting becomes a lot more complex.
Due to filming our thriller in night time settings, we restricted what we could achieve through the lighting and it becomes a lot more difficult. You have to make sure the action is in focus and visible, yet realistic and using techniques which are accurate in relation to the genre.



• Be careful when choosing music.
The music could have been seen as a bit of trouble during our production, as we only used one long piece of music which although gained many positive comments such as it kept the fast pace action going, it may have seemed a little repetitive. It was very hard to fit into the sequence so it was logical and in connection with the piece. Some of the tones and pitches of the music didn’t fit in well enough with the action and atmosphere created within the film. Therefore we changed these, but this then altered the music by having uncalled for sudden stops and blips which were hard to sort out as it was so specific and had to be so précised. It was also hard to fit in voice over’s and extra digetic sounds as it wouldn’t correspond to the piece properly.


• Don’t overcomplicate everything.
This was probably the main lesson learnt through doing our thriller. All members of the group were very creative and although this is a positive factor in many respects, it did also craft a set of concerns as we definitely overcomplicated the ideas and production in many ways. I’ve learnt you can easily be misled as you think you are improving, when in fact you are loosing the plot line and the original quality.