Short Film Ideas

These are a few ideas and plans for short films to be produced.
I have included a completion percentage of each of the films.
I have also included any documents I have produced.

Grim Investigation

Genre: Thriller/Horror
Running Time: 13 minutes

A suspicious man is interrogated about a murder, but turns out to be more sinister than first believed.

This story is a thriller in the modern-day about a young policewoman interrogating a suspect of murder. A woman has been murdered and a man has been confirmed of being at the scene, the protagonist tries to interrogate him for information but he reveals himself to be a very powerful force, and he was only at the scene of the crime to guide the soul to the after life, he is Death and the policewoman is dead. The story of her death, which was previously shown in small segments of misleading information, is now put together in its entirety revealing the murder of the policewoman. Katie escapes Death’s waiting room and comes back to life.

Completion: 80%
-Pitch
-World of the Story
-Characters
-Plot
-Themes
-Treatment
-Script
-Sizzle Reel

To be completed:
-Shot List
-Storyboard

Plan: Grim Investigation Plan
Script: Grim Investigation Script
Sizzle Reel:

https://vimeo.com/57568581

OCD

Genre: Dark Comedy
Running Time: 3 minutes

An OCD sufferer struggles to leave his house.

This story is Dark Comedy in modern-day about a man suffering from OCD. The man tries his hardest to leave his house but his condition stops him from doing so every time, he returns home multiple times in order to leave his house correctly. The film generates comedy from him leaving the house and getting so frustrated with stupid things that don’t seem out of the ordinary to the audience. We assume he is leaving trying to go to somewhere normal, but when he finally gets to where he is going, it is a dead woman who he is burying; he claims she was ‘untidy’.

Completion: 50%
-Pitch
-World of the Story
-Characters
-Plot
-Themes

To be completed:
-Treatment
-Script
-Sizzle Reel
-Shot List
-Storyboard

Plan: OCD Plan

Crave Danger

Genre: Neo Noir
Running Time: 5 minutes

A husband has to satisfy his pregnant wife’s cravings, even if they are for human flesh.

This story is a Neo-Noir in modern-day about a young man and wife. The man must tend to his bed bound pregnant wife’s needs, but she is craving human flesh. The plot centers around the protagonist attempting to coarse a victim into a secluded area where he can murder him and bring him to his wife, the man has been killing other people for a while to tend to his wife’s needs. After the wife has eaten her latest victim, she goes into labor, after the baby has been born the man thinks that his trouble are over and he can finally stop killing, when his new-born child takes a bite out of the midwife.

Completion: 50%
-Pitch
-World of the Story
-Characters (Except Names)
-Plot
-Themes

To be completed:
-Treatment
-Script
-Sizzle Reel
-Shot List
-Storyboard

Plan: Crave Danger Plan
Sizzle Reel:

 

Documentary: Evaluation

Research

Ever since my Granny entered the more severe stages of Senile Dementia, I have wanted to express my feelings that accompany this hideous condition with film, and spread awareness about how it affects not just the person with the condition, but the people around them. When faced with making a three-minute documentary about something that we are passionate about there was only one thing I could do.

A still from my Documentary. A photograph of my late Granny and Granddad.

I went on to research similar topic documentaries about people suffering with life changing conditions and disabilities, which lead me onto films such as ‘Malcolm and Barbara: Love’s Farewell’ (Paul Watson, 2007), an observatory mode documentary following a married couple for 11 years as they deal with the ever-growing effects of Alzheimer’s up until the death of Malcolm. This film was informative, moving and sensitive. Although I would not be able to do something too similar, as I do not have 11 years to make my documentary, and the subject of my film has already passed away, but I still learned a few things about treating the issue with sensitivity and respect and making something that isn’t nice to watch interesting.

An image taken from Malcolm and Barbara: Love’s Farewell

Process/Development

To begin with I knew what I wanted my film to be about due to what I already had planned and researched, but the style was rather up in the air and my ideas changed frequently. Since I had no direction to go in I thought exploring lots of different styles of documentary would be the best way to get motivation and an influencing style, so I attended all the documentary’s that were put on each week and did a bit of further reading for each one.

A short experimental documentary ‘The Beekeeper’ (Sara Preibsch, 2007) stood out to me. An observatory mode documentary, which involved a voice-over of a man who was never really shown in any detail, and a seemingly unrelated visual narrative, I was inspired by this piece and really wanted to make something similar. A visual narrative and a separate audio narrative, which was not connected as such, but still, complimented each other well.

A still from The Beekeeper

After my Granny’s death my Uncle, her main carer, went on a walk through Spain to take a break, and now lives alone in what was formerly her house. This is where my film developed from, I wanted my Uncle to talk about his trip around Spain, while displaying somewhat unsettling images of my Granny’s former house.

A still from my Documentary. An image of my Granny’s old chair, the final part of the documentary, with a slow zoom and one point perspective in order to make the audience feel uneasy.

As making the audience feel uncomfortable was something I needed to stress, I have researched and learned a lot from Kubrick, the master of making an audience feel uncomfortable. I have learned the importance of symmetry, slow zooms and irregular framing and the effect it has on the audience.

Analysis

The shoot was interesting, as I was trying to go for a minimalist approach and shooting the whole film in one room, there wasn’t a massive range of things for me to shoot. This forced me to really put a lot of thought into what is going into the film, anything I can do with the shots to make them more interesting and more relevant. I was building a storyboard in my head imagining how these pieces that I was filming would fit together to further the narrative.

A still from my Documentary. An example of how I have used imagery to further the meaning of the film.

Honestly I think this has been my most difficult shoot so far but also my most successful, I went in without a shooting script or storyboard and only vague ideas of what I wanted, I then had to think on my toes and film what was available to me. I think I have learned a valuable skill in regards to documentary film making in understanding how to work with what is given to you on the day and making a story out of it, in comparison to planning a drama for a long time and setting up every single detail before hand.

Evaluation

The edit was a very troublesome task for me, as the original cut was 9 minutes long and I enjoyed the narrative as it was and thought that everything was necessary, this faced me with the task of getting rid of two-thirds of my film and still trying to maintain a comprehensible message, and abbreviate the constant talking to give time for my audience to take in what they are hearing and seeing. I managed to cut the film down to the necessary 3 minutes and I think I have still kept the most important parts of the interview to make an interesting and understandable story, although I do think it would have worked if it was a little longer, and if I did not have to make it specifically 3 minutes, I would have made it a little longer.

I think I have developed quite a lot in terms of Documentary film making, both theory and practice. Before the module I would have thought that making an interview with a standard sit down interview and using cutaway to introduce some imagery into the film was a perfectly suitable thing to be creating. But now I feel I have grown and learn a lot about how to create something not just interesting with the content and the visuals, but something unique.

A still from my Documentary. An example of using my surroundings in a different way to make the narrative unique.

I feel that my theory and knowledge of documentary has increased exceptionally, I can now identify important things such as what mode a documentary is in, how a shot compliments itself to a scene, different forms of documentary etc.

A still from my Documentary. An example of using imagery to build upon the narrative, in this case the heavy undertones of religion.

I feel that my practical skills have also improved greatly, if not in a sense of making a stunning and extremely complicated documentary, but the other side of things, the getting people to do what you want them to do for your cause. To begin with my Uncle outright did not want to be in the documentary at all, so I had to discuss it with him, discuss what he is not comfortable with and make ways around things so I could make my film and not make him completely against it. I have also had to put aside my massive emotional connections with the film that could have hindered the process and turn them into something positive that could fuel it and make it a lot better. This has really helped me with my people skills and problem solving skills, which have turned out to be the most important skill that is needed in documentary filmmaking.

Documentary: Editing and Narrative Styles

Throughout the past few weeks, there has been a documentary put on for us to watch every thursday. I have been vigilant and made sure I attended each one despite not liking a few of them at all (bar one when I was ill). After these weeks I am glad that I went to all of them and have even sat through the ones i didn’t like at all. I am going to talk briefly about each one, quickly describe what they were about and if I liked them or not, then I am going to talk about how they were made and if I can take influence from these films when creating my documentary. As there are quite a few things to talk about I will try to keep it very basic.

Rip! Remix Manifesto

I loved Remix Manifesto. It enlightened me to many issues about the copy right laws we have around the world which up until watching te documentary, I didn’t even realise were issues. It has turned out to be the most conventional documentary in terms of what I usually watch.

The editing style and narrative in Remix Manifesto, although interesting and enjoyable, isn’t really something I’d use in my project. If you think of any popular documentary, it essentially uses the same style. Introduce a problem, explore that problem and why it is good or bad, repeat a few times, summary at the end of the film. Fairly standard. There were a few aspects of the editing and narrative which I enjoyed, such as someone in the documentary was shown the film, and it quickly played the whole film in a couple of seconds to show the passage of time which I thought was very clever. There was also an instance where manipulating the audio was used to further the story, they said they had used the music that they could use under the current ‘fair use’ act.

As I wanted to go for a rather unconventional editing style, there isn’t much I can take from Remix Manifesto that I can reflect in my work as it as I already described as pretty much the most basic of editing styles that I am already aware of. If I went for something like that I wouldn’t really be pushing myself out of my comfort zone, and in turn, wouldn’t really learn anything.

Sans Soleil

Sans Soleil was a very challenging film to watch, at first I couldn’t make much sense of it and thought it was just utter nonsense, but I did manage to sit through it, which is more that a lot of other people did! In the end I am glad I did sit through it as it exposed me to a piece of work I am not familiar with and have never been exposed to before, but I would not say that I enjoyed it.

The narrative in Sans Soleil is incredibly bizarre, from what I understood it was a woman reading a man’s letters or diary about his thoughts about things when he was travelling around the world, and the man appeared to have some kind of mental problem or was just completely insane, as the items in the film were hardly coherent, followed no narrative that was easily understandable and seemed a bit too focused on bizarre detail at some point, a bit like how someone with autism would concentrate on extreme details.

As much as I want to say that Sans Soleil is a bunch trash that doesn’t have anything good about it, that is not the case. The film has actually helped me in many ways, it sort of introduced me to an unconventional style of narrative and editing, and since my documentary has developed into something arguably unconventional, it has had more of an effect on me than I thought it would.

The Arbor

The Arbor was the most interesting film for me and taught me the most about how different Documentary’s can be from the plain standard that we see every week on BBC 2. Although for the most part it was entertaining, I felt that it could have been edited a little better as it started to feel a little dragged.

The way The Arbor was put together made it feel more like a drama than a documentary. Actors were used to mime as actual people’s interview voice recording’s were played over the top. I thought this was very impressive, and it gave the film a very cinematic look and feel, as a lot of the stuff was set up rather than observing real life, but still kept the element of reality with the voice overs.

After first viewing of The Arbor, I wanted to make something along the same lines as I thought the combination of drama and documentary was fantastic. It was just the realisation of the massive amount of work that would need to be put into it, and the huge amount of content that would needed to be recorded before even getting an actor to do the voice over, it just wouldn’t be suited for a three-minute project, although I would like to make something similar in the future.

Burden of Dreams

Burden of Dreams was a great film, although after two hours Herzog’s thick accent grinds on you, it is an inspirational film about never giving up on your dreams, despite however ridiculous they are.

The film didn’t offer much in terms of a new development in editing and narrative style, it was fairly plain and it didn’t offer much of an interesting editing style, at some points the film was a bit boring and stale and was barely kept alive by the entertaining character of Herzog.

The only thing that I can gain from this film is that a documentary absolutely needs a message, and an interesting character. I think these are the two most important things that need to be used in all documentary’s, as without these two vital things the film would have sent me straight to sleep, as there would have been nothing to keep me invested.

Grey Gardens

Grey Gardens was probably my least favourite of all the films that I have watched. Although it had two interesting characters, for the most part I just wasn’t committed to the film, it just didn’t seem to go anywhere and made for quite a boring watch.

The film was in the observatory mode, which before seeing Grey Gardens I thought it was the mode I would like to create my documentary, I changed my mind completely. Things in the observatory mode need to be really well in order to create a film that is entertaining, Grey Gardens just wasn’t entertaining for me, and it put me off completely.

The main thing I can take from Grey Gardens is how not to make a film. I know that sounds a bit ridiculous because who am I to slate a film that is popular and has had success, but I mean it in a way of, I personally didn’t like the film at all, and if I were to try to do something similar I wouldn’t like what I was doing and the end result would turn out to be not very good at all.

Documentary – Cinematography

John Alcott

My chosen cinematographer is John Alcott. Alcott worked multiple times with Kubrick, and I have always admired the visual style of Kubrick’s films, which can only suggest I must have been a fan of John Alcott’s work as well, and not even been aware of it. I am going to be looking at the Lighting  Mood, Camera Movement and Colours in The Shining, and then progress onto thinking about how I can use them in my Documentary module.

The Shining

The Shining has always been one of my favourite films, and I have always been trying to take influence from it in my script writing, so it seems right that I should try to take influence from the imagery within the film. The lighting used in The Shining isn’t what I would describe as something insanely influential, it isn’t like common horror films which abuse shadows and darkness in order to make a creepy atmosphere for the viewer, but most of the time the scenes are well-lit, probably more well-lit than a normal room would be, everything can be seen, this could be to give clarity to the scenes to allow the audience to take in absolutely everything around them. The mood of the shots used is probably the most important part of the whole film, the one point perspective which is notorious in Kubrick’s films are abused to no end, but the composition of the shots are what give the film the tone or harrowing misfortune and doom. The symmetry of the shots used throughout the film give the audience an uncomfortable viewing experience, everything looking absolutely perfect is something that you do not often see in real life, giving it a very unnerving feel to the scene. There are several camera movements used in The Shining that stand out, one being the slow zoom on Jack’s face, used to emphasise his slow transition into insanity, another is a steady-shot used to track along with Danny riding around the hotel on his tricycle. Another very interesting aspect of the film is the use of colours and filters, as the films progresses, the colours change so to the darkness of the film. The film starts off with beautiful green scenery, turns into shades of orange and yellow as they enter the hotel which become darker and darker as the film progresses, eventually ending up with white and blue in the climactic ending of the film.

The use of a Slow Zoom in The Shining.

The use of Symmetry to make the audience uncomfortable.

The use of green colours to make the image feel pleasant.

The use of dark blue to make the image feel unpleasant.

My Documentary

Some of the key aspects that I can draw from the cinematography used in The Shining is how important colour is in order to get a feeling of a scene across to the audience, so I need to learn to use colour in my documentary to accordingly replicate the mood I am going for, something that may be a lot harder and in some places impractical when it comes to documentary, as in when making a drama, you can spend hours setting up lighting and colour before shooting a scene, but if we only have five minutes to sit down and interview someone, a lot of that is going to be a second thought. The other key things include the unforgettable instances of how symmetry can make an audience feel completely uncomfortable. I could use this if I were making a controversial documentary where I want the audience to not agree with the person that is being interviewed, and put them right in the middle of the shot and talking directly forward, giving a strange aspect to the scene and make people subconsciously not like what they are seeing.

Main things gathered from this task:
-Don’t underestimate how effective colours are in making an audience feel an emotion.
-Symmetry isn’t nice and can be abused to make an audience feel uncomfortable.

Documentary: Reviewing Other Documentaries

Documentary Review: RiP!: A Remix Manifesto

Entertaining, Informative, Logical. Remix Manifesto is everything I think a documentary should be. An Expository Mode documentary, shining light on the unjust copyright laws we currently abide by. I think a good documentary can help further your passion for something you already care about, but a great one can make you passionate about something that you didn’t even consider a problem an hour and a half a go. Remix Manifesto is a very interesting one and does things that I have never seen before, because it is about breaking the copyright law, the producer of the documentary does the same, all of the music that he uses isn’t paid for and he employs things such as the ‘fair use act’ as a way to actually help his cause rather than hinder, for example he cuts the music entirely in a section and claims that his fair use has run out, and it’s a real shame that we can not hear the music. It follows two characters, the narrator and producer of the documentary who visits various different representatives of the copyright law, and his favourite music composer ‘Girl Talk’ who is a mash up artist, who he is trying to defend as not being a criminal. Remix Manifesto has completely changed my outlook on the copyright laws of this country, from not even being concerned and not taking any notice of it, to being completely outraged and want to make a change.
This is my kind of documentary and it makes me really not believe that ‘Documentary is Dead’. As long as there is a good fight to fight, there is something to document, something to revolutionise.

Summer

I thought that seeing as this is the first post on my blog for the second year of university, I should start with an update. Filling the void if you will, telling anyone and everyone who is interested, what I have been up to throughout the summer. Some things relevant to my personal and professional development in regards of media production, and some things that are more things that I have been up too.

Pokémon Center

The first and probably most dominant thing I have been up to is updating my YouTube channel, it’s dedicated to videos of gameplay from various games in the Pokémon series. Pokémon Red version is the first game I ever owned and I still play the game now, it’s become a massive part of my life and a lot of my spare time get’s pumped into it. To say I have been completely obsessed with Pokémon for a long time probably isn’t too far from the mark. At one point, any time spent not playing Pokémon was spent doing something else Pokémon related, a lot of the time was watching people on YouTube play Pokémon. For a long time I had been subscribed to a lot of different people on YouTube who do a lot of different things such as open packs of Pokémon cards and review them, battles on various different games or play through different game versions.

I soon figured that if there was this many people I would put my time into watching on YouTube, people would put their time into me too. I have combined my two loves, playing Pokémon and producing media content. This has allowed me to make something out of what would previously be time spent by myself with no outcome.

This is a video from one of the series I have produced:

Making my Pokémon channel has taught me a few things about having a media output on a site such as YouTube. I have had to put some effort into creating a good-looking homepage to attract the right audience and to give the a sense of professionalism. My videos get a modest following which I am happy with, I update regularly and gain a new addition to my following often. I am quite happy with my channel as I do not need to put a huge amount of effort into it to keep it alive and I enjoy the content I am making for it.

Short Films: Scripts and Screenplays

This Summer I have wanted to make some films, I always have the passion and urge to make films, but this summer has been increasingly bad, I feel like a junkie whose supply has been taken away from him. Making a film would have been easy, but a few things stopped me. The media loan shop at uni is closed to us throughout the summer, and not available to us again until the day we start back, which is fair, they have lives too, why should they have to go out of their way to allow us to take out equipment and then have the stressful ordeal of following up missing equipment on students who aren’t even in term for another 3 months. I understand the closure completely, but to someone who is itching to make a film; not good. I have my small camera. It shoots in HD, sound qualities a little crappy, but doesn’t mean I can’t make a film right? Wrong. The sound quality used to be a little crappy, and it hasn’t aged well, now it’s hella’ crappy. A film could not be shot on that with the awful and inconsistent audio. There’s no point.

So what is the only thing I could do to ventilate my undying urge of film making? I wrote scripts mainly. Some ambitious scripts that aren’t plausible for me to create, not yet anyway. And some scripts which I plan on making before the end of the year.

To be honest I never thought myself as much of a writer, but my writing has definitely developed over the summer, I have given myself a style in which I find it easy to quickly produce a quality script including all the other documents that come with it, including the pitch and treatment.

Writing scripts started at the beginning of summer, when I went to see The Raid. After walking out of the cinema completely blown away at what I will always describe as the best action film that has ever been made, I wanted to make something similar, so I started writing. The product is something I’m extremely satisfied with, and have spent a long time putting in a lot of effort into the script. I am going to edit and adopt this script further, but I am not going to make it as of yet as I do not feel I am technically capable of it yet, and the film will cost a lot of money to make, but generally I am impressed with myself and what I have written. The next step of this short film is to improve myself technically by learning a lot of VFX in Adobe After Effects, and learning how to do a lot of practical FX by means of creating several test films throughout the year. If I am satisfied that the film can be made to a high enough standard that I am satisfied, I am going to create this film for my final media project at the end of third year.

For now, here is the final draft of the script for my short action film; Milk.
‘Milk’

Short Film Society

The last thing I have been organising starting at the beginning of summer and has been developing and processing throughout, is a new society for the university, the ‘Short Film Society’. After discussing it over with a few friends, we decided that there wasn’t a society really geared towards us film heads. There is Source TV which is great for producing things such as event coverage or promotional work, but there isn’t much opportunity for creating something with a narrative. I set out to change this by creating the Short Film Society. The objective of the society is to give people a competitive yet friendly environment where people can make films and receive constructive criticism, as well as attending various film festivals around the country and hopefully the world.

I tried to get involved in a few society’s in the first year, but as I said before none really peaked my interest at all so my involvement with any society’s I did help were purely favours for friends who were already in society’s. In creating the Short Film Society I am not just creating something for myself, but I am creating something for other people to join, enjoy and better themselves, and I’m pretty proud of that. A lot of the time I have found myself wanting to make a film, but have either fallen foul of no motivation, no crew, no equipment or just low morale, and in creating the society I have eradicated this problem for myself and hopefully a lot of others who are stuck in the same position that I am in.

I am really looking forward to getting involved and getting other involved in the society, and it should make the second year a lot more enjoyable and worthwhile than the first.

 

 

Oh yeah, I also went camping for a week and had the most miserable holiday of my life. But I managed salvage some of the god awful video footage from my god awful camera to create this montage:

Holiday Film