Research and Planning

What is a short film?

A short film has different codes and conventions than a featured film. For example a short film has a low budget film or no budget what so ever. This means that a short film has no big explosions or special effects like a featured film. A short film has only two to one character (depending on the plot of the film). A featured film has more than two characters and has a long complex story line unlike a short film .


A short film is usually filmed in one to two locations. this means that a shot film is not always changing locations like a longer movie that would be shot in different places. why is a short film filmed in only one location? The reason that a short film is filmed in only one to two locations is because of the reason that a short film dose not have a long complex storyline and that everything can be shot in one location. Also as a short film does not have a big budget or in most cases no budget they can only film where it dose not require no payment to film. Most of short films have a twist in them to make the story more interesting and to grab the audience attention during that short period of time.


Recap codes and conventions.

Small budget- Meaning that some and most short films have no budget to make shot and make the short film.


Cast contains one to two people- In a short film there is only one ore two characters.


Filmed in one to two locations- Short films are usually shot in one or two location.


Short plot- A short film has a small and easy plot to understand.


Twist- Most short films have a plot twist to make the short film exciting for the audience.


Vladimir Propp


who is Vladimir Propp? Vladimir Propp is a narrative theorist born in Russia on April 17, 1895 in St. Petersburg.in the 1920's Vladimir Propp analysed some Russian folk tales and he realised that the same sequences kept on turning up over and over again. in 1928 he wrote a book called   Morphology of the Folk Tale, and this book explained he discovering.


The plot of most stories.

1. A member of a family leaves home      
2. An interdiction       
3. The hero ignores the interdiction
4. The villain appears and
5. The villain gains information about the victim;
6. The villain attempts to deceive the victim to take possession of victim or victim's belongings
7. The victim is fooled by the villain, unwittingly helps the enemy;
8. Villain causes harm/injury to family/tribe member. Alternatively, a member of family lacks something or desires something
9. Misfortune or lack is made known,
10. Seeker agrees to, or decides upon counter-action;
11. Hero leaves home;
12. Hero is tested, interrogated, attacked etc, preparing the way for his/her receiving magical agent or helper
13. Hero reacts to actions of future donor
14. Hero acquires use of a magical agent
15. Hero is transferred, delivered or led to whereabouts of an object of the search;
16. Hero and villain join in direct combat;
17. Hero is branded
18. Villain is defeated
19. Initial misfortune or lack is resolved
20. Hero returns;
21. Hero is pursued
22. Hero is rescued from pursuit      
23. Hero unrecognised, arrives home or in another country;
24. False hero presents unfounded claims;
25. Difficult task proposed to the hero
26. Task is resolved;
27. Hero is recognised
28. False hero or villain is exposed;
29. Hero is given a new appearance
30. Villain is punished;
31. Hero marries and ascends the throne

      The hero's journey.

1. The villain — struggles against the hero.
2. The dispatcher — character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off.
3. The helper — helps the hero.
4. The princess or prize and her father — the hero deserves her throughout the story but is unable to marry her because of an unfair evil, usually because of the villain. The hero's journey is often ended when he marries the princess, thereby beating the villain.
5. The donor — prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object.
6. The hero or victim/seeker hero — reacts to the donor, weds the princess.
7. The false hero — takes credit for the hero’s actions or tries to marry the princess

Short Film

Identity:The story seems to be about finding or not letting society chose who you have to be. In the short film  you can see different people using different coloured masks. the masks seems to represent what society wants us to look like and creates a different identity than our own. There is a shot of a poster that

This screen shot shows what society now a days wants us to look like and what beautiful looks like.. People look up to this and believes that this is the right way to look like.












  This is a very powerful shot because it shows someone breaking out of their shells. in the next shot it show everyone still with a mask looking at the character without. this shows how society looks down at people who look different.

I think this scene would be more effected if there was a close up of the people who are looking at the girl. The reason I think this is because if we have close up it can show up close the peoples face reaction. After the close up you could have this shot showing how many people stop to stare at this one person.

The Boss is a short film about a employee facing his boss and for ridicules reasons for example arriving one minute late to work. The protagonist has arrived late 3 times in a corse of a year and looks like he is going to be fired. The protagonist finds out that he wins the lotto and decides to quit. He then wakes up and realises that he is late fir work.

screen shot 1

 This screen shot represent some situations that some people are in. This shot also shows thew unfairness that this boss has. The boss was purposefully represented this way because it wants to show why we should be on the side of the employee.

screen shot 2

 This screen shot shows how unfair and the comedic side of this short film. The boss says that he was late three times that year and this is a code and convention of a short film because short films are not suppose to be realistic and that just has the side of something that would happen in real life or at least at most jobs.  

screen shot 3

this screen shot shows that the employee who is about to be sacked, wins the lotto and becomes rich. This part of the story also shows something that wouldn't happen in real life or at least most people wound't react that way. 

screen shot 4

This is the final screen shot that i have captured and it shows the fantasy finally finishing. This screen shot shows the comedic side of this short film.

Creativity and how we can find it. 

There are many artists that find different ways of exploring their creativity. For example the Sting a very famous musician said at Ted talks that the way that he explorers his creativity is by going back home to where he lives as a child. He says that when he is x back home that many new ideas comes to because of past experiences from when he was younger. He turns these ideas into music.  

How we came up with the idea for our five minute short film. The way that we came up with the idea for out five minute short film was we knew what out main plot was going to be about such as we knew we had to get two characters meeting for the first time but we didn't know how we was going to get our two characters meeting. So we knew we wanted this to be a comedy and we thought of how do out favorite comedy's get two characters to meet. What we found was that many comedy have encounters of two characters meeting in a rest room before an interview and we based our short film around that idea