In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Length
The length of our short film was approximately 3 minutes 45
seconds long. This fit into the short film forms and conventions when it comes
to time. The short film could have been made longer to create a larger and
deeper story, but we had to stick to a time frame that was under 5 minutes
long. With this short length of time that we had it made us focus more on what
shots to use to tell the narrative and only use key information.Storylines
In the storyline of Twisted we decided to go against the convention
of telling the narrative through mostly non verbal communication and camera
shots. Because the genre of our film is psychological thriller we decided to
have the narrative progressing through the dialogue of the psychopath; this is
due to most psychological thrillers usually having a central protagonist or
antagonist that narrates the story and allows the audience to understand the
plot as it moves along. So in the conventions of short film we decided to make
it complex and difficult to follow at points to try and make the audience focus
their attention even more on the events that were happening. But in this we
still kept to the convention of a condensed narrative. Furthermore with this
being a psychological thriller we decided to have the convention of protagonist
meeting his antagonist face to face and having a confrontation, but decided to
make this the main bulk of the film as it made the film have more grit to it.
Characters
In following with short film conventions we stuck to three
main characters. Henry, The Psychopath and Mary. The reason for doing this was
so that we could focus on the relationship between Henry and The Psychopath; we
wanted to make the audience unsure of who was really the ‘good guy’ of the
narrative and also what were both their connections to Mary. Whilst doing this
we realised that we could make the distinctions between the two central
characters blurred and make them question who was real and who was not. Like
with the genre conventions of psychological thrillers the characters were
shrouded in mystery, we didn’t know where they originated from or how they came
to meet. In addition to this we also decided that the primary antagonist would
be the omnipotent all knowing character to show who really had the power.Twist
In both the genre of psychological thriller and short films
a twist is usually involved to create an ambivalent ending where the audience
are unsure as to the events that had unravelled. In Twisted we kept to this
convention with the whole story revolving around this narrative device to
generate questions as to what identity is and who is real and who is not. The
twist in our short film was that both Henry and The Psychopath were one and the
same which was revealed through flashback scenes where Henry believed The
Psychopath to be the killer of his wife Mary, but in actual fact it is slowly
revealed through the actions of Mary and the close ups that Henry was no longer
married to her and in his rage he murdered her. We are then again taken back to
the dark room where the two central characters are in a violent confrontation
where Henry murders The Psychopath which then ends with Henry waking up with a
knife in a nurse in a mental health hospital. So in this we conformed to the
conventions of psychological thrillers and short films.Budget and creativity
The budget for our short film was roughly £15.00 for the
fake knife and shirts. Most short films only have very limited budgets for
props, effects and equipment luckily we had the filming equipment for free from
the college. Since we are first time film makers as well as being students we
kept to a low budget as most short film makers do, this in effect is actually
better than having a large budget as we had to focus the money on only the
essential products needed for the film. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Trutex-009659-Sleeve-School-Inches/dp/B008O39AQU/ref=sr_1_8?s=clothing&ie=UTF8&qid=1395663002&sr=1-8&keywords=white+school+shirt
As this film was intended to be released online and in small
niche cinemas we were under less pressure to produce a work of art that would
draw in large audiences. Having the film as a non profit product also gave us
less pressure to produce something that would have to make big returns such as
it is in box office films. The only restriction with the creativity of the
short film was that it was a psychological thriller and therefore stuck closely
to its forms and conventions, making it slightly predictable in its intentions
as many psychological thrillers had be released before.
Distribution
With distribution of short films we did not have any
companies that would mass produce and release our film. Instead we decided to
use what most real products do and publish it to the internet on websites such
as YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xe_Y9MjNTGc
which was our prime place to publish it. We could also publish it on sites such
as Vimeo: http://vimeo.com/upgrade1v2?utm_source=search&utm_medium=google-upgrade1-brand_vimeo_alone_vimeo_exact-uk&utm_campaign=1621&utm_term=vimeo&gclid=CPCkxeqVq70CFWjKtAodQl0AiA&dclid=CJbZ-OqVq70CFQqR3godcTIAyw
another place to release short films or enter in competitions such as the BFI completion.
http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/competitions
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