Tuesday 8 July 2014

RESEARCH: FILL ME IN

In the lesson today, we looked into past A2 student work and professional short films, to gain a deeper and broader understanding into what we should aspire to create. This was also helpful in finding out how to condense a plot line into the space of 5mins.
I first watched:

Fill me in:   Writer / Producer - Gus Miller, Director / Editor / Script Development / Producer - Sebastian Thiel.
 Thiel presents 'Fill me in' a short film written by Gus Miller that explores how a young mans venturesome day gets turned on its head through the perspectives of the people around him. This short film explores how perspectives can change and alter a persons story drastically. It does this very cleverly, the footage is all filmed on a go-pro or hand held camera. The film repeats itself twice the first time we watch the young mans day from his perspective, with him narrating what he is doing, although a selection of words and footage are edited out, due to this what he is doing is seen in a very negative light. After you watch it the first time he say's, "I know your probably thinking i'm wild but thats a true story, tell me what you think of me now?" It then plays for a second time filling in the missing speech and footage, and it is uncovered that the story is not at all what you would thought and so after watching it through again he repeates "I know your probably thinking i'm wild but thats a true story, tell me what you think of me now?" and the audience is forced to rethink there previous answer, now knowing the full story. The film then ends with a quote by Wayne Dyer- "when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." I really liked this short film and found it very benifical in giving me ideas for making my own short film. 

The genre codes and conventions of this film are helpful to me as they give me and outline to follow when making my own short film. As this film is in the genre of drama, it is similar to that of my film. The film works well in communicating the confusion and tension of the film. One memorable convention was the use of soundtrack, this worked in building up the tension. Also the camera shots were clever as they used close ups, extreme close up and point of view shots these all conveyed a sense of mystery, suspicion and secrecy; as they did not give a lot away and they gave the audience a unique perspective. 


A point of view shot showing the young man hading over money.


These two screen shots show how they edited out certain bits making them "warrped"