Codes, Conventions & Editing So Far

Our short film conforms to codes and conventions as it is less than 55 minutes, it has a small set of characters and has been produced on a low budget. We experimented with different filming and editing techniques and decided upon stop frame animation and we aimed to make it abstract and be as creative as possible with the storyline. There were no boundaries on our short film and it is quite controversial as it is a very mature film with an element of immaturity due to the teddy bear reference. It is not at all cliché and doesn’t have a specific genre; this allowed us to work more freely. The pace of our film was also quite fast as we didn’t have enough time to build tension or a storyline as a feature length film would. We didn’t work with professional industry equipment and we worked in a small team.

I have previously blogged about films that have influenced our short film. They have been teddy bear based as from the beginning we wanted to mix the themes of childhood and adulthood. The use of camera was influenced by a short film we had watched by previous students who has done the same unit as us. It was completely in photographs and we felt this was a different approach to short film and adapted it into our own. A mainstream film that we took our idea from was Toy Story, as we had recently watched it, it was fresh in our minds and proved that a person’s childhood always stays through them throughout life and it also displayed the transition between childhood and adulthood. Our target audience is very niche. It is for those who enjoy abstract films and over the age of 15. It is slightly humorous so could possibly reach out to a slightly wider audience. We have reached out to them using adult reference, a range of emotions throughout the short film can be exposed, humour, it is very relatable and the idea of innocence that is shown in the teddy. I would like to exhibit my short film on youtube as it is a very famous video website so it could be easily accessed. I would also put it on vimeo as that site is visited and used by breakers into the media industry. Short film competitions and festivals are a good way to get my work out there and to watch other short films for further inspiration.

Editing So Far

So far, editing has gone successfully. We have most of our footage edited and our voiceover is completed. There have however, been a few changes to our original idea. We wanted to do things such as make the teddy walk in stop frame or throw up but we couldn’t because it proved hard when it came to filming. We also wanted to do some focus pulls on the camera but because we were using a standard compact camera, we didn’t have the option of doing so.  The person we intentionally wanted to be the voice of our teddy later changed to another person as we came to a joint conclusion Alex’s voice matched the character of our teddy well. We changed the intro of our short film from outside to indoors as we would have had continuity issues; the teddy would appear outside the suddenly be indoors. We felt this didn’t work well. We needed to reshoot due to lack of footage, when we were filming we were convinced we had enough photographs but because our whole short film is in photographs, we should have thought through how much pictures we would need more thoroughly. When we are able to edit again, we will continue to finish our short film by filling in any gaps, adding a sound track and making titles and credits. Over the Christmas holidays we will take the time as an opportunity to take more photographs.