P1 - Create pre-production materials for an original TV programme or short film, in a chosen genre

10 Short Film Conventions - 

Some short films do not use the standard Todorov 5-stage narrative.

Simple cinematography.

No use of CGI.

Usually heavy use of colloquialisms.

Smaller Cast (under 10 people). 

Usually an unanticipated ending.

Natural editing styles, Short and Fast paced.

Simple Narrative, Complex Ideas.

Low budget.

Usually free and online.

Niche Audience.

Emotive.

Short Film Elements - 

About a Girl:

Lighting - Natural lighting, no artificial lighting used, possibly to conform to a budget.

Audio - A limited amount of foley effects, the rest is captured seemingly in real time on a microphone.

Foley track - Underwater scene.

Mise en Scene - Natural real-life environment; next to a canal, in a Cafe and on a bus. All footage seemingly shot in Manchester.

Setting - Northern English town/city, could be Salford or Manchester. 'Rough' area of town.

Costume - Costumes are designed to replicate the fashion of an average North Yorkshire family, and it never steps away from this.

Actors - Small cast, all actors appear to be British and/or from the area they are representing.

Positioning - Natural Positioning, the actors that are talking are kept in centre frame at medium to longshots.

Finley:

Lighting - Natural lighting, also using the occasional low key horror style lighting.

Audio - Tense Music is used in the scenes where Finley is attempting to kill the characters. Tense music throughout the robbery scene. The rest of the film has natural audio that is used in an everyday American house environment.

Foley track - Foley could have been used in some scenes with screaming, as it does not feel entirely natural. Could also be sued in the scenes with stabbing or injury.

Mise en Scene - Props and set design is completely normal, to replicate the average American household. Props such as knives, toasters and cutler are used. Finley could be considered a 'prop'.

Setting - American house, two different settings of the actual house and the attic are used contrastingly.

Costume - Finley's costume is a small suit and doesn't change from that.

Actors - Small cast totaling of 5 people, not including Finley.

Positioning - Average film conventions, centre frame for most of the film.

My Own Short Film:

The Fence (2015) - 

Lighting - Natural day-lit environments. Most of the film is shot outside.

Audio - Mostly diegetic apart from some music. Dialogue is used most prominently similarly to the previous two films.

Foley track - Some foley tracks will have been used for natural effects, and maybe vehicle sounds as there is a driving scene in the film.

Mise-en-scene - Set design is also completely natural, there are a few indoor scenes that could have been a built set but they do not appear to be. Props are used frequently in the film, with things such as bike helmets, baseball bats, motorbikes and cars.

Setting - The film is set in stereotypical England, and is more specifically filmed in South Bristol

Costume - The costumes are designed to represent a 'rougher' and less fortunate British family, and the male cast have shaved heads to replicate the late nineties 'skinhead' era.

Actors - The cast is larger than normal, having in total 8 actors and characters. This is not conventional for a short film but is not entirely uncommon.

Positioning -  The actors are positioned on screen according to their presence, for example, when they are trying to find the bike the brothers are placed equally on screen to show their teamwork and ambition.

Conventions of Short Film:

Short films are a very distinct type of film, as they do not usually have the time, budget and publicity to make anything that is up to par with modern day cinema. However, short films are usually much more intellectually advanced and use the power of narrative in order to make up fora  lack of production budget. Because of this, short films have a group of conventions which are used frequently in order to make a shorter film interesting. One of the most important conventions of a short film is length. The films can range from around 1 minute to 30 minutes, which is a larger range to consider but they are all much shorter than feature-length. Another convention of short films is the unconventional use of narrative. Some examples are too short to contain a narrative, so they choose not to follow a structured narrative. Most of these films do follow a simple narrative, but some stray from this common ground. 

Obvious differences out of the way, most short films also sport a heavy use of colloquialisms. This means that the films are mostly directed at a very specific area, or a broader but centralised area.

Risk Assessment - 

Contingency plan - 

Location Recce - 

Melton Woods

Location Recce

 House - 

Storyboard Pages - 

The editing techniques between each shot here were all cuts

Production Schedule - 

Film Treatment - 

Call Sheet:

Camera Equipment and Lighting - 

Camera and Lens:

The camera that we are going to be using for this film is a Canon R5.

The R5 is a mirrorless body camera, meaning there is no slow shutter speed issues anywhere on this camera. This is also good for our film as it means that the frames are smooth, and fast which has a good effect on our lighting, and we can also change the frames per second if needed at a moments notice.

The camera has features such as facial recognition and autofocus which can be of use to us when filming any facial shots in the film. This can also be done however using the manual focus option, which may be the best option for creative control.

The Lens we are using is a Canon 105mm telephoto lens, which is a perfect match for the camera. This lens is 24mm to 105mm which means that we have a lot of range for shot types from wide close ups to extreme long shots.

This lens also has a good range of aperture, which means our depth of field will look extremely professional on screen.

Lighting: 

We are not going to use a lot of artificial lighting in our film, as most of it will be shot either in natural environments with natural lighting, or with natural lighting indoors.

The artificial lighting that we will use will be low-key lighting that is used in an indoor night environment.