USES- Our short film is very compliant to forms and conventions of short films, dramas and social realists,

and thrillers.

My short film uses the forms and conventions of a drama as it engages the audience and manipulates them to feel like what they are seeing on screen is what they are seeing in reality; it emerges them into the inside world of the film. This is done through the mise-en-scene, as it is a realistic setting-an average house, in a teenage bedroom, and simple and typical clothes form the costumes of our characters- blue jeans, white trainers, green parka coat for Jack and or Pablo the costume is a typical shifty guys clothing e.g. black leather jacket, black leather boots and blue jeans. The two characters are both quite normal looking people and the type the audience would expect to see in real life. Also, narratives of drama involve applying universal emotions that the audience can and do relate to, even if the situations are not the same as what the audience are familiar with. Our short uses this convention as Jack feels the universal emotions of repression, as he has to do something he doesnt want to-deliver the briefcase, hes also shown to feel anxious, nervous and a little scared. The audience can emphasise with him because these are universal emotions.

My short film uses the forms and conventions of the thriller genre as they aim to create suspense and excitement for the audience by revolving around a puzzle or the investigation of an enigma. The audience are constantly trying to investigate who this character is (Jack), what he is doing, where he is going, who the other character is (Pablo) and ultimately what is in the briefcase. The whole film surrounds the burdensome delivery of this suitcase. The suspense is built around the uncertainty of what it would be like when Jack gives this briefcase to Pablo, as he is worried about his own safety, as he is entering an area which may not be safe. A convention of thriller genre film is that to achieve their goal, the protagonist or hero is involved in a dangerous or life-threatening situation, and must pass through such frightening situations, either physically or emotionally. That is exactly what we portray of Jack in our film; to achieve his goal of delivering the briefcase, he has to pass through the emotionally frightening situation of meeting this unknown authorial person Pablo. In thrillers, the antagonist plots to gain power and the protagonist is trying to prevent this from happening. Jack is contemplating of refusing to give Pablo the briefcase, but he realises that he has no choice and gives in. However, he later on wakes up and in a way he has prevented giving Pablo the power symbol of the briefcase as he wakes up in his room, with the briefcase still beside him. The answer to the enigma is usually more rational than unrealistic, as is evident in our short; when Jack meets Pablo, Pablo doesnt immediately look like a gangster i.e. there are no guns or weapons visible on him, he isnt surrounded by a round of bodyguards or anything unrealistic such as that but still feared by Jack and the audience before the meeting has taken place.

Social realism forms and conventions are also very much present in our short film. The genre focuses on issues that are based in modern society such as money, drugs, prostitution and sex, class, religion and political views. Our film focuses on one of the issues in modern society; the shabby people (Jack) who do nothing with their lives, yet are not very happy when they end up in bad situations, and of course the furtive criminals (Pablo). The cinematography of social realists cosists of medium and closeup shots, perhaps with a handheld camera if a realistic dramatic effect needs to take place for representation of fear, panic, confusion etc. I think the audience can relate well to our social realist film as the main character would be very similar to them; middle class, normal house, similar although not familiar locations (e.g. the location is not in a stretch of dessert, which would not be a similar location). Forms and conventions of short films include a low number of characters with the main character having a lot of screen time, as short films dont have the time to create back-story for many characters. Our short film has only two main characters, with the very brief appearance (a few seconds) of a third. This allows the audience to relate to the characters desired, accurately in the short amount of time given. The situation in short films is usually an everyday situation that the audience can relate to. Short films are short in length, with a typical maximum length of 35minutes, but they are usually around 5-10minutes. Ours is within that time. Short film conventions also include low budgets, as usually short film directors are independent; budget is kept down by sticking to one or two locations. Our short film conforms exactly to this; it is a low budget and is filmed at two locations.

DEVELOPS- As we were very compliant to the forms and conventions, we didnt develop them very much.

We had a dynamic cut to the field meet-up. Having a multi-cultural element develops the drama and social realist genres further Mainly have medium and close up shots, but some other shots are used e.g. LSs and a Dutch tilt.

CHALLENGES

A typical form of genre is natural lighting, with not much editing as it would need to represent real lighting. lighting. This is apparent in our film but we have put an orange-y filter through the outdoor meeting scene. scene. Generally, thrillers are fast paced, the majority of our short is very slow moving, building anticipation. Our short film rejects Todorovs theory of narrative as: There is no equilibrium as Jack knows hes got to deliver the briefcase. The disruption is the resolution as he actually wakes up from the nightmare Claude-Levi Strauss Theory of Binory Oppositions;He was less interested in syntagmatic relations i.e. how events line up in the narrative structure to develop the plot than paradigmatic relations i.e. those events and features that belong to the theme of the piece, especially within genre based texts. He states that there are a pair of terms or concepts that are theoretical opposites. and one cannot be there without another. For example, there cannot be innocent villagers, if there was no horrible werewolf, or evil king which punishes them and exploits them. Therefore when creating our film we must take into account creating a clear representative of good and evil, because if our representatives of one, or both, are weak the lack of clarity could cause confusion. In our film although both characters are bad and evil to some extent, Pablo is clearly represented as the criminal and Jack is portrayed as the victim. Our unrestricted narrative let us build suspense. Roland Barthes Code Theory could be used to describe our films narrative. With the example of a ball of threads, he stated that they can be open- the ball may be unraveled in a lot of different ways, or closed- there is only one obvious thread to pull on. These threads that you pull on and unravel meaning are also narrative codes. Those codes include the Action code- this applies to any action that implies a further narrative action. For example, a gunslinger draws his gun on an adversary and we wonder what the resolution of this action will be. The Enigma code- refers to any element in a story that is not explained and therefore exists as an enigma for the audience, raising question that demand analysis. The Semantic code- any element in a text that suggests a particular, often additional meaning through connotation. The Symbolic Code convey Claude-Levi Strauss Theory of Binary Oppositions. The Referential Code- refers to anything in the text which refersto an external body of knowledge such as cultural knowledge, so the audiences morality and ideology to give the text more meaning and context.