Post 2a: Short Films

What makes a good Short Film?

I have researched into different types of Short Films to help support and allow me to expand on my Ideas. In the above Spider diagram I have picked out key points of which are essential in short films to make them exciting and successful.

Here is a link for a website of which has multiple short films on, it also has lots of comments and a forum page where you can see peoples ideas and opinions on the short films that have been posted and created. After reading some of these articles and comments it have given me some more Ideas of which would work and what wouldn't work in a short film.

 http://www.shortoftheweek.com/ 

I have also looked at different narrative structures which have been created by literary theorists such as Todorov, Propp and Strauss. these theorists have developed ways of which you can de-construct a narrative. Here is a photo of some notes I made while looking at the different narratives.

Here is an eight step guide to script writing for short films of which my teacher came up with....

1. Find a small idea

2. Explore the structure

3. Define your world, character and problem 

4. Beat the problem out

5. Write the first draft

6. Have a critic read it through

7. Write a second draft

8. Write a third draft

This is effective as it gave me a brief understanding of where to start to create my own short film, I also found out that every short film needs an effective Idea. I have been trying to find Ideas from all sorts of different formats such as looking at image's, reading newspaper articles, lyrics from songs and even poetry. The only thing I need to keep in consideration when looking for a short film Idea is that whatever Idea I find or come with, has to be small as have to be able to explore it in emotional depth in approximately 5 minutes for my project.

Here are some links to different websites of which I have explored and used to get resources and research from about short films. I found the first website link consisted of a lot of helpful and effective points and tips for script writing and short films in general which have helped my understanding and have helped me develop my ideas. Some of the key elements mentioned on this website is that  for a successful short film you need to have an exciting and original Idea, a strong script, Good acting, need to avoid repetition and needs a strong beginning. 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/filmmaking/guide/introduction/what-makes-a-good-short

http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/guide-to-making-short-films/id/901