Thinking of an idea for a Short Film

• A conflict (big or small)
• A story or anecdote you have heard
• Something that has happened to you, possibly amplified, simplified or exaggerated
• A generic film - identify key tropes of genre. For example, a zombie involves a death, zombies and a survivor
• A rite of passage story - E.g. Learning to drive
• Subvert the audience's expectations
• A desire you have that either comes true or is thwarted
• A historic even (can become difficult for a short film due to getting props and costume)
• A sense of closure
• A tale with a twist

Most short films have limited characters and a simple plot. This follows Aristotle's classical unities. This involves the simplistic methods originally used within Greek theatre. These 3 methods are: One place, one time, one action. This means avoiding sub-plots. My short film will only be 5 minutes and so this isn't enough time for a sub-plot to develop or come to an end, it may also confuse the audience.

Thinking of an idea it tricky, even just the initial idea. To help me create an idea I have started a mindmap to quickly jot down anything that could lead to an idea. These are:

• Soul mates
• Death? - Zombie film
• Day dream
• Drawings become reality
• Army theme? (access to Airsoft guns and uniforms)
• Child growing up (access to look alike sister)
• Music? (trying to create a band, people brought together by the love of music)
• Gaming into daydream reality (mario kart to go kart, access to go karts)

-KickThePj's short film - Colour Bandits

Primary, Secondary, Quantitative and Qualitative reseach

The research methods that I intend use are Primary, Secondary, Quantitative and Qualitative research. This is because Primary research is a great way to personally find information about films and what people like the best in these films. I can do this by using questionnaires and surveys, but also by using Internet forums to get a wide audience feedback. By using an Internet forum, this can improve my information intake greatly as I won't only get a variety of people but also from a variety of places across the UK, or from around the world if I do not limit the forum.

Secondary research will be good to get information about short films that I cannot get from Primary research, such as reviews. For this I could use magazines or IMDB. The Internet Movie Data Base is filled with almost every movie made with reviews and star ratings on these films. I can look for certain genres of films to see which have the highest ratings, best reviews and then analyse film posters to produce one of my own and make it have an overall professional look.

Quantitative research helps to identify patterns and trends, e.g more men than women watch RomCom films than men. These patterns can help establish a target market and what to put more of in a magazine to make it more appealing to that area of the audience. Also, Quantitative research helps identify more about the numbers and specifies what ages buy films.

Qualitative research is very similar to Primary research in the sense that it gets people's opinions straight from them, like a survey. But with Qualitative research it gains opinions and ideas about a films. This can be done through Primary research or through Secondary research.

Full Length 'Teachers Collaboration'

Evaluation of 1 Minute Short Film

What could have been improved or could have been changed in this 1 minute short film?

This is the first time I had ever really experienced FinalCut Pro and so I don't know all the tricks and editing that goes with this, but this application is still better than iMovie after this short experience. It was very frustrating editing the film due to the high quality of the videos themselves. The Mac I was using at the time was filled with others work and so the application crashed on more than one occasion.
FinalCut Pro doesn't give you an option to save until you export and so this meant I needed to re-create the same project more than once. In future reference I will make sure that FinalCut Pro is less crowded with other files that are not being used before uploading and editing my work. The other option would be to lower the quality of the files but that isn't something I want and it lowers the standard of professionalism. Another thing I found difficult is the time I had set myself. Originally I thought that just create the Teacher Collaboration video would be enough but soon I was sitting in classes not doing anything whilst others edited. I wanted to also get practice at making short filmed before filming my 5 minute short film. I only gave myself a weekend to create an idea, create a storyboard of shorts, film and edit. I managed to create it but it would have been much easier to produce this over the space of two weeks. Due to the short space of time I wasn't able to show my creativity as much as I had hoped. Given more time I may have done a speed painting video of 'A Day in the Life Of An Artists', or something similar. What I have learnt is not to set myself too much work and to leave myself a decent amount of time to complete tasks.

But what went well? I have gained new skills with FinalCut Pro and how to produce my own music in GarageBand. This will be helpful for when it comes to creating my own 5 minute short film. I recorded and overlapped myself playing the ukulele as I felt that a happy instrument and happy music would fit best with this genre and style of short film.
With my storyboard I have learnt a lot. Although I produced a storyboard with only just camera angles and shots I have come to realise how complex storyboards can become. Camera shots are the main basics, you also have to add who you want this camera shot to be of and what they will do and make the storyboard flow to create an easy to follow guide. I know sometimes it might be difficult to stay 100% to a storyboard but I will remember for my 5 minute short film to produce a more in depth storyboard, possibly with images to make it easy for me and possibly others to follow.
Filming was fun due to the fact that I was working with kittens (don't judge my girly-ness). I managed to gain all the angles and shots I wanted but I wouldn't film with animals if I needed to make a proper story from it. Why is this? Well one of the main rules of film that I foolishly chose to ignore is 'Don't work with animals or children' as if following a real storyboard it would possibly take 3 times as long to film as they may not produce what you want first time filming. I will take this knowledge with me onto my 5 minute short film.
I also enjoyed filming as I got to use the Sony 5n which is light and small, perfect for close ups. The camera also films in 1080p and takes photos in RAW so for posters and filming its a good all round camera. Although I didn't use it this time round, the camera can also be attached to a tri-pod, mono-pod or a hand held grip for more stabilisation. I didn't really use these as the subject I was filming was always on the move. But for a more professional look for my 5 minute short film I will use a tri-pod for the majority of filming.
And lastly, editing, although with its problems, did turn out well. I got to experiment with colour changes and transitions, learning along the way which items I could use for my short film. FinalCut Pro is more detailed when I comes to editing lighting compared to iMovie which will help me in the future. I will defiantly use FinalCut Pro for my 5 minute short film and learn along the way how to create different effects.