Tabitha's A2 Blog: January 2015

The technical codes of my short film in terms of camera work and editing follow similar characteristics of other short films. For example, before my title appears (another convention of films) my film opens with an establishing mid long shot. The idea of this was originally from PJ Ligouri's short film 'Smokey Saloon', in which PJ is doing an every day task of watching TV before the main adventure begins. My character is also doing an every day task of drawing which also links to this short film. Although you can't tell from these stills, both my short film and 'Smokey Saloon' open with a slow zoom which focuses on the main protagonist of the film. I wanted to use this as I felt that I gave a little bit of movement to a shot that would have otherwise been still. It keeps the interest of the viewer which is something I needed even though this was a very short film. Codes that relate to symbolism within this scene of my short film can be found the most at this point. This shot contains the most symbolism due to all the props that signify and relate to Japanese and Chinese film culture. The best way I found to relate this film to the old style of Japanese and Chinese action films was to place a large poster to the right to relate to the art style of the films and the origami to the left to represent the culture. The origami are actually paper cranes which have hidden connotations of their own. Origami paper cranes are known for hope and healing which is very fitting for this short film as the main character has to defeat her inner demons to heal herself and the book she is drawing in in this scene is what gives her hope.
My favourite film is 'Scott Pilgrim VS The World' and has many battle scenes inspired by the original comics which were drawn in an Anime style which has a clear link to traditional Japanese and Chinese films with action scenes. This film has given me a lot of inspiration, especially for the effects but also the camera work and editing. In one of the final scenes of 'Scott Pilgrim', Scott and Knives team up to fight the final battle. I liked the use of split screen here and so I decided to put this into my own short film to show the determination between the two enemies. This makes the audience focus on the eyes of the two teams and the determination as they are about to square up to one another. The reason as to why I focused more on the eyes of the characters and not the entire face like 'Scott Pilgrim' does is because I have heard that emotion is portrayed through the eyes alone and so I kept it to just the eyes.