Post 6 What makes a good short film?

In our media studies lessons we discussed and researched many attributes of short films. As a class we watched and talked about all the different types and watched many short films ourselves to compare and evaluate as shown in my previous posts (wasp). we had a professional short film director called Becky Knapp to talk to us about short films and answered many questions that gave me a much better understanding on short films and their purpose.

In this post I will be discussing what does make a good quality short film. firstly Becky Knapp gave us two different short films scripts to read through. One was called Donna and the other Does god play football.

The fist script I read was the script Donna. For me personally I found it very difficult to get into and i was not enthused to try and read the hole thing. My reasoning for this were it was not a very compelling story. I felt that the story had to much description of the scene and the atmosphere but had no interesting dialogue or substance to it. For me it was far from compelling and interesting. Taking into consideration when actually put into a film it will be more visual and perhaps more interesting I still feel that the scrip was in many ways was quite boring. We discussed the script after we had read it and most if not all of the class were in agreement that the script was not to our liking. I thinks this may be because it is targeted at a different audience a lot of the people who are my age look for more comedy and action but the script (Donna) was not offering this type of entertainment. We then watched a clip of the actually short film and it was in fact how I imagined it would be (better and more interesting visually and the acting and camera work was in my opinion to a good standard). this made it more interesting but unfortunately I still found myself thinking the story was fairly boring and it did not hold my attention at all. Ways to improve this would be to engage with the audience more, perhaps more dialogue and better explanation of what was happening because I found my self within a few minutes of watching the short film slightly confused on what was actually happening. questions such as who is the girl? Who was the man shouting at her? These were questions passing through my mind. Perhaps the directors were trying to do this so the audience would want to watch more to find out what was happening but for me it was simply not enough for me to want to watch the hole short film.

We then read the script Does god play football. I found this short film far more interesting for many different reasons. Firstly the story was easy to follow and was very clear and understandable. The story in general was good and encouraged the audience to watch more. There were things in the film that I really liked. For instance when the young boy asked his mother who his father was his mother replied God is all of our fathers, in response to this the young boy relates himself to Jesus Christ (the son of god) he takes his mothers words quite literally. When he prays to God he refers to God as 'Dad' I thought this was a marvelous touch by the director and film writers.

After doing my own research I have come up with some of my own points and views on what is needed to make a good short film. Firstly I feel the story line needs to be a an exiting and original idea (something different to what has already been produced). The film is only short so it must be exiting from the start and can not be the same old stuff that has already been done or else it is a waste of time. People don't want to watch short films that have already been done and watched before. Another important factor for me is to have a really good start and powerful start to the short film. This is something the short film 'Donna' failed to do. This is important because it draws the audience in and compels them into the story line. another important factors for a short film is perhaps using different filming techniques that can separate the film from the usual films being brought out. This will make it slightly quirky and different, audiences could really appreciate this. The short film needs to be short exiting, have good actors, exiting story line (original) and to be different from all the other films done before and must also have a good director because they will a short film requires the vision and creativity of a good director. If these points I have made are factored into the production of a short film then it will be a to a high standard.