Conventions of the short films I analysed

From the three Short Film Analysis’s I posted on my blog, I am now going to discuss the common themes and conventions of the three videos.

When deciding the three films to study, I decided to choose films that were no longer than 10 minutes, but not shorter than 5. Get Off My Land is approximately 5 minutes long whereas The Siren and 3X3 are 7-8 minutes long.

All three films had characteristics that I really enjoyed, such as the Comedy in 3x3, the suspense, which was built, by the editing and camera angles in Get Off My Land and the beautiful storyline and finish to the Siren.

In terms of cinematography, I think that The Siren was superb and really helped catch the drama in the scene. The way the camera pans, moves, and changes focus in the film really creates a sense of fluidity, which could connote the fluidity of the sea on which the film is based. The cinematography in 3x3 however was not so impressive, as the camera didn’t have much movement, pans or editing techniques. This didn’t matter because the storyline within the film was so funny, that there wasn’t much drama to be caught by using impressive camera angles and pans. Get Off My Land fits right between the two other films in terms of cinematography. The shots are framed marvelously and there are moments when there were cut away shots of long grass blowing and close ups of the couple’s muddy feet. What is common in Get Off My Land and The Siren is that they used ‘steadicams’, a device you attatch to the camera and hold which fluids out your movements in control and creates a slight steady movement, for which you can get some great effects. This could be something I look into getting hold of for when I start filming.

The genres of the three films are different, but there are other similarities such as the way the three films are edited. There seems to be mainly straight cuts, and match cuts with a few close ups and cut aways, but the editing all seems to be quite straight forward to these films. There are no special effects in them all, which is interesting because in my film I don’t want to have to worry about special effects, so I will avoid using them, as like many short films, I don’t have a large budget.