Brandon's Film Studies Blog

Talk by Filmmaker, Ryd Cook Ryd Cook is a filmmaker who was gracious enough to come in and give a talk to our class about the process of creating a short film. Ryd had created his own short film, 'Single to London' which had been entered into several film festivals and had won an award for 'Best Short Film'.  One of the main focuses of Ryd's talk was the importance of a good logline in the creation of a film, Ryd brought up the idea of an 'elevator pitch' that a logline has to be a very simple, one sentence summary of the plot of a film that encapsulates the core essence of what the film is about. As Ryd described, the logline should highlight the protagonist of the film, their goal and the antagonistic force opposing the protagonist and standing between them and their goal and it should specifically be in this order. So for instance a logline for a film I have already looked at such as 'The Arrival' might be 'A pregnant woman must prepa...

'Come Be Creepy With Us' analysis 'Come Be Creepy With Us' (Link here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46jo7hwHeZ0) is a 2019 short film directed by Beth Fletcher. I found this short film on the youtube channel 'Short of the Week' which was one of the channels suggested by Neil, a former A level Film studies student during his talk to our class, as a good channel for watching more short films that can influence our own creative process. I chose to watch and analyse 'Come Be Creepy With Us' because it is a Coming-of-Age film, the same genre which I have chosen for my screenplay and digital storyboard, however it is also a horror film which is an interesting combination of two genres.  'Come Be Creepy With Us' follows a traditional three-act-structure, the inciting incident of the short film takes place early on as Anna starts seeing weird, supernatural things happening in her apartment, the mid-plot twist comes as it is revealed that Bonn...

'Tight Jeans' analysis 'Tight Jeans' is a short film written and directed by Destiny Ekaragha and released in 2008. Destiny Ekaragha said in an interview with the National Film and Television School that with 'Tight Jeans' she wanted to represent black youth from her own experience as she said that young black people are often 'misrepresented' by the media. Although 'Tight Jeans' does have a typical inciting incident in the man wearing the tight jeans walking past, the short film decides to forgo a conventional three act structure. Without a three act structure to follow along with the film instead focuses on a comedic conversation between a trio of young men that takes place entirely within a single location. Although the conversation is one written to make the viewer laugh, the points of conversation touch on some deeper and more complex themes such as history, race and sex. The short film also employs some dramatic irony for humour th...

'Slap' analysis  'Slap' is a 2015 short film directed by Nick Rowland and it is about twenty five minutes long. The narrative of 'Slap' deals with identity, sexuality and gender identity as well as how these things can be difficult to come to terms with in the face of social and cultural ideas that are sometimes opposed to these things. The short film opens with a tense scene as Conner promtly attempts to cover up his make up from his dad showing how he hides his identity from the people he is close to. The opening scene is then juxtaposed with a scene of Conner boxing training showing the contrast between two binary opposites of cultural gender roles, introducing the theme of duality in Conner's identity in the film. Conner is conflicted between being vulnerable to his friend, Archie, and helping him or letting him get hurt. Conner opens up to Archie and Archie accepts his identity. He then embraces his new identity and is proud of it, however his ...

'Operator' analysis 'Operator' is a 2015 short film directed by Caroline Bartleet. The short film is a drama and it is approximately six minutes long. 'Operator' follows a simple three act structure, the inciting incident for this short film is the call the operator receieves from the woman trapped in a house on fire with her infant son, the rising action occurs as the woman on the phone becomes more frantic as the house begins to collapse and the climax comes as the firetrucks arrive to help the woman and the call ends. This three act structure could of and usually would of been filmed from the perspective of the woman in the house however the filmmakers decided to focus on the operator. The narrative of 'Operator' is conveyed through the dialogue and the sounds of the phone call. Events on the other side of the call are not shown, the viewer is expected to imagine what is going on so the diegetic sounds becomes important for allowing the viewer...

'The Arrival' analysis 'The Arrival' is a 2016 short film directed by Daniel Montarini. The short film is a drama and is about four minutes long. 'The Arrival' follows a pretty traditional narrative on a more limited scale. The short film all takes place within the same location and follows an unbroken internal monologue from Anna, the main character, the monologue chronicles her train of thought and change of mind showing character development which is usually more common in feature length films. A three act structure can be assigned to 'The Arrival' as the inciting incident of the film is when Anna arrives at the cafe and starts thinking about what to say, the rising action is the rethinking of her decision and the climax would be the father of her child arriving to the cafe. Like some of the other set short films we have looked at in class, the film ends with a sense of ambiguity as it is unclear wether Anna has changed her mind or not and wh...

'Echo' analysis 'Echo' is a 2011 short film directed by Lewis Arnold and is about seventeen minutes long.  The story of 'Echo' was inspired by the writer of the short film, James Walker's experience with a girl in covent garden who was running a similiar con to the main character, Caroline. The narrative of 'Echo' is one of a cyclical nature, as the title of the short film suggests, it deals with how events, especially very emotionally impactful events in life can echo on through time and potentially repeat themselves in the future. The cyclical narrative of the film is best embodied in how the film's first and final scenes are almost word for word identical, however the way the viewer interprets these two scenes will be completely different because of the context that has been granted throughout the duration of the film and this is the genius of 'Echo'. This short film is uncharacteristically long when compared to the other set...

'The Fly' analysis   'The Fly' is a short film directed by Olly Williams and released in 2014 with a duration of six minutes. 'The Fly' follows a conventional three act structure for films, the inciting incident of the film is the fly in the car that annoys the getaway driver, the rising action is the getaway drivers comedic attempts to kill the fly which get more and more eleaborate each time including shooting the car with a shotgun and the climax is the robbers coming out of the bank only to find the getaway driver has destroyed the car in the process. Unlike other short films we have looked at in class 'The Fly' does little to challenge narrative conventions but excels at telling an enjoyable story within the traditional narrative format.   'The Fly' owes a lot to silent films for it's borrowing of multiple narrative techniques from the genre. Some tropes of silent films that are used in 'The Fly' include a lack of di...

'The Ellington Kid' analysis 'The Ellington Kid' is a short film released in 2012, directed by Dan Sully and is about five minutes long. The genre of the film is comedy/drama. Unlike traditional films, 'The Ellington Kid' feautures a narrative embedded within the plot of the film and as such it is possible to identify two three-act structure stories within the film. The inciting incident for the first story is Nathan telling Beefy the story of the Ellington kid, the rising action and subsequent twist which would usually occur in the second act is Nathan inferring that the burgers are made out of the gang members and the climax is when the camera pans to the kebab shop worker listening to them and scraping the knives against each other. For the story within the story the inciting incident is the Ellington kid getting stabbed, the rising action is the Ellington kid taking refuge in the kebab shop where the gang members follow him and it seems like there w...

'Over' analysis 'Over' is a short film we have looked at in class. The film was directed by Jörn Threlfall, released in 2015 and is about fourteen minutes long. This film is based on real events and the genre it belongs to is best described as drama. The editing in this film is very interesting as the filmmakers decided to redirect the arrow of time and edit the film in reverse chronological order and hence defy narrative conventions of linear storytelling. The filmmakers take advantage of the short film format to subvert typical film tropes to create an unconventional film that still maintains the important and reliable three act structure. The film closely follows the three act structure as it starts by showing the quiet suburban neighbourhood in a state of equilibrium and harmony before revealing the inciting incident which comes in several forms including the flowers, the blood on the road and the car being brought in for repairs that all show somet...

What is a Short Film? A short film is defined by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as a film with a running time of 40 minutes or less. From the research I have done the main aspects that differentiate a short film from a feature length film include a shorter runtime, minimal characters (usually a short film will focus more on a concept than characters however if characters are a focus of a short film it will usually just concern a single character) and short films also usually have only a single plotline as opposed to feauture films which can include multiple interwoven plotlines within one film. Some of the earliest short films date back to the late 19th century and include films we have looked at in class such as 'L'Arrivee d'un train en gare de La Ciotat' which was directed by Auguste and Louis Lumiere. The film was simple and just depicted a train pulling into a station, supposedly the audience jumped out of their seats in fear when the f...