CR blog

      In the short film it addresses the issue of selfishness and taking someone for granted. In the beginning of the film, it starts out as a moment of rekindling of friendship between the two characters, where they highlight each other on significant moments in their life separate life and the one they both shared before. By this the audience gets a grasp of the two personalities of the characters and as the film develops and the scene changes the audience also gets to grasp the unfavorable traits of each character. For example, in the film, the first encounter of the issue was the character going inside the house to get changed, and the other waiting outside for a long period of time, which showed how one character was acting selfish in regard to other character waiting outside. In the progression of the film, we see that this behavior continues but it gets continuously worse overtime, and eventually both characters engage in an active and direct argument over the issue of whose being inconsiderate towards one another. As a result of this issue, both characters walk away from each other with high emotions. Later in the film, one of the character’s is tragically hit by a car resulting in death and the other is left to mourn the loss of their friend in regret about their own acts of selfishness towards them whilst the other character was alive. The entirety of the film was a highlight of choices made by each character was either a selfish or selfless intention.

     Also, the development of our branding throughout the film begins by documenting throughout production to form a single identity for the film. When spare time was available during production, pictures was taken offset for the development of our website and postcard. In general, we wanted the theme of the website and postcard to match the theme and genre of the film. For the postcard it was designed with bright colors of the outdoors such as blue and green to catch the eye of the audience, the picture on the poster is a prominent shot from the film to pique the interest of the audience, centering it in the postcard making it the first thing the audience notices. Similarly, to the postcard, the website is also designed with bright colors and has variety of pictures to emanate friendships, that way the audience can gain an understanding of the type of film being produced and essentially the identity. By expressing piece of our branding with postcards and websites, our identity is completely developed in the completion of the short film, where there is a storyline and character development that really shows the audience what our production is all about.

     Furthermore, to engage with the audience, the short film storyline was created in a way to connect with the audience emotionally and morally. By creating characters and situations that generate sympathy, jeopardy and relatability, the audience is drawn to how each character of the film behaves towards those elements whether it is humor, avoiding conflict, or being immature. With characters of such attributes in this short film, the audience wants to be close to and identify with them. In the film, there is a conflict of values chosen to be understood by the audience and this is what tells the audience what the film is essentially about. In this short film the conflict of value was selfishness vs selflessness, or in other words, “selfishness leads to being alone, but selflessness leads to being connected”. This engages the audience by allowing them to identify with various characters and help them decide what moral choices to have them actively root for their desired outcome of the film. While character building does contribute to the morals of the film, what’s constantly undermined is the background setting and music that ensures that every scene and dialogue exchange matches the moral of the film. In this film setting played an important role for the audience to understand the characters of the film in a realistic environment. Not only does the film engage with the audience by watching, but the film engages with them by being distributed across multiple platforms as media text. Being uploaded onto popular platforms online such as YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, and more to reach targeted audience and gain more popularity in the film itself.

      In addition, the research information gathered for the short film started out with genre research. At first, we needed to decide on a genre and that lead us to the decision of drama since it relies heavily on the emotional and relational development of the characters, as well as feature a story with high stakes and conflict, plot-driven to the point of portraying real-life situations to relate to the audience. The drama genre led us to the use of common conventions in the short film such as camera angles and shots, sound, mis-en-scene, and editing. Frequent camera angles and shots seen in the short film includes wide shots to exaggerate the character in a setting, medium shot to emphasize the facial expressions of a character while still informing the audience what’s occurring in the environment, and close ups to reveal the drama between characters. The sound for the drama genre follows up with the situation in the short film. For example, the sound track for one of the characters feeling left out would be sad and since the film is striving for realism, background noise is included in the film during dialogue. Costumes of the characters are based on the character’s development throughout the film, and in the film’s case, the costumes consisted of casual wear outfits to replicate the everyday clothing worn in real life. Editing in the film based on the drama genre mostly consisted of cross cutting between characters dialogue and actions to convey that there are different things occurring in different locations at the same time, therefore, dramatizing the film and emotions of each character.