What Makes a Short Film?

Analysis: Tight Jeans (2008), Destiny Ekaragha

'Three black teenagers are becoming frustrated while waiting for their friend. A young white lad walks past wearing super tight jeans. The boys look on until one of them asks the pivotal question, "How can a man wear jeans that tight?" This sparks a hilarious debate about race and culture.' Tight Jeans is very much focused on dialogue, which made analysis of micro-elements in the film very difficult. Apart from the establishing shots during the opening of the film, the camera almost exclusively sticks to panning around the three main characters sitting on a wall. While this does compliment the relaxed conversational tone of the film, it leaves little to analyse. The one feature of the film that stood out to me was the cyclical narrative created a character asks why he 'can't wear a shirt that tight' at the end, after asking the same thing about jeans at the start of the film. I find that cyclical elements like this one and the one in the Ellington Kid...

Analysis: Slap (2014), Nick Rowland

'A teenage boxer searching for self-definition gives in to his true colours at the risk of losing everything.' Slap, because of its plot, has a heavy focus on the theme of splitting. This is shown visually throughout the short, often through mirrors. For example, in one shot, we see the main character (Connor) retrieve something from his closet while his mirror shows a lewd poster of a girl. There is also a shot used later on that eludes to more of an internal split when Connor returns to the gym. The shot is a POV of Connor as he looks into a broken mirror, which shows a segmented and distorted reflection. The use of mirrors in these shots is also an indicator of the importance of appearance in the film. Music is also effectively used in the film to convey characters' emotions. For example, as Connor leaves for the party, heavy rock music plays, which would usually be an indicator of confidence, but the guitar line is sloppy, which suggests Connor doubts himself despit...

Analysis: The Ellington Kid (2012), Dan Sully

'Two friends sit in a kebab shop in London. One tells the other a story he'd heard about a boy who'd recently been stabbed by a gang in the street. He'd staggered into the very kebab shop they are sitting in, desperately looking for somewhere to hide, pursued by the gang, looking to finish him off. But the gang hadn't thought about the shop's owners...' The Ellington Kid opens with a series of establishing shots of knives in the kebab shop accompanied by title cards. The first one shows the film's name, the second reads 'Based on a true story', and the third one says '(kind of)', establishing the comedic nature of the short film. While the gang is clearly the dominant power in the chase scene, they slowly become the victims along the course of their stay at the kebab shop. At first, both parties face each other confidently, then as the kebab shop employees find weapons, the gang begins to lose their confidence, and finally, the audie...

Analysis: The Fly (2015), Olly Williams

'An uptight getaway driver waiting outside a bank robbery has three nerve shredding minutes to get through before his crew returns. All he has to do is focus.' While the Fly was disliked by many of my classmates, I found that the short succeeded in its own right. While it may not have been as complex as our other set films, the piece provided an abundance of respectable slapstick humour, which I believe was the intent. This film does not try to be subtle, this is best shown by the flashing title card we are shown near the start. While I find this element to be annoying and I would not use it myself, I can see why it was included as it succeeds in showing the film's bold and simple premise and ideas. While the cinematography and editing are both well used, I found that diegetic sound was applied the most successfully. At the start of the short, when there is little action, the background noise is amplified and used to create tensnion. As the fly arrives, it is heral...

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