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A Social Life | Award Winning Short Film | Social Media Depression
"Never Happened" - Sci-fi Short Film - DUST Exclusive
IMAGINE - Short Film (2015)
History of short films prezi link:
https://prezi.com/w5lxl4cds5zq/brief-history/
Key codes and conventions:
https://prezi.com/tktbgiigmxw9/key-codes-and-conventions-for-short-films/
Short Film Background Research:
“Imagine” analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gVcI_0T5l4
What genre is the film?
This short film is a drama that follows the story of Millie, a little girl who dreams of becoming a dancer, yet suffers from Niemann Pick Type C; an extremely rare, incurable disease which causes neurological decline and dementia.
What sort of narrative is it?
The narrative is linear but contains a few ellipses.
How does it establish the mood?
The film starts with a black screen and a voiceover. This shows straight away that it is going to be quite a serious and grave film.
Where was it shown?
Carl Mason, the 17-year-old director, raised £6000 to produce a full-scale short film to help increase awareness of the extremely rare disease. The young film-maker secured collaborative support from over 20 television and film professionals to create a film that could aid fundraising efforts and also raise medical awareness of NP-C.
What is the target audience for this film?
This short film is targeted to everyone, trying to raise medical awareness as much as possible.
What devices were used to target your audience directly? (What representations are used?)
The film represents a happy family and a normal, average little girl, showing how this illness could happen to any child and destroy any family.
What key genre elements were employed?
A real life situation is shown, with realistic characters and settings. It manages to move the audience emotionally, which is the purpose of a dramatic story.
What is the key point in the narrative?
The key point in the narrative is the fact that she keeps repeating “Hello my name is Millie, I’m 10 years old” showing her loss of memory but most of all, that she will always be 10 years old due to her illness. These are very effective passages.
What elements are particularly successful? Why?
The “Hello my name is Millie, I’m 10 years old” passages are very powerful, as well as when we see her in the playground, the fast passed editing juxtaposed with her fall in slow motion is very effective as it gives us a small feel of how she might be feeling. Once she’s on the floor, everything goes blurry and the voices resonate like distant echoes which is again very successful.
What elements are least successful?
Perhaps the acting from the parents at some points of the film.
What studio made this film?
The film was recorded at “new money recording studios” in collaboration with Niemann-Pick UK, INPDA (international Niemann-Pick disease alliance) and Hope for Hollie foundation.
What will be the marketing points for the film?
The marketing point of this films was to distribute it on TV’s.
“Never happened” analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oBfJ9MknDLc
What genre is the film?
The genre of this film is Sci-fi and Comedy.
What sort of narrative is it?
It has a non-linear narrative.
How does it establish the mood?
It starts off quite dramatic, with recurring drum noises, using parallel editing to cut from two different actions that seem to have nothing in common, before starting what seems like a very normal conversation between a married couple.
Where was it shown?
The film was shown at the Toronto International Film festival as well as the Tribeca Film festival, where it was nominated for “Best Narrative short” and was then distributed on the internet, on websites such as “short of the week”.
What key genre elements were employed?
This film subverted most of the Sci-fi conventions as the only little bit of sci-fi is near the end. The key Science fiction element is the futuristic app on their phones, which enables them to forget small events that have happened to them.
What is the key point in the narrative?
The key point in this narrative, is when we realize that they can forget about events that have happened to them. This is the turning point in the film, where we realize that the story isn’t just about a cliché married man cheating on his wife with one of his colleagues. This gives a very interesting twist to the story.
What ideology is being promoted?
This film is about infidelity and how current it is amongst married couples. It’s almost as if the director was trying to show that even when the characters made themselves forget that it happened, they still did it again, as if it’s something they couldn’t control, couldn’t not do.
What elements are particularly successful? Why?
The Sci-fi twist is very successful, as well as the ending when we realize that actually the wife has also been cheating on her husband.
What elements are least successful?
Maybe the beginning which is not explicitly clear at first and the fact that the two female characters seem quite alike.
What studio made this film?
This film was written and directed by Mark Slutsky, with the support of Actra Toronto and presented by “DUST”, a new entertainment portal dedicated to sci-fi shorts.
What will be the marketing points for the film?
Part of Gunpowder & Sky, the digital division of Chernin Entertainment, the recently launched site has been filling out its back catalog with internet favorites of the last couple of years, but Never Happened marks its first premiere.
“A social life” analysis:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXdVPLj_pIk
What genre is the film?
This short film is a Drama.
What sort of narrative is it?
It has a restricted linear narrative only following the life of a single character.
How does it establish the mood?
No music has been added to the beginning of the film, all we hear is the sound of the girl’s phone. The mise-en-scene shows quite dull colors and a very tidy and empty house, reflecting her real life and self. The music only starts 3 minutes into the film.
Where was it shown?
This film did its premiere at the Camberra International Short Film Festival, where it was awarded the prize for Best International Actor and more recently has won Best Ladies First Short, at the Lady Filmmakers Festival in Pacific Grove, CA. It then continued to screen at film festivals throughout 2016.
What is the target audience for this film?
This film is targeted to people who might spend too much time on social media rather than making the most of their lives. It seeks to ask the question “Are we truly living the life that we post?”.
What devices were used to target your audience directly? (What representations are used?)
I think everyone who uses social media can identify themselves a little bit in this young woman. She is a more exaggerated version of what most young people experiment daily. So by using this young woman as the main character and the fact she has an Iphone, helps
target the audience directly.
What key genre elements were employed?
In the same way as the first film that I analyzed, a real life situation is shown, with a realistic character and setting. And just like the first film but in a different way, it manages to move the audience emotionally.
What is the key point in the narrative?
The key point in the narrative is probably when she sees she has no new notifications, goes to the mirror, and realizes her whole life is just a collage of all the pictures that she has posted on social media.
What ideology is being promoted?
The ideology of “are we truly living the life that we post?”, how fake can someone’s life be on social media and how much importance people put into it, in contrast with their real life.
What elements are particularly successful? Why?
The fast forward passage in the middle is very effective and the use of a normal paste shot of her taking another picture for Instagram in between is very good.
What elements are least successful?
The slightly too cliché ending, when she realizes that there is a great world outside and then walks into the light.
What studio made this film?
Kerith Lemon is the writer, director and creator of this film. Driven by her passion for stories that emotionally connect, Lemon is drawn to narratives that elevate women, mirror societal complications and create dialogues amongst a broad audience.
What will be the marketing points for the film?
The marketing points of this film is to keep being distributed in film festivals, in order to get known and raise awareness.
I also really enjoyed the short films “Drink” and “Cold” but they were slightly too long for me to analyze.
How are they distributed and exhibited? How does this affect how the films are made and the content of the films? What audience do they appeal to?
“Imagine” by Carl Mason was distributed on TV’s as it was aiming to raise awareness to as wide an audience as possible. Consequently, the film had to be suitable for an all age audience and had to try and appeal to a very broad amount of people.
“Never happened” by Mark Slutsky was distributed in film festivals and then online. This allowed the director to create quite an interesting experimental story which he might not have been able to if he had to distribute it on TV or make a longer film. This film appeals to niche audiences found in film festivals and on the internet.
Finally, “A social life” by Kerith Lemon, was similarly distributed in a big variety of film festivals and then online. This is what most short films do for their distribution and exhibition strategies, as they lack the budget to go onto the big screens so by going to film festivals, they have the chance of winning an award or getting noticed, and then online they can attract lots of different kind of audiences, as they can’t really monitor who watches their film.
Key narrative forms and theories used-3 examples and explanations of different ones with hyperlinked examples.
First of all, we can apply Todorov’s theory to “a social life”, as it starts off with an equilibrium stage of the girl going about with her life, then she seems to get really addicted to it, which is the disequilibrium, followed by the realization that this is not the life she should be living, ending up to her leaving the house and going out into the light (new equilibrium).
We could also link “Imagine” to Levi-Strauss’ theory of binary opposites, with the girl who has a disease contrasting with all the healthy children in the playground, the opposition between the doctor who is always dressed in white and the parents who wear dark clothes and finally between the dancer that she dreams to be and the girl in a wheelchair that she actually is.
My third theorist is Barthes, which we can relate to “Never Happened”. Barthes believes that all media texts are open to interpretation and that it’s the audience who decides what they think happens to the characters. In this short film, the ending would imply for most people that the wife also cheats on her husband quite frequently, however, nothing proves this point, she could have just lost her earing, or taken it off to have a shower. So this proves that Barthes’ theory applies to this short film.