SHORT FILM: My work uses the short film format to its advantage due to the neighbours comments are almost like little facebook comments or tweets. Visually there is a lot happening that can tell us about the set up and the protagonist’s life before the first spoken word at the end of Act 1.
GENRE: The film started as a satire/drama in ideology, however I have added in more dramatic elements to keep the pace and raise audience empathy towards the protagonist.
CHARACTER: Kath’s journey throughout the story takes many highs and lows, she manages to achieve her external goal but her internal goal is harder to grasp. She needs to re-evaluate her internal goal because no matter how many children she saves it will always be too late to save her own.
The neighbours as the antagonists – needs work
PLOTTING: The external story is about the distractions of life getting in the way of being alive (or keeping someone alive) The internal journey in Kath’s head is about her getting past what she has lost by helping someone else.
DIALOGUE: The dialogue will be used mostly by the antagonists and will rarely be helpful to the situation, I want the audience to be as frustrated with them as Kath is.
The main dialogue used by Kath will be between her and the paramedics (on the end of her phone) and will almost always be essential.
STRUCTURE: I believe the film has a clear, formal three-act structure and if finding an unconscious child in the road isn’t a clear inciting incident I don’t know what is!?
The resolution is slightly less clear cut, there is one in the fact that the child wakes up and the mother turns up to take her to the hospital, but we never find out what happened to the child in the first place and Kath gets no real resolution other than managing to save the child this time round.
Problems I may encounter with the short:
- It feels like the beginning of something bigger (I normally find shorts more difficult)
- It is not funny enough (I’m not aiming to make it too funny but I do need to be careful that the satire lands in the right way)
A theory on what makes successful shorts:
- Settings are limited – I only have three locations.
- Number of characters is small as there is little narrative time to get to know and feel anything about them – I have a lot of characters but the audience don’t really need to know or care about the neighbours.
- A basic three act structure in which a small number of events are revealed in chronological order
- A reliance on continuity editing
- A limited theme – one or two basic points about a bigger theme. I think I’m making a point about a bigger theme…?
I’ve narrowed my narrative down to three plot options, would be interested to know which one suits it the most?
The circle:
The story comes full circle – a sense of closure is offered.
The journey:
The moment they give up, or finish the journey, we accept we have closure.
A character crisis:
A character with a situation that will change them forever or force them to do something difficult.
