Script for Walking the Dog.

Man is walking through a field with his small dog trotting along beside him, the dog suddenly darts off.

Man: WALTER, WALTER COME BACK HERE NOW!

Walter trots back looking very pleased with himself, little known to his owner he has something in his mouth

Man: Don’t you run off like that you bad bad dog! I’ll put you on the lead if you pull another stunt like that you bad dog! Whats that you’ve got there……. Leans toward Walter to take what he has retrieved.

Walter Runs off again

Man chases Walter excited, and intrigued into what he has in his mouth.

Editing is fast paced and scenes are short so that the audience realise how long he has been chasing his dog for

Man: I’ve caught you! What have you got? Pulls the lottery ticket out of the dogs mouth. Oh my god, these numbers look familiar….   


Pulls phone out of his pocket and calls home…

Screen is cut in half so you can see Man standing in the field and Woman in the kitchen 

Wife: Hello dear, has he run off again? You haven’t lost him have you? I told you to keep him on the lead….

Man: no, no, no I have got him, he did run off but he’s come back with a lottery ticket, the numbers look familiar from last night, check them now we could be millionaires!!!

Wife: Oh my, I’m logging on… right the numbers are 4

Man: yes

Wife: 12

Man: yes

Wife: takes a deep breath, grinning 23

Man: yesss….

Wife: 39

Man: YES

Wife: 42

Man: yes yes yes yes, and the thunderball…. Please say 7?!

Wife: YES. Have we won?

Man: YES!!!!!!!!

Wife: AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH WE HAVE WON THE LOTTERY.. I cannot believe this, I will always remember the 30^th of October 2011 as the day we won the lottery!!!!!!!!!

Man: What? 30^th of October?

Wife: Yes, Halloween tomorrow..

Man: The ticket says the 22^nd, it’s a ticket for last week..

Wife: you’re joking.. you idiot!

Man: well that was exciting for a minute wasn’t it?!

Wife: laughs, but is clearly gutted Oh well. When will you be home?

Man: Me and Walter will head back now.

Hangs up phone. 

Man: oh for gods sake.. WHERES MY DOG?

Runs off after dog.

Stop Motion

Stop Motion is a very advanced Animation technique that makes an object e.g. a Teddy bear, appear to move on its own.
We have done various Stop Motion work shops to explore the option, but I have decided against using stop motion to create my Short Film, as I do not think it is effective in the "Black Comedy" Genre that I have chosen to work within.

Stop Motion can be very effective and entertaining for example in the Television programme "Smart" they use Stop Motion plastecine people to show how they do things, and the Children's television programme "Pingu" none of these characters speak, as it is hard to incorporate speech into a stop motion clip or film. Stop Motion is very time consuming The feature film "Wallace and Gromit, Curse of the Were-Rabbit" was filmed using Stop Motion with Plastecine models, they only managed to film 1 second of the film per day leading to it taking 5 years to make.

Stop Motion is really challenging and time consuming to use Stop Motion and I do not think I could add the level of detail that I intentend to use in my work if I chose to use it, and I feel it would comprimise the quality of my film and the enjoyment for my audience.

Final idea: "Walking the Dog"

Treatment

Walking the dog

A man is walking his dog in the countryside, when his dog runs off he really shouts at the dog to come back, which he does, whilst still shouting he realises the dog has something in his mouth, the dog runs off again. Intrigued, he chases his dog relentlessly, but cannot catch him, the dog is teasing him; after what seems like hours of the man chasing his dog he finally catches him and realises that he has a lottery ticket in his mouth he winces and starts to get excited, rings his wife from the field and says I have found a lottery ticket, don’t get too excited but I think we have won…. The wife stays calm and tries not to get too excited and logs onto the internet to look at last night’s lottery numbers she reads them out slowly as he is agreeing with each number… as they agree the final number the wife screams “I CANNOT BELIEVE WE HAVE WON THE LOTTERY” and is getting very excited on the other end of the phone as he realises he has found a lottery ticket which is dated for last week, and they have won nothing, he breaks it to his wife and they hang up the phone, and he realises the dog has run off again. He runs off in pursuit of the dog as the screen fades out and the titles are introduced.

How my ideas have changed...

I cannot decide whether I want to do a Mockumentory as I feel it would be hard for me to find the actors, so I am in the process of deciding between 2 ideas; A Mockumentory and A short film containing Irony and Black Humour.

Use of Narration

Narration can be a really important part of Short film, as it can help the audience to understand what is going on, as it can be hard to communicate a storyline in a short film to help the director get across what they are trying to say, and to help the audience understand what is going on.

For my AS piece I used narration in the opening 2 minutes of "The Life of Emily Banks" to engage the audience with my character, she introduced herself and her background that we understood her as a person, as I thought that this was a really good way of enticing my audience by familiarising themselves with my character, she was letting them into her life. We also see narration in the film "Mean Girls" at the beginning so that we can understand where shes from, and that she has moved to America from Africa, so it gives an instant insight into her life so that we already know what is going on before the film starts, it was a really good way of communicating what was going on so we can connect with her, and also engages the audience by adding some comedy.

Narration is used in many feature length, short films, TV series as it is another tool which is used for Breaking Fourth Wall and can add some comedy and personality to a programme or film.

Narration has changed a lot over the years, for example 1950s Radio and TV narration with a very proper English accent, as at the time that was what was seen as proper and you would rarely hear any accents on TV, Film or Radio, another example of this is the film "Mary Poppins", The Banks family are very upper class and Mary Poppins, their Nanny all have very proper English accents but Bert, the Chimney sweeper, has a very Cockney accent, this is typical of this era as it was seen as very "Working Class" to have any accent that wasn't prim and proper.

Times have changes and now we see a lot of regional identity in narration, as it is now understood that a narrator has to be clearly spoken, yet doesnt have to be really Britsh for the audience to understand what they're saying. For example the Big Brother narrator, Marcus Bentley, has a strong Geordie accent which is one of the most recognisable voices in the UK, even to people who don't watch Big Brother. accents are a really good way of getting some character into the medium.



Ideas so far..

As a team Me, Nicole Rance, Ryan Cole and Steven hubbard decided to get together and make something thats short and comical to share our ideas....

How are short films consumed?

Short Films can be consumed in many different ways; it is unlikely that you would go to the cinema and pay to see a short film, unless you see sequence of them. If you were interested in watching short films you are more likely to visit a short film festival, which are not uncommon, but are very small scale events where people submit their work to be watched by an audience who have a particular interest in short films for example the Edinburgh Short Film Festival. Short films are usually an aspiring directors passage to making feature films, as someone making a film by themselves would not have sufficient funds to pay for equipment, or actor/esses, time or editing equipment to pay to make a 2 hour long film, short films are a lot easier to make as they are... short! They do not require the same amount of editing, planning, filming, equipment and so on, although it is unlikely you could be a famous director and make lots of money by making short films, hence, they are a passage, and usually used for recognition.

Some people submit their work to online forums such as The BBC Film Network just for recognition of a piece of work they are particularly proud of and feel like they want to share it with the world. The BBC Film Network has hundreds of short films from part time directors who like to make and edit short films in their spare time as a hobby, and students who would like a wider audience on their work, it is a prime example of how short films are consumed.

Another example is the short and quirky animated short films we see at the beginning of a Pixar feature film, like the birds on the wire- "For the Birds", and the lamp squashing the ball- "Luxo" these are all popular short films and are just something that make people laugh before the real film, but if you asked somebody about them they would recognise what you are saying and know what you're talking about, but not necessarily see it as a Short Film, yet it is.

The difficulties of telling the whole story in a few minutes...

It is difficult to tell a whole story in under 5 minutes, because you have to introduce the characters and make the audience engage with them in a short period of time, as well as telling the whole story and making it clear to the audience. In feature length films they have 2 hours to do all of these things, so trying to comprise all of these factors in a short period of time poses many difficulties.


The main difficulty is Characters engaging with the audience or "breaking fourth wall". Meaning breaking down the imaginary wall between the audience and the characters, the other 3 walls being their stage or onscreen set. Breaking the fourth wall is a metaphor for breaking down the boundaries between characters and the audience so they can fully engage and the audience can fully see into the characters life and understand what is happening not only in the characters life, but around them as well, therefore understanding a characters emotion by putting themselves in the their shoes; this is where we see the audience showing emotion to things that are sad, or laughing when they think something is funny. If you cannot engage with your audience then fundamentally they will lose interest and you will lose your audience, you have to draw them in and make them keep wanting to watch. Obviously this is hard to do when making a short film because you have a short time to do all of these things, you have to build it all into the film all the emotion that you want your audience to feel it is hard to pack humour and suspense into such a short period of time, therefore the audience would have to be fully drawn in and intrigued as to what is going to happen for then to fully engage in the piece itself.
Another problem of telling the whole story in a few minutes, is, funnily enough, telling a whole story in a few minutes. When I come to writing my script and filming, I will have to take into account how much dialogue I use and how long it will take to film each scene, as it is easy to get carried away. Last year when I made the first 2 minutes of "The Life of Emily Banks" we shot over 15 minutes of footage, which meant a lot of editing and deciding which bits we wanted to the most, and it was very difficult to cram pack everything we needed into 2 minutes. Also, there were some bits we needed at the beginning and ending of scenes, but we wanted to cut out the middle, which meant some really sharp scene transitions. So this year, I aim to be very careful with my timescales, to avoid going over my time limits, and dodgy editing.

Inspiration..

So far in my A2 project I have had some creative difficulties, and am struggling to come up with an idea for a short film that I really want to do.

I have watched lots of short films, but one that really caught my eye was called "It's all fun and games, until someone loses an eye". This film is a prime example of the kind of black humour I'd like to use in my short film. The first time that I watched it, it really made me jump, and laugh due to the nature of the innocence of the practical joke that he plays on her, and the seriousness of the consequences, and then it all comes back and shoots him in the foot (or stabs him in the eye!).

It's a very funny short film and portrays the same degree of irony and black humour I want to use in my own short so it has inspired me and given me a starting off point.

I really like the way they have used a quote at the beginning of the film which sews a seed in your mind and I felt like I was waiting for something to happen, yet it still made me jump out of my skin! This is what I would like to do in my short, I would like to show a dramatic, and amusing twist in the storyline, at the beginning to make the audience think it is going one way, when it is going completely another.

Another short film that I have watched that I really liked was "The Crusader" where a middle aged man is convinced that he is Batman, and is looking into sewing Warner Bros for giving him a bad name. 

"The Crusader" is a "Mocumentary".

A Mocumentary is a "Mock" documentary, where a documentary is really serious and documenting something is a serious way; a Mocumentary is doing the same thing, documenting something in a serious way, but something completely stupid, for example in "The Crusader" they are doing a documentary of a mans life, who thinks he is Batman, he is sitting there being completely serious; but the aim of it is to make people laugh, it's not a serious documentary its more comic, and designed as a comedy. It portrays very dry humour and some people wouldn't understand it at all and would just think it is silly. I found "The Crusader" really funny and I mainly liked the idea that everyone else thinks the man Lee is a complete prat, and takes the mick out of him, where he says he is just doing his duty as Batman. He is being interviewed by a serious woman who is asking him serious questions and he is replying with serious (yet absurd and funny) answers.

This also inspired me and I am weighing up my ideas and deciding whether to do a Mocumentary or a Short with a pun.

What is a short film?

A short film or a "short" is anything thats not long enough to be a feature film, they can be as short as 5 minutes long, or up to 40 minutes long, although are usually under 10 minutes long. The definition of a short film has changed over the years as when films first came out, they were all short; the best way I can think of to define a short film (mine in particular) is to compare them to a longer film where the story line is deliberately extended to make the film longer, whereas in a short film its concise, and straight to the point theres no climax building up to the main event, and no anticlimax.


Start > Main Event > Finish

My A2 project.

Last year I made the opening 2 minutes of "The Life of Emily Banks" which me and my partner for the project, Nicole Rance, came up with ourselves. This year I have decided to work individually to make a short film, which will be between 4 and 5 minutes long. My targets for this project are to come up with something more amusing than my idea last year, so I will be setting myself a challenge by exploring a whole new genre, as last year I chose to operate within the "Teen Drama" genre, which was a safe choice as being a teenager myself, I have a rough idea of what teens want to see. Doing comedy is more of a risky choice as not everybody has the same sense of humour, yet I hope my short film will be appealing to all ages. I want to use innocent comedy, so my film is funny in an obvious way not crude humour!!! I would also like to explore different areas of technology to broaden my knowledge; for example this year I am using Adobe Premier Pro to edit my Short film, aposed to Apple Imovie, which I used last year. Adobe Premier Pro is more complex editing software, which allows for more accuracy within the production, it means I can edit the fine details of my film whereas last year I had some trouble with Apple Imovie as it is quite basic editing software, although useful, I feel with a step up from AS to A2 Premier Pro will help me make my work much better. I will also be using Photoshop this year for my Poster and my Review, this will also make my blog more interesting, as I will have used a vast range of technology to break up from all the writing. I have started drafting ideas for my short film, and a synopsis is coming soon!