5 key concepts of 4 short films by Josh Brown

The 4 short films I will be analyzing are:

·         Future.INC

·         Crush No.472

·         FINAL ARMAGEDDON DOT COM

·         Love Sick

FUTURE.INC

FUTURE.INC is a 2 minute 20 second short film that I found on Virgin Media Shorts. It is about a woman living alone in the present time. She works in cardiac science or a similarly related job. She sees a news story on a brand new futuristic dating website that puts you in touch with people from the future. In the end, the woman attempts to freeze herself for 300 years so she can be with the 24^th century man she met using the new website. However, the film leaves us in a cliff-hanger as it never reveals if her plan works. Directed by Martin Sterling.

Representation

·         This short film attracts a wide range of social groups. If there were to be specific groups targeted, it would have to be technology lovers. This is because the application used in the film on the woman’s tablet PC is full of futuristic technology.

·         The main character in the film is well presented. The audience is allowed collect parts of her identity to figure out what kind of person she is. The woman is young and single, living in an apartment and whose work seems to be long and dull according to her reaction at the start of the film. From the young and single parts, we can guess that maybe the woman is seeking a relationship. She seems eager to meet someone, especially when she hears about Future.Inc.

·         The representations are mostly positive because the woman is portrayed as loving and very selfless that she is trying to be with this man form the future by freezing herself. However it might represent her as a bit too eager and needy as a result of her drastic measures, unlike most woman in reality.

Looking at he image above, there are clear traditional semantic codes of femininity and romance seen here. The woman is in pajamas, eating ice cream in bed whilst talking to her future man. These codes can also be seen in other romantic movies during the equilibrium or development of the story.

Narrative

·         The chronology of the film is linear. There are some shots in the middle of the film which seem to skip to a moment and back again. For example the woman is seen to be exercising, then runs to answer a message. The shot then goes to a clip where she is paying her rent for the next 3 centuries and then finally back to her exercising again.

·         The plot has an unrecognizable theory. The story seems to be nearly completely linear. Todorov’s theory on plot can be lightly applied. The equilibrium is the girl is young, single living alone; the disruption could be the idea of dating 24^th century people. The recognition could be that she wishes to be with the man but she can’t. The attempted repair part seen is where the woman decides to freeze and then shock herself when she is in the 24^th century. However the last part is the re-equilibrium cannot be applied because we never see if her plan is successful and if it was, then it would not be the same as the beginning.

Gender

·        On Virgin Media Shorts, this short film is classed under Science-Fiction.

·         Rick Altman’s theory of semantic codes can be traced in this film. One example of a semantic code could be when the woman is tucked up in bed eating ice cream in her pyjamas. These collected characteristics can be gathered and used to represent to woman to the audience.

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Audience

·         On Virgin Media Shorts, this film is classed under Sci-Fi. This film could then expect future loving and/or social networking audiences to watch it.

·         The film is clever, quirky and fast paced. This keeps the audience’s attention high. I was pleased with the film mainly because it made me wonder if her plan could be possible. This means it pleases audiences if they think about it more.

Media Language

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Crush No.472

Crush No.472 is a 2 minute 20 second short film on Virgin Media Shorts. It consists of a man standing in a queue at a cafe when he spots a pretty woman at the front. He starts talking to himself in his mind. From her actions, he attempts to figure out what type of person she is. He over-exaggerates a lot of his thoughts which ads comedy to this film. I thought this short film would be great because he is collecting her identity to figure her out by the way she is being presented which is what I am doing in this work. Directed by Jess Scott Hunter.

Representation

·         This film could attract a more social audience and cafe users. The film is clearly identifiable as a comedy. This is a result of the actions, expressions and thoughts of the man in the queue.

·         When the woman approaches the counter, the man begins to panic because he thinks they will part before they even meet. The man continues to quickly process thoughts in his head until he realises that the woman has been at the till for a while. Then he starts to begin to seem angry and patronising. This is partly stereotypical as men look down on women and see them as incompetent and incapable, however we know this to be false.

·         The representation of the man could be a negative and misleading representation because it portrays him as weird, freaky and needy. He seems to care about getting his order more than meeting the girl.

·         The representation of the woman is positive as she seems like a legit, regular person. Some semantic codes concerning her dress and shoes show that she is a well presented higher working class woman.

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Narrative

·         The chronology of Crush No.472 is completely linear.

·         Todorov’s theory of narrative and event happenings can apply to this film. The equilibrium is the man standing in the café like he does regularly. The disruption is when he spots the new pretty woman standing ahead of him in the queue. The recognition is when he realizes that the woman is taking her time at the register and that she has in fact been to the café before because he sees her loyalty card. The attempt to get back to the equilibrium state is when he shouts at the woman and finally the re-equilibrium is when he resumes as normal standing in the queue.

Genre

·         The film is categorized under comedy on Virgin Media Shorts. This is because the film comes across as quirky to the audience.

·         David Buckingham’s theory of constantly changing genres can be applied the Crush No.472. There is no argument that the film was intended to be comedic, however there is a slight hint of romance. This is due to the man analysing the woman. “He well-moisturised ankles”, “So intoxicating is your beauty”, “With your infectious sense of calmness and serenity”.

 

·         These quotes firstly portray the man as romantic until things change for the worse. This film almost comes off as a rom-com as a result but not quite because the couple never fall in love. So it falls between comedy and rom-com.

Audience

·         I would expect more social people and café users to watch this movie because they can relate themselves to this situation although possibly not as quite extremely shown in this film.

·         Others would find this short film funny because it is quirky and enjoyable. The man’s thoughts entertain the audience because he comes up with extreme and unlikely thoughts.

·         Crush No.472 was Jess Scott Hunter’s first short film shown on the internet. They have made another short film about French parkour staring David Belle.

Media Language

·         One shot that I found particularly interesting is the point of view shot when the man is being slapped by the woman.

·         This shot gave a sense of action from the man’s view. It was a hint of action that the audience were enabled to experience that made the scene a little more interesting.

FINAL ARMAGEDDON DOT COM

• Final Armageddon Dot Com is a 2 minutes 30 second short film found on Virgin Media Shorts. WE are introduced to a father who appears to be saving his family's life from a great flood. He has built an arc, and persuades his family to come aboard and live their lives on the water. I thought this movie incorporated the use of sound effects very well due to the continuous thunder and rain soundtrack. I liked it because it was unusual but clever. Directed by Rob Spence.

Representation

• From the dialogue, the audience assumes that global warming has gotten too high and as a consequence, the earth is beginning to flood. One social group that may be interested in this film could be environmentalists and other such hobbies or jobs. This is due to the included themes of the environment.

• In the film, we see the main character Sam, trying to save his family from a soon arriving flood. Sam is seen to be a bit mental by us the audience. The way he has built an entire wooden arc seems a bit dramatic and his partner Christina describes hm as “Not well”. So from these few clues, we begin to think has partially lost his mind just because its heavily raining. However his representation all becomes clear at the end of the video when his prediction of a flood was true.

Narrative

• The chronological order of this short film appears to be linear because we start before the flood and end after the flood.

• Todorov's theory can't be applied to this short film. This is because at the beginning of the film we don't see an equilibrium or a re-equilibrium because we never see what their everyday lifestyle is like. It could be said that when they are on the arc floating on the water is a re-equilibrium. However, it's not what like the situation was like before the disruption (the storm).

Genre

• This film is classed under Action & Adventure on Virgin Media Shorts. I would class this film as an adventure film only because the family are doing something probably never done before and so they are adventuring into the unknown. I could not Identify any other clear genre's in this film.

Audience

• I was pleased with this short film because I found it clever an uncommon. I have never seen this type of short film before so it was nice to see something very different.

• I would expect enviromentalists and people who care about various aspects of the natural world to watch this filmThe fact that Sam is obessed with global warming and even went to the measures of crushing his family car could attract this audience.

Media Language

• A theory I found hard applying to this film is Rick Altman's theory. His ideas of semantic and syntactic codes couldn’t be found here. One big object is the arc, but the rest of the film doesn't relate to the story of Noah's arc, or anything else along the lines so semantic codes were difficult to find.

Love Sick

Love sick is a 4 minute 31 second short film that I found on YouTube. The film is all about a man looking for a relationship. He chases a number of women around a city until the moment comes where they have to separate as a result of a dispute. There is no dialogue in this film, only a voice over which we can identify as being the main character's. Directed and written by Kevin Lacy.

Representation

• Whilst watching this short film, I could identify two noticeable genres. The story of this film can be identified as a romance because the character is trying to find and fight for love. To accompany it, the plot and some events in the film seem comic. This should equal to a romcom (romantic comedy). On the other hand, there are qualities to the movie which makes it seem different.

• This movie breaks the stereotype because traditionally, it was females who would usually be chasing men. We know that in the more modern times this is untrue and females are more independent. But if we were to put this in a traditional perspective, the stereotype has been switched over because the man now seems like the needy dependant person.

• Social groups relevant to this film could be people who are looking for relationships, people already in relationships that could relate to this film as partially what they went through to get a partner.

Narrative

• From the film, we assume that the chronology is linear. There is a possibility that we start and end at different. We gather that it is all in one day because he is wearing the same clothes throughout the film and so is the boy introduced to us as “Justin Beiber”.

• Todorov's theory is again challenging to apply to this short film because it's difficult to identify what the equilibrium and disruption is. The equilibrium could be when he just gets rejected by a woman and is again on the lookout, or it could be when he is chasing a new woman. The disruption could also be either of these.

Genre

• This movie to me mainly seemed like a romance because the man is trying desperately to find his one true soul mate, despite him losing interest in a woman as soon as he find another. There are also conventions of a comedy too, for example the relation to Justin Bieber is funny because the name calling is unexpected. If this movie were to be a romance and a comedy, that would result in a romcom. However, there are qualities missing from this short film to make it a romcom. Such as the toned down amount of comedy and the contrapuntal music in the background.

Audience

• Love Sick is a very popular and successful short film that has over 490,000 views on YouTube. It has won the following awards:
• WINNER - Fringe Film Festival 2011 - Grand Jury Prize
  WINNER - Fear No Film 2011 - Utah Short Film of the Year
  WINNER - CityWeekly Artys 2011 - Reader's Choice Award
  WINNER - Salt Lake Comedy Festival 2012 - Best Actor - Josh Cameron

OFFICIAL SELECTION - Action on Film Festival 2011
OFFICIAL SELECTION - HollyShorts Film Festival 2011
OFFICIAL SELECTION - Who Likes Short Shorts Festival Spring 2011
OFFICIAL SELECTION - Film-Sharing Festival (Germany)
(Evidence taken from the video page on YouTube)

• In my opinion, I think the audience for Love Sick would attract a teenage onwards age group and a mixture of male and female views. I would also estimate the social class viewing this short film would be higher working class and lower middle class people. This would be due to the attitude and dialogue coming from the main character.

Media Language

·         In love sick, there are a few semantic codes that I spotted. Just after his second rejection, he goes to the park and sits on a bench. Audiences usually see this in a romance, when a couple break up, the chances are, one of the two will go sit on a park bench to think things over.

           

·         For this small clip of the man on the bench, they used a tracking shot simply going from left to right behind him. I thought this shot was interesting, especially the direction in which the decided to track. Going from left to right made it seem like a timeline. He was going along it and suddenly he ends up and stops there.