English Language and Literature

Hundred

Film study

Resources
What is a short film?

Short films are motion pictures that aren’t long enough in running time to be considered a
feature film. They are generally 40 minutes or less and can even be 30 seconds long. To qualify
as a short film at film festivals, the running time should be less than 15 minutes.

Short films can be of any genre (e.g. horror, comedy) or method/mode of filmmaking (e.g.
documentary, animation). Making a short film is great practice to get hands-on experience in
filmmaking. Often, short films become feature films.

Social, cultural and political issues are popular themes of the genre. They have created their
niche in the film industry, which works similarly as feature films with mainstream and popular
short films or lesser-known short films that are works of art.

They are commonly released and premiered at film festivals and art theatres, which signify the
genres place in the world of art and movies. They are also treated as stepping-stones for young
directors and starting actors. Due to most short films having a low budget, the risks of failure
are significantly less than typical feature films and are the perfect avenue to showcase or
discover upcoming talent.

Short films are also showcased as bonus features for feature films. Sometimes they can be used
to resolve a minor conflict or shed light on an unresolved theme of the feature film or even give
the audience a glimpse of the aftermath of the conclusion of the original storyline.

The key differences between short and feature films:

No doubt, they are definitely still films, but they differ significantly from feature films. Besides
the short length, short films are also structurally and script-wise different, more indie so to
speak. The structure of short films has been now experimented with, but usually, it follows the
simplest structure of introduction, conflict and resolution.

As short films are short in length, long scripts are avoided. A short film screenplay just focuses
on the theme and concept. Presented scenes are explored way more in depth as compared to
feature films. However, on the flip side it is harder to introduce a lot of characters in short films
and develop them with the storyline as is the case with feature films.

How impactful can short films be?

The question that is raised then is, how can their short length deliver a powerful and lasting
effect on the audience? The answer to this very important question lies in the capability of the

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directors and particularly their research. The theme needs to be well thought out as that would
then lead to better storytelling.

Usually, a short film has one major issue that is explained or shown through a character. This
singular focus makes it easier to affect the audience, as they do not have to follow a
complicated story.

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Analysing film

One easy way to remember what to look for and comment on when analysing a film the
acronym - CAMELS.

C: Camera techniques

A: Acting

M: Mise-en-scene

E: Editing

L: Lighting

S: Sound

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Mise en scene

What Is Mise en Scène?

Mise en scène, pronounced meez-ahn-sen, is a term used to describe the setting of a scene in a
play or a film. It refers to everything placed on the stage or in front of the camera—including
people. In other words, mise en scène is a catch-all for everything that contributes to the visual
presentation and overall “look” of a production. When translated from French, it means
“placing on stage.”

10 Components of Mise en Scène in Film

1. Actors: Actors, their performances, and their performance styles are crucial parts of
mise en scène. When an actor is on screen, they’re typically the focal point, so their
presence carries a lot of weight for the overall look of the story.

2. Location: The location of the scene sets the mood and supports the action. For example,
in a scene in which a man proposes to his girlfriend, a domestic setting sets a completely
different tone than a public one.

3. Set design: Set design refers to everything the audience sees within a particular scene.
These details help build out the world of the location and add even more context to the
story. If it’s a dorm room, are there books and notebooks on the desk to indicate
studying? Or are there pizza boxes and red cups to indicate a party?

4. Lighting: Lighting is often the tool that conveys mood most clearly. High-key lighting,
often used in musicals and romantic comedies, relies on hard light to minimize shadows.
Low-key lighting, often used in horror movies, features a high-contrast lighting pattern to
both brighten and darken parts of the frame.

5. Shot blocking and camera placement: Blocking is working with performers to figure out
their body positions, gestures, and movements on stage. In cinema, blocking also
involves working out the placement and movements of the camera, and can impact the
lighting, set design, and more. Both shot blocking and camera placement are effective
tools that convey things like characters’ status and relationships to the audience.

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6. Composition: Composition is the deliberate selection of frames and camera angles that
make up a shot. Manipulating composition can accentuate the emotional themes of the
story and communicate a sense (or lack) of meaning to the audience.

7. Depth of space: The depth of space is the distance between people, props, and scenery,
both in relation to one another and the camera. Much like shot blocking, it can tell the
audience a lot about the tone of the scene and the status of the characters. Is the space
shallow or deep? Does this accurately capture the truth of the narrative?

8. Film stock: The film stock refers to the appearance of the movie on the screen. Is it in
black and white, or color? Is the film fine-grain, or grainy? Each tells a different story.

9. Costumes: Costumes are the clothes actors wear and how they’re tailored to fit them.
For costumes to be effective, a costume designer must know which colors look right on a
character, and then reconcile this with the colors suited to the actor playing the part and
the color palette of the production design.

10. Hair and makeup: Hair and makeup are the physical touches that help actors transform
into their characters, such as prosthetics, blood, or aging techniques. Like costumes, hair
and makeup are fundamental ingredients in the story being told.

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Film terms

A glossary of useful terms can be found here and here

Camera Motion: how the camera moves in relation to the characters and the action

Center Framing: putting your main subjects right in the middle to establish a feeling of stability
or neutrality

Close Up Shots: camera shot that is very close to punctuate an emotional moment or story
point

Dolly: dynamic shot where the camera moves parallel to the ground, as if moving on tracks

Down Shot: shot by placing your camera above the subject and pointing downward

Dutch Angle: shot by tilting the camera to get a diagonal view of the scene

Dynamic Shots: shots taken with a moving camera

Extreme Close Up Shots: shot framed very tightly around the subject to feel intense emotion

Extreme Wide Shots: used to show how big a world is, create a sense of scale or make details
difficult to see

Framing: the part of the scene you see through the camera’s lens and from what perspective

Medium Shots: camera shot that is personal and close enough to establish emotion and
conversation

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Mise-en-scène. a French term for "staging," or "putting into the scene or shot". In film theory, it
refers to all the elements placed by the director before the camera and within a frame in the
film

Pan: dynamic shot where the camera rotates either horizontally or vertically to reveal addition
information

Rule of Thirds: framing technique used by dividing frame into equal thirds and placing the
subject at one of the four intersection points

Scene: the part of the story that takes place at a particular time and location where our
character learns something new to carry them forward in the story

Shots: a visual representation of a character’s action in time

Staging: the positions of the characters in the scene and where the action occurs

Static Shots: shots taken using a fixed position and direction throughout the entire shot

Tracking Shot: dynamic shot where the camera follows a particular subject as it moves within
the environment

Up Shot: shot by placing your camera down low and pointing it upward

Wide Shots: camera shot staged by placing the camera far away from your characters to give a
broad perspective and understanding of a new location; also called “establishing shots”

Zoom: dynamic shot where you push into or pull back from the action within a frame

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Camera Angles

Resources for camera angles can also be found here

Camera Angles

Camera angles and movements combine to create a sequence of images, just as words, word
order and punctuation combine to make the meaning of a sentence. You need a straightforward
set of key terms to describe them.

Describing Shots

When describing camera angles, or creating them yourself, you have to think about three
important factors

— The FRAMING or the LENGTH of shot

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When describing different cinematic shots, different terms are used to indicate the amount of
subject matter contained within a frame, how far away the camera is from the subject, and the
perspective of the viewer. Each different shot has a different purpose and effect. A change
between two different shots is called a CUT.

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Framing or Shot Length

1 . Extreme long shot

This can be taken from as much as a quarter of a mile away, and is generally used as a
scene-setting, establishing shot. It normally shows an EXTERIOR, eg the outside of a building, or
a landscape, and is often used to show scenes of thrilling action eg in a war film or disaster
movie. There will be very little detail visible in the shot, it's meant to give a general impression
rather than specific information.

2. Long Shot

This is the most difficult to categorise precisely, but is generally one which shows the image as
approximately "life" size ie corresponding to the real distance between the audience and the
screen in a cinema (the figure of a man would appear as six feet tall). This category includes the
FULL SHOT showing the entire human body, with the head near the top of the frame and the
feet near the bottom. While the focus is on characters, plenty of background detail still
emerges: we can tell the coffins on the right are in a Western-style setting, for instance.

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3. Medium Shot

Contains a figure from the knees/waist up and is normally used for dialogue scenes, or to show
some detail of action. Variations on this include the TWO SHOT (containing two figures from the
waist up) and the THREE SHOT (contains 3 figures...). NB. Any more than three figures and the
shot tends to become a long shot. Background detail is minimal, probably because location has
been established earlier in the scene - the audience already know where they are and now want
to focus on dialogue and character interation. Another variation in this category is the
OVER-THE-SHOULDER-SHOT, which positions the camera behind one figure, revealing the other
figure, and part of the first figure's back, head and shoulder.

4. Close-Up

This shows very little background, and concentrates on either a face, or a specific detail of mise
en scène. Everything else is just a blur in the background. This shot magnifies the object (think
of how big it looks on a cinema screen) and shows the importance of things, be it words written
on paper, or the expression on someone's face. The close-up takes us into the mind of a
character. In reality, we only let people that we really trust get THAT close to our face - mothers,
children and lovers, usually - so a close up of a face is a very intimate shot. A film-maker may
use this to make us feel extra comfortable or extremely uncomfortable about a character, and
usually uses a zoom lens in order to get the required framing.

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5. Extreme Close-Up

As its name suggests, an extreme version of the close up, generally magnifying beyond what the
human eye would experience in reality. An extreme close-up of a face, for instance, would show
only the mouth or eyes, with no background detail whatsoever. This is a very artificial shot, and
can be used for dramatic effect. The tight focus required means that extra care must be taken
when setting up and lighting the shot - the slightest camera shake or error in focal length is very
noticeable.

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Camera Angles

The relationship between the camera and the object being photographed (ie the ANGLE) gives
emotional information to an audience, and guides their judgment about the character or object
in shot. The more extreme the angle (ie the further away it is from eye left), the more symbolic
and heavily-loaded the shot.

1. The Bird's-Eye view

This shows a scene from directly overhead, a very unnatural and strange angle. Familiar objects
viewed from this angle might seem totally unrecognisable at first (umbrellas in a crowd,
dancers' legs). This shot does, however, put the audience in a god-like position, looking down on
the action. People can be made to look insignificant, ant-like, part of a wider scheme of things.
Hitchcock (and his admirers, like Brian de Palma) is fond of this style of shot.

2. High Angle

Not so extreme as a bird's eye view. The camera is elevated above the action using a crane to
give a general overview. High angles make the object photographed seem smaller, and less
significant (or scary). The object or character often gets swallowed up by their setting - they
become part of a wider picture.

3. Eye Level

A fairly neutral shot; the camera is positioned as though it is a human actually observing a
scene, so that eg actors' heads are on a level with the focus. The camera will be placed
approximately five to six feet from the ground.

4. Low Angle

These increase height (useful for short actors like Tom Cruise or James McAvoy) and give a
sense of speeded motion. Low angles help give a sense of confusion to a viewer, of
powerlessness within the action of a scene. The background of a low angle shot will tend to be
just sky or ceiling, the lack of detail about the setting adding to the disorientation of the viewer.
The added height of the object may make it inspire fear and insecurity in the viewer, who is
psychologically dominated by the figure on the screen.

5. Oblique/Canted Angle

Sometimes the camera is tilted (ie is not placed horizontal to floor level), to suggest imbalance,
transition and instability (very popular in horror movies). This technique is used to suggest
POINT-OF-View shots (ie when the camera becomes the 'eyes' of one particular character,seeing
what they see — a hand held camera is often used for this.
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Camera Movement

A director may choose to move action along by telling the story as a series of cuts, going from
one shot to another, or they may decide to move the camera with the action. Moving the
camera often takes a great deal of time, and makes the action seem slower, as it takes several
second for a moving camera shot to be effective, when the same information may be placed on
screen in a series of fast cuts. Not only must the style of movement be chosen, but the method
of actually moving the camera must be selected too. There are seven basic methods:

1. Pans

A movement which scans a scene horizontally. The camera is placed on a tripod, which operates
as a stationary axis point as the camera is turned, often to follow a moving object which is kept
in the middle of the frame.

2. Tilts

A movement which scans a scene vertically, otherwise similar to a pan.

3. Dolly Shots

Sometimes called TRUCKING or TRACKING shots. The camera is placed on a moving vehicle and
moves alongside the action, generally following a moving figure or object. Complicated dolly
shots will involve a track being laid on set for the camera to follow, hence the name. The camera
might be mounted on a car, a plane, or even a shopping trolley (good method for independent
film-makers looking to save a few dollars). A dolly shot may be a good way of portraying
movement, the journey of a character for instance, or for moving from a long shot to a close-up,
gradually focusing the audience on a particular object or character.

4. Hand-held shots

The hand-held movie camera first saw widespread use during World War II, when news
reporters took their windup Arriflexes and Eyemos into the heat of battle, producing some of
the most arresting footage of the twentieth century. After the war, it took a while for
commercially produced movies to catch up, and documentary makers led the way, demanding
the production of smaller, lighter cameras that could be moved in and out of a scene with
speed, producing a "fly-on-the-wall" effect.This aesthetic took a while to catch on with
mainstream Hollywood, as it gives a jerky, ragged effect, totally at odds with the organised
smoothness of a dolly shot. The Steadicam (a heavy contraption which is attached a camera to
an operator by a harness. The camera is stabilized so it moves independently) was debuted in
Marathon Man (1976), bringing a new smoothness to hand held camera movement and has
been used to great effect in movies and TV shows ever since. Hand held cameras denote a
certain kind of gritty realism, and they can make the audience feel as though they are part of a
scene, rather than viewing it from a detached, frozen position.
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5. Crane Shots

Basically, dolly-shots-in-the-air. A crane (or jib), is a large, heavy piece of equipment, but is a
useful way of moving a camera - it can move up, down, left, right, swooping in on action or
moving diagonally out of it. The camera operator and camera are counter-balanced by a heavy
weight, and trust their safety to a skilled crane/jib operator.

6. Zoom Lenses

A zoom lens contains a mechanism that changes the magnification of an image. On a still
camera, this means that the photographer can get a 'close up' shot while still being some
distance from the subject. A video zoom lens can change the position of the audience, either
very quickly (a smash zoom) or slowly, without moving the camera an inch, thus saving a lot of
time and trouble. The drawbacks to zoom use include the fact that while a dolly shot involves a
steady movement similar to the focusing change in the human eye, the zoom lens tends to be
jerky (unless used very slowly) and to distort an image, making objects appear closer together
than they really are. Zoom lenses are also drastically over-used by many directors (including
those holding palmcorders), who try to give the impression of movement and excitement in a
scene where it does not exist. Use with caution - and a tripod!

7. The Aerial Shot

An exciting variation of a crane shot, usually taken from a helicopter. This is often used at the
beginning of a film, in order to establish setting and movement. A helicopter is like a particularly
flexible sort of crane - it can go anywhere, keep up with anything, move in and out of a scene,
and convey real drama and exhilaration — so long as you don't need to get too close to your
actors or use location sound with the shots.

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Acting

Nearly everything an actor does is part of a scripted performance which has been directed
down to the smallest detail.

When analysing a film, pay attention to small details of an actor’s performance including:

- Facial expressions: These help the audience understand the character’s emotions
and personality.

- Body language: Body language can communicate a lot about a character to the
audience. A character who routinely bows her head, for example, may lack
self-confidence.

- Tone of voice/accent: How a character speaks often reveals important information, such
as their personality or socioeconomic background.

When analysing acting, ask yourself questions like:

“What effect does this facial expression have on my understanding of the character?”

or

“What does this character’s accent tell me about their background/life experiences?”

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Editing

When films are edited, filmmakers think carefully about how the sequences of shots, pace of
editing, and use of editing techniques contribute to the narrative.

When analysing a film, look at editing techniques such as:

- Fast motion: Here the rate the story is told is sped up. A good example of this is
montages, where often many months of in-film time are compressed into a few minutes.

- Slow motion: This is where time is slowed down. This often gives the audience time to
absorb a dramatic event or dramatizes a particular scene.

- Fade in/out, dissolve, wipe

- Cuts, including jump cuts (where the camera remains stationary while the subject is in
motion) and cross cutting (where multiple events occur at the same time and the film
switches back and forth between them)

Consider how these techniques communicate messages to the audience about characters or the
plot.

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Lighting

Although lighting in a film often appears natural, filmmakers go to great lengths to achieve
particular lighting effects to create mood and atmosphere in a scene.

Some common terms to refer to film lighting include:

- Soft: Lighting that is soft and diffused, not harsh.

- Hard: Lighting that creates harsh, obvious shadows.

- High: A scene is well lit with minimal shadow

- Low: Lighting is poor, lots of shadows are cast

- Warm: Lighting with a warm yellow or orange hue.

- Cool: Lighting with cool blue or green hues.

When analysing lighting, ask questions like:

“What type of light is used?”

“What does the lighting tell the audience about the character?” – a character who is always cast
in shadows, for example, may have sinister motives.

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Sound

Sound – diegetic and non-diegetic

Diegetic sound is also known as ‘environmental’ sound; it refers to sound that occurs naturally
within the scene. Sound that has been added post-production (such as music, sound effects or
voice-overs) is referred to as non-diegetic.

Sometimes the absence of non-diegetic sound can be as effective as its inclusion. In Rear
Window, for example, in the scene where Thorwald makes his move, we hear lots of diegetic
sound (car horns, the telephone ringing, traffic noise) and Hitchcock lets the tension build by
not adding anything to that.
tthis create tension in the narrative or provide insight into characters or relationships?

Music is always a great element to weave into your response. Look at where refrains of central
pieces of music are used at particular points of the narrative, and how they’re used. Are they
slower, to indicate a melancholic interpretation of the film’s action? Or upbeat, to indicate that
a character has achieved what they were after? In Made in Dagenham, for example, the lyrics of
the song accompanying the final scene, ‘You Can Get It If You Really Want’, summarise the
women’s determination and success in their fight for equal pay, just as its buoyant tone reflects
their feelings of triumph and optimism.

In a film text, look at the playlist, the lyrics that are linked to the text (or specific parts of it) and
where a refrain of a key piece of music is used to create a mood or emotional state.

If a piece of music begins as diegetic sound in one scene and then becomes part of the
soundtrack accompanying the next scene, think about why this sound bridge has been used to
connect two ideas or sequences together.

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Film links

Advertisement: What will they say about you

TV Programme: Old People's Home For 4 Year olds

Animation: Coin Operated

Short Film - No Dialogue: The Black Hole

Extreme Poverty

Cultural Context: Hong Kong Strong

Social Context: Dating Do's and Dont's - 1948

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