Short Film: Comparative Analysis

normally varies from 5 to 20 minutes. It gives the director a chance to create a slice of life to be presented to the audience. The conventions of a short film is a story told in a short amount of time. It normally has a shock factor to it.

This is explained through Alfred Hitchcock’s expression of the difference between shock or surprise and suspense, he says that for example if him and another person were having a conversation and there was a bomb under the table and neither the audience or the characters (him and the other person) “and then all of a sudden “Boom!” There is an explosion the audience is surprised”. “Now, let us take a suspense situation. The bomb is underneath the table and the public know it, probably because they have seen the anarchist place it there. The public is aware that the bomb is going to explode at one o’clock and there is a clock in the décor.” He continues to say that the public will react by wanting to shout or shouting at the characters about the bomb. He goes on to say “In the first case we have given the public fifteen seconds of surprise”, “In the second we have provided fifteen minutes of suspense.”

The reason that short films are popular to create is because it gives small director a chance to express their name and so that they are able to be funded so they can create feature films in the future that will be successful.

Mise en scene is used effectively to help create the environment that the director has intended as in the film ‘Gasman’ it has a 1998 feel to it, this is presented to us imminently, as the audience is welcomed to a woman cleaning shoes, this opening scene tells us a lot already because people in the 21^st century don’t clean shoes in this way, the camera then focuses on the background where we see a child running over the carpet which is typical of the 1990’s era these things alone help us depict the era of the film, this is then backed up when we the film cuts to a shot of a suit hanging up, in the background of the shot we see the wallpaper which correlating with the carpet we establish this 1990’s feel.

The images that are used to create regional identity within the film by Lynne Ramsay is the use of the iconic buildings that are related to Glasgow, this is shown in the pictures below. The way it is presented is that the audience’s attention goes from the dad and the daughter and focusing on what they are doing, it then cuts to a scene of just the girl in front of the buildings, this allows the audience to see how the girl is feeling due to her facial expression and then to the background, the image on the right gives quite an eerie feel to the image it’s as if she is on her own outside, due to the openness of the image and the editing of the darkened sides, it creates a sense of horror, which could relate to foreshadow the shock that is presented at the end.

For Andrea Arnolds film she uses mise en scene to create. An era for the film can be depict from the costumes that each character is wearing. For example Zoe is wearing a dress which wouldn’t be considered as nice but old and not very pleasant. The image below shows the mother and children and their outfits, as the image shows it isn’t a very nice dress which makes us believe that she doesn’t have a lot of money, maybe due to her being unemployed or having a low skilled job and most of the money goes to the children. The children seem like their clothes are better than the mother’s clothes, the baby that Zoe is holding is hardly wearing any clothes.

The UK is represented negatively in the film wasp, this is because it shows the family as an aggressive family as shown in the image below. This is because they all turn around and swear at the other family as if they have done it before, this connotes that the children’s upbringing wasn’t that of what we would consider normal, as children at such a young age shouldn’t be acting in this manner and it is also encouraged by the mother. It isn’t a representation of all of the UK and its families however it does present the families of the lower class and their behaviour however I believe it is exaggerated.

Northern Ireland is represented as a more joyful environment when comparing it to Wasp and its representation of the UK. With the very family orientated feeling that it give the audience, it gives the impression that the family in Gasman is a lot happier and well off then the family in Wasp. The representation of the family in Gasman is more accurately presented then the family in Wasp, this is because it shows that they appear well off but aren’t really. The children are positively presented at the beginning of the film, as the girl is running around the house happily, the only time that she is presented negatively is when she fights with the girl, however, we expected this