Post 11: Script Influences

In class we have been watching numerous short films, and some of which have been of the French New Wave genre. One film which we watched and one which influenced our ideas for our own short film was The 400 Blows. This is a french film directed by Francois Truffaut. It is set in Paris and is part of the French New Wave movement. We particularly liked the ending scene. The boy is continuously running and comes to the beach and reaches the water where he realises he can run no further. The film then ends with a close up on the boy's face. We particularly liked this part of the film as it linked in with the ideas we had got for our own short film. The young boy in our film is very alone and isolated and feels trapped where he is in life and so when he reaches the hedge it shows he has reached his furthest point and can not reach any 

further. 
















Another element which has influenced us is lighting. Many of the short films we watched used natural lighting rather than artificial.We felt that this would work quite well in our short film as we are trying to portray loneliness and having dim and natural light will help us achieve this. If we used artificial lighting it may appear too bright for what we wanted to portray. Having natural lighting will help the audience read more into the film. If we used bright artificial lighting then the audience may feel a bit confused as to what is happening in the story as we would be contradicting the theme of loneliness.

This is a still from a Hollywood film using artificial lighting. We feel lighting like this would be too bright for our own film.
















We also discussed the camera position. This is very important when shooting anything, but from doing research and looking at different camera positions in different short films we have seen the effects of what lighting in the wrong place can do to the picture and also what different effects positions can help achieve. For example if we was shooting by a window we would have to position the camera carefully so that if any sunlight was reflecting through we would avoid casting shadows or hiding the character's face. This would also help the audience when watching the film, as they want to be able to clearly see what is going on in the scene and if they can't see the characters or other objects in the scene then they may miss out on a crucial part of the storyline, therefore leaving them confused.


 This picture shows the camera filming into the sunlight, creating shadows and making it not very clear what is in the room. This is not what we want for our film.





When looking at the editing we wanted for our short film we discussed things like  music. We wanted to create an atmosphere and have some shots in silence with atmosphere noise. We also created our own piece of piano music in which we wanted to use in our short film. We felt that by creating our own music would mean we would really be able to get the right tone and we would be able to play around with different notes to find the one that suits the film the most.We also wanted quite a slow editing pace between scenes. For example our scenes are much longer than you would usually expect to see, and this fits in with our influences from the French New Wave genre. We feel if our short film is edited together the way we hope and the music fits then it will help the audience to engage with Billy and understand and empathise with him.