A2 Media Studies evaluation question.

2. For my main media product at A2 level, I have created
a short film with the help of my production group –
Lucy Clarke, Eman Shah and Hamza Hanif.
I believe that the short film I have created, ‘Lost in the
Eve’, mainly uses the forms and conventions of
short films that I discovered through research
before I began the process of making my own short
film. Although, it does challenge some as well.

4. A LIMITED NUMBER OF CHARACTERS
My short film only involves three characters: Richard, the ‘old’ man who finds a girl lost on the
moors; Eve, the girl who is lost on the moors; and David, who is Eve’s father. A limited
number of characters is a convention of short films which I found through researching and
deconstructing short films before I began to create my own. Short films generally have so few
characters because their narratives are limited due to their short run time. Every character
requires an introduction to establish who they are and their role in the narrative, and this
takes up some of the run-time. The less characters there are, the more time the director
saves in this area to use in other areas, such as in driving the narrative forward or creating
elements of suspense.
In ‘The Baby Monitor’, a short film I deconstructed earlier on in the year which is also a
psychological drama, there are only four characters – the baby, the husband/boyfriend, the
lady who we perceive to be the mother, and the strange lady who is seen with the baby
initially. The baby and the strange lady take on major roles, whereas the husband/boyfriend
and the ‘mother’ have far smaller ones. This is replicated somewhat in my short film – there
are two main characters (Eve and Richard) and one character who has a much smaller role
(David).
For me, it was important to save time when introducing characters because I intended for the
pace of my short film to be very slow in the beginning as the audience is introduced to the
unusual situation and the different characters, so that they have time to wrap their head
around it. The slow pace will also represent the confusion that Richard and David feel
because of Richard’s discovery of Eve, and it will act as a contrast to the fast pace of the final
scenes, where Richard discovers Eve’s grave. I have found the change in pace to be a
convention of psychological thrillers, which is the genre I believe our short film fits into.
Therefore, it was important for us to replicate this.

5. A SHORT RUN-TIME
The run time of our short film is around 13 minutes. This is in line with short film
conventions because although short films don’t have a definite definition in
terms of length, short film festivals tend to have a cut off point of 30 minutes
and most short films are under 30 minutes because of this reason. I tried to
keep our short film well under 30 minutes to use this convention, to fit the
brief we were given by our Media Studies teacher, but also because the
narrative we came up with as a group wouldn’t allow for a 30 minute run-time
without getting boring.
In terms of short films, my short film could be considered to be relatively long.
Most of the ones I looked at when researching short films initially were
between 5 and 10 minutes long, particularly if they were made my amateur
film makers, such as A level students like myself. I challenged this convention
and made my short film longer than 10 minutes because I wanted to allow
time for our narrative to develop slowly in order to create suspense.

6. A NARRATIVE FOLLOWING TODOROV’S
NARRATIVE STRUCTURE
My narrative follows Tzvetan Todorov’s narrative structure, which suggests that successful
narratives should have these stages:
• A state of equilibrium, where everything is as it should be, in a state of equal balance
between powers of any kind within the narrative.
• A disruption of the equilibrium caused by an event.
• A recognition that the disorder has occurred.
• An attempt to repair the damage of the disruption.
• A return or restoration of a new equilibrium.
The state of equilibrium in my film is when Richard is driving down the moorland road without
a care in the world, listening to loud music. When he sees Eve, the disruption has occurred.
Richard recognises the disorder by stopping and speaking to Eve, then he attempts to repair
the damage of the disruption which has shocked and frightened him slightly by taking Eve
home to see her father. A new equilibrium is present when Richard learns about Eve’s story
and finds his coat hanging over her grave.
This narrative structure is a convention of short films, as most follow it. Therefore, in this
respect, my short film uses conventions from similar products.

7. USE OF STEREOTYPING
Stereotyping is a technique used frequently in short films because it allows characters to be established more
quickly and understood more easily, which is essential in short films because the time-scale for characters to
be introduced is extremely short. For instance, if a short film maker wanted to create a character that is
intelligent and geeky, they would probably make the character have glasses and braces, as these are things
that geeks stereotypically wear and the audience would recognise and understand this immediately.
In my short film, I have used stereotyping for the reasons described above. This is another example of how I have
used short film conventions to create my final product.
I have chosen for the lead of my short film to be a young girl. This is because stereotypically, young girls are seen to
be the most vulnerable, and it is important for the storyline for the lead to be seen this way. However, this did
create some problems for me as I intended for the character who picks Eve up to be male, and I did not want
there to be any signs of a love interest between these characters and so when I was scripting, I made special
effort to make sure that anything that could be read as a sign of romance was removed. To do this, I made the
male character, Richard, come across as a father-figure who loves his wife dearly, and who is more interested
in the girl’s well-being than her happiness or appearance.
I wanted the character who picks Eve up from the moors to be male because stereotypically, a male is more likely to
be driving down a moorland road in the late evening than a female because men are generally more interested
in cars and are also seen to be more brave whereas females are seen to be scared of more things, including
the dark. Furthermore, they are not typically the primary care-givers for their children so they would be less
likely to be at home at this time with them.
When casting, I also made sure that Eve’s father had some resemblance to Eve, to make it clear to the audience
who he is as soon as he opens the door. However, in case this wasn’t clear I did include his relation to Eve in
the dialogue (Richard: “Oh, hello. You must be Eve’s father.”) The main resemblance between the two
characters is their pale skin, but also their hair colour. Eve has blonde hair and David has strawberry blond
hair.
I gave Eve blonde hair and pale skin to represent her being a ghostly figure, but also to give the audience the
impression that she is in a bad state before they find out what happened to her and that she is a ‘ghost’.

8. LIMITED BUDGET
Most short films have a small budget, as usually they are used as a gateway for
filmmakers to become more successful and source more funding to be able to
create a feature length film, if their short film is good enough This is no different for
our short film. We were limited to part of the budget the media department receives
from the school, which is only an insignificant fraction of the budgets of big,
successful Hollywood blockbusters meaning that we had access to limited
resources.
For instance, there is only one jib within the school media department which we had to
share between the two A2 media production groups, and also all of the year 11
GCSE students who were producing film trailers and although school has got a
number of decent film cameras, which are capable of recording cinema-quality
footage, they are still on the lower end of the spectrum and are nothing in
comparison to the quality of the cameras used in feature length films.
However, this didn’t affect the crafting of our short film. We were still able to use the
conventional planning processes such as scripting and storyboarding, which we
then sought feedback on to make sure that we were heading in the right direction
in terms of appealing to our target audience (which we established to be mixed
gender 19-25 year olds after handing out a questionnaire for market research.)

9. EDITING
The editing techniques I used are largely in line with conventions of film, but not specifically
short film. This is because I researched into editing before I began the process and found
many helpful videos explaining the most effective ways to edit films, but these videos
weren’t specific to short films and I learned how to use some editing techniques that I felt
would be really effective in my work, even though they weren’t designed for short films.
One of the best clips I found was about editing dialogue scenes and it was really useful
because my short film involves a lot of dialogue to move the plot forwards. The main
thing I remembered from the video was that it’s important to include reaction shots within
dialogue scenes, and it’s okay to have a reaction shot of the character who isn’t speaking
on screen whilst the other character is speaking, because sometimes it is more beneficial
for the audience to see the reaction to the words, rather than them being spoken. I
definitely took this on board when I was editing the dialogue scenes in our short film and
included reaction shots wherever I felt was appropriate, including when times when the
other character was still speaking.
My editing skills have developed a lot this year as I have progressed through the A2 course
because I have gone from editing a film trailer in year 11 to a whole short film in year 13
and there were many more tools and techniques I needed to know how to use in order to
do this. Especially in relation to my short film specifically, because I needed to know how
to do things such as colour grading and editing different shots from different angles
together smoothly to create a scene. I mainly learned how to do this through clips on
YouTube and the experience of other members in my porduction group.

11. TYPES OF SHOT
The types of shot used within my short film is one of the ways that it challenges conventions.
Generally, short films use a variety of shots to create an interesting and dynamic piece,
particularly in psychological thrillers and horrors, but I decided not to do this to the same
extent. Instead, I have used mainly medium shots, but also some close up and long shots to
mix things up and make my film more interesting.
I didn’t want to use a variety of too many shots because I felt that this would disrupt the
initially slow pace and unusual nature of my short and make my audience more confused.
Using mainly medium shots meant that the shots taken from different angles could flow nicely
into one another to maintain the slow pace, making it easy for the audience to see exactly
what is happening, so that they can pick up on the subtle representations I have included
(including the white of Eve’s dress representing her purity and ghostly form) to try and work
out what is going on.
However, I did include some close up shots, and some long shots otherwise my film would be
boring. I used close ups mainly to give my audience more detail – a closer look at what’s
going on to help them figure it out, such as when I used close ups of Eve’s facial expressions
in the van or Eve’s hand on the door handle. I used long shots mainly to establish setting and
to show the movement of the van, and through doing this, the passing of time.
Moreover, it would have been easier for me to create suspense by using extreme close ups
and a wider variety of shots, but I decided that I wanted to challenge myself and let the
narrative to speak for itself and achieve this effect in a different way. This should be
something new and refreshing for my audience who are likely to have seen many other
psychological thrillers because they probably enjoy this genre.

12. IN CONCLUSION
Overall, I am confident in saying that my short film mainly uses conventions of the
short film genre in order to make it successful. I made particular effort to stick
to the forms and conventions because they are well established and will help
my audience to realise immediately what I am trying to do, but more than this,
the conventions successful and therefore I didn’t feel any need to mess with
them.