Researching Media Texts - 2

 Hi blog! Time for more research discussion!

Here is a film that we chose to analyze because it inspired the main technique that we are going to be utilizing. It is all going to be shot from the same angle in the same room from the same location. We thought that this idea would be able to tell a unique story in a way that you don't see very often. Essentially it is like the category at the All American Film Festival "Clausturphobic" where the whole short film must take place in one room but to an EXTREME where the camera does not move. We are going to make sure that we put everything into other aspects, because if we don't execute them in an effective way, it could just come across as lazy for not wanting to plan a variety of shots.

Here also is part of the coming of age genre, however the age group is slightly older, since it has some more intense themes than typical teenage conflicts. Despite this, we all decided that we needed to watch this film to better understand how we wanted to go about the technique that inspired us.

In Here, the whole film takes place in a family living room, but it goes all the way back to what that plot of land looked like during the big bang. This technique can be tricky, because if the camera moves slightly, it ruins the whole effect. Here used this technique beautifully, with every scene being essentially a perfect matchcut of the scene before. Here also inspired how to tell a story from a perspective of something other than a character. Usually, when there are main characters, the plot revolves around what is going on in their head, and we view conflicts and relationships the way that the character does, however in Here, although the main characters are the people who live in the house, we view situations from a direct third-person perspective and see it for what it is. We hope to reach this level of success in our own short film

Since we are on the topic of productions that gave us inspiration, but not necessarily the same target audience, we decided to also analyze the short film, "The Seed".  Although this is not a coming of age, and is more just an inspirational short film, we still wanted to include it because we want to have some uplifting aspects and plants are one of the best ways to do that when it comes to symbolism. 

We already decided that plants are going to play a major role in the plot of our short film, our current plan is to have it take place from the plant's point of view, witnessing the main character's life from the shelf. Like I mentioned, this short film is not the exact genre of coming of age, and the target audience is not likely to be teenagers as our short film will be. Renn, Vicky and I thought it was important to look for opportunities to research more than just the genre of coming of age but also for techniques, since we all have seen many coming of age films before, and finding inspiration for the technical aspects is where the challenge will lie for us.

Citation:

A.C. Matthews. (2018). The seed // Inspirational short film [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVPYIRF9RCQ 

IMDb.com. (2024). Here. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt18272208/

Sony Pictures Entertainment. (2024, June 26). Here – Official trailer (HD) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_id-SkGU2k