Influences

The plot for our story is heavily influenced by the Final Destination films. In these feature films, the main character experiences 'visions' or 'premonitions' which show how his friends will die. He then has to act upon this information in order to protect his friends from death. In our short film, the male character appears to experiece similar premonitions. The difference with our short film is that, the deaths are a lot simpler, and therefore are more likely to happen in real life e.g. stepping out into the road and being hit by a car, as apposed to being stabbed and set on fire simultaneously, as seen in Final Destination.  We liked the idea of the character waking up and realising that his dream was not just an ordinary dream, but a vision. Our plot uses this idea but puts a twist on it. We decided to base it on a situation that our target audience is likely to encounter on a daily basis. for most people, their daily commute is so mundane and repetative that they could do it with their eyes closed. Our short film takes this idea, and uses it as a ploy to draw the audience's attention in. They can expect that something interesting is about to happen, but they get the enjoyment of trying to figure out what might happen. 
a recurring theme through our short film is the idea of parallels. Constantly the shots are switching between the lives of two different people, highlighting the ways in which something as simple as their journey to work can be so different. Although this was not directly influenced by any individual piece of media, it is a common trademark in action films to have a male character who leads a fast paced dangerous lifestlye, and a female who has nothing better to worry about than her hair and her routine life. In our short film, we are working on the stereotypes that one character is male and one is female, but this is simply through choice, as the idea could work with two male characters or two females just as well. Both characters would still have the contrasting lifestyles, it just means we would not have the gender stereotypes to play up to. 

Testing Our Idea

This is a short clip of us testing the idea of shooting from a first person perspective.  Doing this was helpful for us as we have realised that the concept of shooting in first person would work well for our idea, and we also learnt which techniques we would need to use in order to make this look professional and effective. In this test clip, we shot with a basic camera which was held in the right hand of the actor. This means that a lot of the footage is quite shaky, especially as the actor was walking whilst filming. For our final production, we have managed to arrange to use a high end Go-Pro camera, which is often used in the sports filming industry as it reduces shake and is able to withstand a fair amount of impact. This camera, aside from the better footage it produces, has a fish eye lens attachment, which creates a really good looking effect, making our film more interesting. 

Who Is The Audience for Short Films?

The target audience of short films is a rather small audience, made up of two main groups of people, those who work in the short film industry, and those who want to work in the short film industry. Obviously, when trying to get into an industry, it helps to be familiar with its conventions. So an aspiring film maker may spend a lot of time watching a wide variety of short films in order to pick up some creative techniques and ideas, and essentially learn what makes a good short film. 

Often, the target audience of a short film will vary depending on the content of the film itself, much like in the feature film industry. For example, a film about a victim of bullying in school is likely to be watched my children/young adults around the age of those in the film, often because they are able to relate to the story through their own personal experiences, and turn to these films in order to make themselves feel less alone and alienated.

I think that the reason that short films have such a small audience is mainly due to the fact that people just don't realise they're there. Recently, this has started to change. With the ever growing popularity of YouTube, and its ability to be a quick and easy way to share videos virally, more and more people are taking to making short films and posting them online. This new availability means that people are going to be able to discover short films more easily, and the target audience will expand, and will no longer be limited to those in the film industry.

Recently, Dreamworks have placed their foot in the door of the short film industry, creating a series of animated shorts that are shown in cinemas before the start of the feature film. This will hopefully create a massive boost to the short film genre, as it reaches out to a huge number of people, who clearly already enjoy some forms of media, and introduces them to this new creative aspect of films. 

The Target Audience of my A2 Coursework

For my A2 coursework, the target audience we are aiming for are young adults between the ages of 15-25. Based on the idea we have drafted so far, we feel like the content of our film would appeal to this age group the most. For example, we plan to start our short film with a scene featuring 2 people on their journeys to college, the boy's journey being fast paced and intense, around long country roads on a motorbike, and the girl's simple and relaxed.

We feel that our target audience are likely to experience something of this sort in their day to day life, as the age range specified can include a large proportion of students. This means they are able to relate to the film from the start, and will be able to think about the events happening in relation to their own journey, looking for similarities and differences. This idea could take inspiration from Reception Theory, in which audience is considered as each individual, who will take their own meanings and messages from media, making it relatable for themselves.

Having done some research into psychographics, we found several youth-orientated categories that could be applied to our target audience:

• Utopians- this type of person just wants the make the world a better place. I feel that they would be part of our audience as the male character's only aim in our short film is to get to the girl in order to protect her, and therefore make everything all right. this would appeal to the Utopian's kind nature.

• Trendies- This kind of person aims to look 'cool' at all times. I think they would be able to relate to the male character in our short film, as he does appear very cool as he speeds through town on his motorbike. They would see him as a bit of a rebel but not so much that they feel he should get into trouble for his actions. They may look at this character with admiration, and aspire to be as cool as he appears. Also, we rarely get to see the character's face (due to most camera angles being POV shots), so the perceived "coolness" of the character would not be based upon looks as is normally the way.

• Puritans- this category of person should be able to associate with the female character in our short film. Her life is shown to be lovely and simple. She sticks to all the rules and doesn't seem to get into any trouble. Puritans wish to feel virtuous, so this "goody two shoes" persona should fit right with them. Also, it is common for people of this kind to be bullied during school, and it may always seem as if they are down on their luck. This also applies to our female character so there is a lot for them to relate to within our short film.