Watching shorts

Like I mentioned in my last post, I watched a few shorts from the All American Film Fest YouTube channel and examined what they do well and what I can learn from it for my project. 

Forever Young

The first film I wanna talk about is Forever Young, a coming-of-age drama centering on a senior in high school learning to love life again in the suburban Mid-West. Although it isn't a comedy, I still feel a need to talk about its cinematography and music. This movie is pure eye-candy. It looks amazing. It has this film overlay applied to it which immediately creates a warmer tone throughout. It also has a hazy look, most prominently with the lights during the night scenes where lights look blurred and out of focus. This would apply to my idea as it will be filmed primarily in nighttime downtown Fort Lauderdale and I can emulate a lot of the stuff that they do here.

In terms of music, one of the creators of Forever Young, Maxamillion Cope, scored the film himself, mainly consisting of guitars with soft rising synths backing the strings. This works extremely well for the coming-of-age approach that they took for the film. Knowing that the creators scored this film mainly just gave me some inspiration and drive to go through with making my own. Here's a link to their Spotify.  

Here's the short film on YouTube

Crazy Cult Camping Movie

This short is a comedy centering on 4 teens on a camping trip and then they get kidnapped by a crazy cult. Its literally in the title. The film achieves its comedy through not only dialogue, but editing and shots. The characters are 4 male teenagers, so a lot of their lines are stupid jokes like "50 babies or 50 babies with ray guns?!". They really just embrace the stupidity of the situation and the characters. Although dialogue and writing is important, delivery is EVEN MORE IMPORTANT. The delivery these kids have is fantastic, just the way that they say a normal line sounds funny, so casting is important. 

Editing is also another big, big factor. Cutting from jokes to reaction shots, letting a line simmer a little, MUSIC and STINGS. For my film, I'm not sure how true this will hold, but for Crazy Cult, stings are pretty important for whenever the cult character are around. The use of super wide lens on closeups is also something I would love to do. I think it creates uncomfortable intensity, but also just elevates the humor when used in the right moments, like in this short. Here is the link to the YouTube video.

Next post I'm gonna be looking at 2 more comedy short films and dissecting their choices and see what I can learn and apply to mine