Practise

I had no experience in making short films, whether it be from shooting different takes or editing, therefore our class split into groups to have a practise.

All we were given were a few lines of dialogue therefore from here we created a storyline. Originally, our group decided that a scenario that would fit the dialogue would be somebody being encouraged to apologise. However, this took a sharp turn when we decided to make this about bullying.

The dialogue then took the meaning of encouraging somebody to send a mean text message.

We also discussed which shots we would use. I said that it was important that we use subjective shots in order to make the audience relate to the person being bullied, allowing them to empathise with the character and understand how people feel when receiving nasty messages.

Seen as this was a short film, we needed the meaning to be clear immediately and few characters to allow us to get straight to the point.

The group all decided which shots we would take. One member was in charge of operating the camera and the rest of us acted in our short film. I played the person being bullied.

Despite this only being a short film made in a short time, shot and edited in under 2 hours, we thought about editing, cinematography, sound and mise-en-scene. For example, I played the person being bullied because I was wearing the darkest clothes, highlighting that I was sad and lonely. This was my idea.

Our opening shot is of daisies, which are very natural and pretty, emphasising that bullying is often disguised under things that appear to be fine.

We used continuity editing in this piece so that it was more realistic. The harsh situation needs to hit people hard in order to maintain the severity. We minimised the background noise as much as possible although seen as we shot outside I liked that there was some as this enhanced the realism. The editing of our shot-reverse-shot looked extremely good and I think that we used each take to its optimum strength.

Please see our short film below...