For my short film, the story idea that my group and I chose to use is called ‘Jeté’. The idea for ‘Jeté’ was created by our director and main actress Gemma Davey. Cinematography was then led by Sarah Freeman and Editor was Eilish Crowther. I then took on the role as producer. Our idea/product was selected after careful consideration in the group, we analysed which film would make more sense to go ahead and film considering budget and location while also picking a story with a flexible and interesting narrative.
As the producer, my role within the production of ‘Jete’ was a significant one. I organized time schedules of when our group would be filming (including booking locations), location scouted to find the right places to film, secured and took care of all technological equipment such as the camera and tripod.
After researching into articles and reviews into film magazines such as ‘Empire’ and ‘Total Film’, I created the double page review based on ‘Jeté’. I also oversaw all filming done while supervising continuity, script and storyboard. I gave advice with direction and cinematography while also making sure our cast and crew were safe in our varied locations and out of the way of the public. Due to a scheduling conflict with an actor, I also had to step in and act within our short film, I play Judge 1.
‘Jeté’ is a short film which belongs in the hybrid genre of Dance/Drama, we mainly followed the forms and conventions of a short film by following Todorov’s theory but it also challenges the theory. The narrative is left in a cliff-hanger (Obviously not following Todorov’s theory of having a conclusion) leaving the audience unknowing to whether the main character achieves her dream. We did challenge the conventions of a normal short film within our genre by doing something creative with our title’s which hasn’t been done before. We actually filmed our main actress writing the titles and making it look like she was filling in an application to a dance college. We connected the titles to the film by having the link of the dance college application form which then leads straight into the opening sequence. We examined different short films and feature length films during our research and were inspired by the film ‘Napoleon Dynamite’, the titles in ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ are written in different types of food. We then applied this theory to our short film and thought it was an interesting idea. We also followed forms and conventions of a Dance/Drama genre by including lots of dancing - so it’s fits within the genre perfectly. The drama aspect comes from the main protagonist ‘Faye’ trying to overcome the obstacles that are in the way of letting her achieve her dream.
Throughout ‘Jeté’, some social groups are represented. We have Faye and her friends representing the youth and Faye’s mother and the Judges representing authority and women. Through our research and survey’s we concluded that our target audience would be 12-30 year women so ‘Jeté’ would connect with the audience positively as the women would relate to Faye’s situation and be sympathetic.
From analysing and researching 15 short film products, we were inspired to create a short film as intense and enrapturing as the films we had researched. Many short film’s are not released like full feature length movies, but are released in short film festivals and online. YouTube is a great example of a website where you can distubute your work for free. Short film don’t rely on the budget of a big full-length film but rely more of the art of the shots and that’s what I feel we have created in ‘Jeté’.
In ‘Jeté’, although our narrative is solid, we did use other macro and micro elements to support and strengthen the theme’s and message’s of our product and also create meaning. Within framing, we used the rule of thirds, keeping Faye centred to show she is the main focal point of the product, yet we also keep her in big backgrounds showing her isolation due to nobody understanding her situation. Our camera shots are varied showing our diversity - we had to create a few montage scenes showing Faye dancing so our wide-range of shots can keep everything new and fresh, and not repetitive. The mise-en-scene was hugely important to us, we wanted everything to be subtle but enough so you could clearly understand the narrative. We considered every detail - our locations were proper dance and theatre studio’s, when Faye visit’s the physio, we used an actual nurses consultation room. The clothing Faye wears are all to do with dancing, and her room is covered with dance materials. The colours in our product are important for creating meaning - the colour of Faye’s clothes are dull and the colour of the studio when Faye auditions is black showing her sense of lost hope. Sound played a crucial part within ‘Jeté’, we took great inspiration from the music video/short film ‘Angel’ by the band Massive Attack. We edited to the ballet music to make the film more realistic and believable. Also, the lyric’s in the song Faye auditions matches her predicament.
From studying Media at AS, I do feel my skills and knowledge have progressed and it clearly shows in ‘Jeté’, my A2 short film. I learnt from AS, to be more fully prepared with all pre-production work and I researched a lot more into similar products and took careful notes. One of the most obvious changes was using a larger camera with a better microphone which created better picture and better sound. Another large skill and knowledge progression was the editing software. In AS, we used Window’s Movie Maker which was quite basic, but now we used Premiere Pro. I learnt how to razor clips and fit them how we specifically wanted them while also editing audio and cutting up voice-overs to fit the appropriate times
within our short film. We received no training on the software, so a difficulty we found was learning how to use Premiere Pro while trying to keep up to date on our production schedule.
Overall I think we created a brilliant final product that I‘m proud of, a product of high standard that can be viewed by any audience. I have learnt a great deal throughout AS and A2, the main aspect I will take away with me though is thoroughly researching and completely pre-production work efficiently.
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