Final Evaluation

 Final Evaluation

My short film mood focuses around a main character who has trouble regulating their emotions on their own, so they have to use pills in order to help stabilise specific emotions. However, as the film progresses, the main character starts to slip as the effect of the pills become short-lived and cause the protagonist to slip back into negative emotions. The brief in which I have chosen to follow is a narrative twist. This requirement of the brief is met in the last seconds of my short film where the main character comes across another person who seems to be the same as them, and the scribbles across their face fades. My short film pulls influence from a variety of other short films I have studied such as: The Swimmer and The Grandmother in terms of sound, High Maintenance in terms of narrative structure, and other films outside of the specification to help inform my creative decisions.

mood loosely reflects Todorov's narrative structure much like other short films I have studied such as The Gunfighter, Wasp, and High Maintenance. My film begins with the protagonists’ own equilibrium. Once their emotions start malfunctioning, the disruption begins and this pushes the narrative. Instantly the character recognises this disruption, and tries to resolve this taking more pills than they had previously. Ultimately this attempt fails, and the disruption remains unresolved, but the plot twist ending, may suggest a new equilibrium within the characters life as they recognise they are not alone.

My short film plays into a linear narrative similar to that of the short film The Swimmer. Both my film and The swimmer follow the course of a set character through a journey and I felt this was an appropriate narrative structure because it allows spectators to follow along with the character easily, without the confusion of added flashbacks which may be able to be confused with the present time in the timeline. On top of this, I felt a linear narrative as it giver viewers to understand the characters current predicament and allow themselves to align with the character with more ease, rather than them also having to learning about how the character has previously acted.

Another short film which has inspired the narrative structure of mood, is High Maintenance. High Maintenance ends with an abrupt and quite unpredictable plot twist, which I mirrored in my narrative. The use of the plot twist really inspired me because it allows the spectators to form their own idea of what happens afterwards, as well as leaving an impact on th spectator. Furthermore, the narrative of my short film was also influenced by the short film Wasp which has a real impact on me. Wasp follows the journey of a single Mother who is struggling financially and emotionally, which ultimately effects her social life in which she seemingly no control over. The narrative in Wasp sets up many enigma codes that impact the spectator such as where the family are going in the first minutes of the film. The film opens up with the mother rushing her kids out the door in a hurry, but where are they going? I too wanted my spectators to respond to enigmas such as why do they need these pills? and why did they stop working?

Key element from numerous short films have ultimately influenced the way in which my short film has been filmed and edited. The main influence for my short film would be The Swimmer. Throughout the entirety of my short film as well as the swimmer, I include no dialogue or spoken words. By doing this, I keep the attention on the emotional turbulence that the main character is going through, it also emphasises how alone and isolated from anyone else around them they feel. Furthermore, another aspect of my short film that The swimmer inspired were the montages. Throughout The Swimmer we get series of quite eerie montages of the space around the centralised character, as well as montages of scenes containing the character himself. With the montages in my film, I decided to have a mix of clips containing the main character, the landscape around them, and even the pill bottle to remind the watcher of what caused the problem. During these montages I made sure to add any micro-elements which would contribute to enhancing the conflicted emotions of the main character which would them make the spectator more uncomfortable. For example, during the montage scenes, I would increase the volume of any sound in the clip to create an almost claustrophobic atmosphere for both the character and the spectator. Additionally, I added in a high pitched tone towards the ends of the montages as it amplifies uncomforted feelings. Another micro-element I focused on was the speed of editing during these montage sequences. I made sure that the editing was fast paced as this meant spectators didn’t have a chance to settle into the sudden change of events.  Furthermore, as well as The Swimmer, the short film The Grandmother also heavily influenced the use of sound in my film. As my short film is silent, the way in which the limited sound is edited is really important in terms of setting moods for the scene, so taking inspiration from both The Grandmother as well as The swimmer, I chose to distort and enhance certain sounds within my scenes. Much like The Swimmer, I muffled any existing diegetic, parallel sound within my film to enhance the idea that the main character feels trapped within themselves and so the sounds around them feel shut off. Moreover, I decided to add non-diegetic sounds such as heartbeats and high pitched ringing sounds to further put the watcher at unease, which helps relay the feelings and the emotions of the main character over to the spectators; this decision for the sound was influenced by the use of un-comforting sounds in The Grandmother. Continuing on, the element of colour was particularly effective in terms of relaying emotions onto the spectators. Before the main character takes any pills, the film is black and white. This represents the lack of any emotion whether it be positive or negative. However, after the main character takes the pills to be happy, the colour on screen changes. Things become for saturated and bright, as these elements connote to positive emotions and will put spectators in a happier mood along with the character. Then on the other hand, when pills are taken in order of the character to be sad, the colours on screen are a lot darker, less saturated and blue tinted. These elements have connotations to more negative and sadder emotions, and will likely put spectators in a lower mood.  

Lastly, during parts of mood, mise-en-scene is used to create a slight comedic effect. The idea of using comedy within my short film wis influenced by the short film The Gunfighter. Within my film, there is a scene in which the main character takes pills to become sad, so they can watch a sad film. However whilst they are watching the film, the pills effect starts to wear off, and the main character seems to be happy in some clips of the montage. The idea of someone being happy whilst watching a sad film can be seen as comical to spectators so this aspect of the film is able to create some comedic effect within the more heavy themes of the film.

My short film mood creates meaning to spectators through the use of animation as well as colour. The medium of animation created a barrier of sorts between the spectators and the main character. You dont see the main characters face until the very end as the animation has been edited on top which creates a ridge between spectators and the character. The spectator feels closed off from a part of this character, which restricts any means to align with this character. This concept was influenced by the short film THE MASK by Garahisarlıyın. In his film there is no dialogue, only emotions. In the beginning of his film, the main character picks out a ‘mask’ for his emotion for the day, however, like in my film, the emotion slips and leaves the character in conflict. This idea of having a mask, enhances the divide between the character and the spectators as we never get a sense for who the character is behind the mask.  

Furthermore, my use of colour created meaning throughout my film by using colours that connote to the emotions being felt by the main character. A film which influenced this decision was the feature film Joker by Todd Phillips. In the film Joker more dark, colder colours such as blue were used during sadder scenes, whilst warmer, more saturated colours were used in moments that were more happy. I took inspiration from this and decided to use more bluer tones when my main character is supposed to be feeling sad, then in contrast, increasing saturation, and adding a warmer, yellow tint to the scenes where they are supposed to be feeling happy.    

I feel this idea of using colour to represent emotions throughout the film worked really well. By making sure the surroundings matched with the main characters internal feelings, spectators are able to get a better understanding of the character, despite not being able to fully connect with them as the characters face is covered throughout which distances spectators and the character on screen. In relation to the characters emotions, another thing about my short film that I feel went well was the use of animation to cover the face of the main character. The main character is complex in terms of expression, and so I feel by using animated faces, it is able to simplify this complexity. Furthermore, the character feels alone and isolated within themselves, so by having these animated faces further distancing the character from spectators, it intensifies the idea of the main character feeling alone, and even invisible as people aren’t able to see the real them behind this mask of emotions. However one thing that I would improve would be having the main character interact with other people. I feel that if they would have interacted with other people, and spectators were able to see the reactions of those around them witnessing the emotional slip, spectators would generate more of a reaction and may have sympathised with the main character.