MY SHORT FILM

CONSTRUCTION: BBFC CLASSIFICATION

All UK films are given an age rating by the BBFC.

The BBFC's focus is on helping children and families choose well by providing them with the guidance they need to help them choose what’s right for them and avoid what’s not.

The BBFC’s classification standards reflect people’s current views and expectations and their decisions give due weight to what people find acceptable for each age rating.

The BBFC has two main principles. These include:

• To protect children and vulnerable adults from potentially harmful or otherwise unsuitable content.

• To help children and families choose what’s right for them and avoid what’s not.

For our short film Down and Out, I found a template of a BBFC rating that was used in an actual film. After finding an appropriate template, I imported it into Photoshop to edit the title of the film and the details about rating etc. 

We decided as a group that our short should be rated a 15 due to 'threat and horror' and also 'infrequent violence'. 

PLANNING: CHARACTERS

In The Morphology of The Folk Tale, Vladimir Propp identified common themes and character types. Propp argued that stories are character driven and that plots develop from the decisions and actions of characters and how they function in a story. He claimed characters could be classified into certain roles that progress a story. Our protagonist undergoes a journey of discovery in our short film: his initial representation is a confident, self-contained and rather superficial man embarking on his early twenties with a comfortable lifestyle afforded by a secure place in society. However, unsettling experiences unexpectedly unnerve him as he encounters a whole world of poverty, insecurity and hopelessness. His appearance changes as he plunges into experiences that he cannot explain or handle.
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 The corner shop is a familiar feature of every urban high street. It a place that usually excites no alarm. However, in our film, it is the location where our protagonist experiences an initial uncomfortable and inexplicable experience.
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 The homeless man in our film acts almost as our antagonist, cursing our protagonist. However, the homeless man represents much more in our short. The homeless are a group usually disregarded by society and looked down upon, but they are still human. It shows our audience that it is important to always treat everyone well; you never know the consequences to your actions!
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 In order for our audience to grasp the genre of our short easily, we have included many visual and audio codes linked to horror films. The pictures below represent some of the aspects of our short: scary dolls, shadows, blood and the supernatural. In order to really make our film a good horror these are essential.
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PLANNING: CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

HOT SEATING

In order to develop our main character in our short film, we decided to hot-seat him. This therefore gives the audience more of an idea about his role in our short film and gives them extra information about their life and what will happen to them. To complete this I used Soundcloud which is a website which allows anyone and everyone to upload audio files to the internet. 

PLANNING: STORYBOARD

PLANNING: AUDIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE

PLANNING: AUDIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS