New British Shorts

When we went to the BFI film festival we watched a series of short films all made by different directors and producers and all following a different narrative and mostly using a different genre. My favourite film was Alicia Macdonld’s Romantic comedy ‘Otherwise Engaged’ because it looked at how social media changes our lives and affects how we react to things. I felt I could relate because being a teenager in the 21^st century I have witnessed similar activities to what happened in the film. I felt the film was made better because it was a comedy and it made me realise how unusual these actions are especially straight after an engagement. I also thoroughly enjoyed the first film that was shown to us which was Caroline Bartleet’s Drama ‘Operator’. I liked this film because it was incredibly tense and really captured my attention, it was also based around a phone call Bartleet had heard which made it more intriguing because it was partially based on a true story.

All the film makers took a different approach to making their films so it was interesting to hear how they made them and the difficulties they had whilst creating them. I was quite surprised about their budgets with none being particularly high and this inspired me to think that I can also create a good film on a low budget. I really enjoyed some elements from the film such as in ‘Otherwise Engaged’ one of the characters ‘Megan’ had her music playing and the music quietened whenever the camera was facing away from her which I felt was really effective. These shorts films also helped me to think about a range of ideas for my short film I will be making for the film coursework. The shots they used made me further think about how the shots are used to show different things.