BFI Trip

Looking at short films at the BFI i managed to find films sorter than the "micro-short" (90 seconds)
these films were called : the X-RAYS by George Albert Smith, he was a counter-part to George Melies who was one of the first people ever to ever experiment with fictional/ science fictional work when it came to film making.

The X-ray (1897) is a Minute long, with no sound (due to the date it was made) and a static camera shot of a couple appearing to have an argument, or the male trying to flirt with the female, a third character then enters the shot- appearing to hold a x-ray machine (boxes with x-ray written on them), the couple then appear to be skeletal in a jump and then revert back to normal, and that's the end of it, its simply got a story of a couple and a man coming and watching them, then the man leaves and then that's it the story ends, this completely changed my look on short films as not only can you evolve them past needing a huge length to tell a story you can keep them as simple as possible to show the audience whatever is necessary.


The Postal Delivery 1971 -John Beech 10 mins

This has to be the most surreal but realistic piece of short film i've seen, its simply about a man who is going to post a letter but his hand gets stuck, and through some-kind of miss-hap he becomes famous for drawing on the pavement, he then builds his house around him (this is shown solely through props around him) he then gets freed from the post box during a passionate kiss with a stranger, this then leads to the protagonist realising he didn't post the letter he was meaning to in the first place, consequently he runs back and gets stuck again,
the camera angles of this are mainly on the street corner within 90 degree view of everything around, with the camera being specifically stuck in place; this is particularly shown through the shots looking past the protagonist with his hand stuck in the post box.

Borderline:

Borderline by Alex Chandon is a surrealist view of london being turned upsede down and inside out on itself in a very experssionistic artistic way; this is a very good short film due to the fact that most of the mise-en-scene of this piece consists of camera and editing work to boost the surreality of what the audeince sees. There is no voice in the piece too, only a melodic tune to add to the fantasy that the piece shows, it was supposed to be in the style of artist Maurits Cornelis Escher; with his abstract renditions of the world around him.



(Note: All information on this blog comes from the BFI Database.)