Completed Short Film

Lazy Days-Vimeo Settings HD from BDC on Vimeo.

Codes and conventions

With Lazy days completed I've reflected on the things i think need changing and the things i think work well. looking at short films in general I've come to the conclusion that short film itself is just an acted short narrative. with no specific codes and conventions i feel that Lazy Days fits perfectly to this as its clear to the audience that our protagonist is a lazy man and spends his day doing nothing but sitting on the couch. with no specific codes and conventions for short film i find it hard to specify what makes and what breaks Lazy days.
when talking about the specifics that lazy days has to offer the short film audience the only things i can see relevant are the fact that lazy days is roughly 4 minutes long which completely fits short film as it is under 90 Min's (which is feature length film) which classifies it as a short film. Lazy days has the quirky gimmick of having a strange moral message that most short films have such as "killing time at home" which has the moral gimmick of playing on the fact that friends are disposable through using the website "disposable friends.com" to buy friends, lazy days has the moral gimmick of having the tables turned on people watching television by having the television itself staring that the person and seemingly stalking him giving the audience freedom to find a moral message; some moral messages that have come up all fit such as "don't watch too much TV"- "society is too dependant on technology"-"life catches up with you"- i feel this is an incredibly strong part of lazy days- the freedom of allowing people to come up with their own moral, unlike some short films that have a guided moral that is pushed at the viewer.

What works and what doesn't

Lazy days has alto that works with it, this is mostly due to the fast paced edits and the beginning more specifically the bus stop scene because it just flows perfectly for the audiences, so smoothly that they wouldn't necessarily notice the television appearing if that was one of the first television appearances during the short. due to the narrative being so simple there is so much room for improvement with the aesthetics of the piece, the colour throughout the piece is too a little bit too dark for the audience as we've shown the piece to the year 12s and they found it hard to see what was going on in certain areas so colour correction is a definite area that needed more work to it.


Personal Opinion Of Lazy Days

I feel that Lazy days is a nice overall complete piece, i feel that the music fits well and conveys a lazy atmosphere, the exact atmosphere we wanted to create. the comic cowboy track gives the television scenarios the quirkiness they needed to add the humours effect. The track is still annoying but there weren't any other tracks that could have been used.

I feel that Lazy days was lacking, it needed another Television scenario to keep the mood, and the last laptop scenario needed more to it; there was too much of a build up to nothing, it would have been better if the television was next to the protagonist in bed.

The reaction to the television in the fridge was ; i feel, lacking, it needed to have more of a reaction perhaps exaggerated like the bus stop scenario...

overall i see the outcome of lazy days is allot better than i initially expected this is due to the fluid motion of the cuts and tracks and the conveyance of all lazy atmosphere crossed with quirkiness of the television stalking Laurent. due to the editing the story comes across short and sweet allowing the audience to appreciate the comic scenario that is lazy days.
i feel the main reason lazy days has succeeded is the fact that the idea is allot more solid compared to tramps which would have relied heavily on scripting whereas lazy days relies on sight and sound and is incredibly edit orientated.


Fitting Codes and Conventions

Lazy days fits the codes and conventions of short film very well, its short and sweet lasting approximately 3 minutes with a very defined storyline to it,

a man spends his time watching television all the time. after a day of indulging his television addiction to the fullest extent he wakes up to have the television stare and stalk him much like he did with his favourite program, after a day of being stalked he finds himself trying to cure boredom with the laptop which then follows him around creating a vicious circle involving technology following him around.


much like the short films we've studied in class lazy days fits in well as its a short story told in less than 10 minutes- like the mime love story we've watched in class lazy days has the quirky comedy to it that few short films adhere to ; like a Monty python sketch and a Mitchel and Webb sketch that could be classified as a short film.


Editing the short film

The editing process was short and sweet, much like our short film, i was present for everyday of the editing and contributed to it by adding and taking away parts that had been laid down, i also contributed by putting in a soundtrack that Louis and Bethan had chosen called "lazy days" and adding my own track called "comic cowboy" The piece had a very strange gimmick of having the television follow the protagonist and by using the comic cowboy track for each of the televisions appearances it gave the piece the added emphasis it needed to make the audience laugh (as tested by using members of the form seeing the piece with and without sound) much like the filming process a lot of my time was spent messing around with sound especially on one day where the levels were messing up and there were various things wrong with the television sound and the ring tone sound; saying this i did have a part editing the piece as a whole adding cross fades, fades to black and general transitions between shots like with the outdoor scene having a cigarette.

as I've already mentioned the process was short and I'd only come across complications when it came to sound, everything else was generally very straight forward and easy to mend.




Filming our Short Film

there were many complications to do with sorting out the filming, one being that our "tramps" idea had failed and the Saturday we were supposed to film completely collapsed due to an actor dropping out at the last minute; but with the new idea for "lazy days" in hand we picked up the filming pace and began to film on Monday the 1st of march which was the first date of our 3 day filming.

During the filming of our short film i was present for 2 out of the 3 days meaning that i wasn't there for the bus scenario and the throwing out of the television; by being present i mean that i was using the boom to pick up sound that would be needed for the final edit to make our piece better than what it would have been without the sound.


Filming was incredibly simple as the whole short film was based around peckham rye e.g Louis' house mainly the living room so there wasn't any problem for me to be present for the filming to contribute to the stylising and the sound proportions of the set dates we had given ourselves to film