Initial research into Short Films - Black or White - Matt Bishun

Film Title: Black or White

Found: Virgin Media Shorts

Date: 2013

Director: Leon Williams

The Film

Film Synopsis: 

Everyday we make decisions, but who will this lady pick, black or white?

Narrative

• The structure of this film is linear. We could apply Todorov's theory to this piece, including the 3 main stages only, which are Equilibrium, Disruption and Resolution. Todorov's theory was mainly about how linear narratives are planned and organised in a 5 stage sequence.
• For this film, however, I believe it would be more appropriate to cover the 3 main stages as they are all covered in equal depth.
  

Equilibrium - the 'set up' of the film, black or white?

Disruption - two men argue about who's better and who will be picked

Resolution - the white guy get picks then mocks the other guy

Audience

• The audience I would expect to watch this film would be males/females of 18-36 years old.
• This audience would be pleased in the way the men have argued about nothing and tried to act cooler than the other in order to get picked. The black guy describes himself as 'hot' and 'stronger' than the smaller white guy.
• With regards to a psychographic audience, I believe comedy film lovers would enjoy this film as well as other regular short film watchers.
• My source for this film was Virgin Media Shorts, a popular short film website in which I have found several enjoyable short films.

The Director

• Leon Williams, is a 23 year old scriptwriter who has a great passion for comedy film making.
• He is one of the less experienced director's from Virgin Media Shorts, but his raw talent and humor has shone through in this film.

Genre

• This film is clearly a genre due to the humorous language of the two men such as; innuendos.
• We can apply Altman's theory to this film, using semantic codes and syntactic codes to convey meaning.

Semantic codes in this film are:

1. Cups
2. Coffee and Tea pots
3. Kettle
4. Spoon

Syntactic codes in this film are:

1. Two male friends exchanging banter
2. Unusual setting (inside cup but looks like sauna)
3. Humorous language (innuendos)
4. Characters are of different build (almost man against boy)

Representation

• Both men are shown to be very masculine and this has been achieved through a variety of different shots.

• Stereotyping has been used by the director in a very clever manner here. The two men each look like they are in some form of sauna. However, this clever technique has fooled the audience and they are actually inside a mug.
• These men are being represented as traditional social groups, two men having banter at a sauna, which are mostly found at a gym/swimming pool.
• Colour has also been used by the director effectively to convey meaning. The film is in black and white and low key lighting has been used to tell us that they are within a mug and therefore it is very dark and dull.