Here i have watched some short films that i feel will benefit the making of my own film. I have specifically looked and studied the narrative, camera and editing techniques of the film as well as a complete overview.
Strangers
Strangers is not a romance but when i watched it i saw many similarities to our concept and deconstructed it to give us some good ideas. The story lines relate as we witness two strangers meeting on public transport. I looked at the camera angles and the shots of the train for inspiration. I was mainly interested in the first half of the film when the Jewish and Arabic man are sitting alone. I studied the camera shots and found that the sequence was almost entirely made up of close ups of the two protagonist's faces, this gives a good idea of their emotions and i think it works very well. The tension of this sequence is broken up with a exterior medium shot if the train passing, this gives emphasises on the location of the two men. The establishing shot of the train pulling into the station is very low angle, i liked the effect it gave and will take it into consideration for when filming my own similar shots.
Link to strangers
Close encounter
link to close encounter plot, cast, crew etc
I was recommended to watch this short film by my teacher after she had seen my pitch and synopsis. I watched it in school on video. The short film's plot has several similarities to ours and so i was interested in this film. One similarity to our film is the two main protagonists are the only two characters who appear during the film, I was looking to see how the film used camera and editing to not let the film be boring. As the two characters in this film are complete strangers I studied the camera angles that were used to get an idea of how they show chemistry between the two protagonists. I found that the first few shots of them together are close ups of their faces, clearly showing emotion. There was also a direct line line match between the man and woman. As a result of these camera and editing techniques I was left feeling very clear how the two characters felt about each other. When filming my own film I will take into great account these techniques. The first clear difference in my film is i do not plan on using any dialogue. Close Encounter not only has dialogue but voice overs of both characters telling us their thoughts. This is an aid in showing romance which i do not have. Instead i blocked out the voices and studied the music, the music could easily go unnoticed but it clearly sets out the mood and vibe of each scene. The music is all instrumental and starts off at a quite a fast pace but through out the movie the pace slows and it turns more romantic.
The last thing that i see as a similarity in our two films, would be they share the whole idea of 'the chance meeting' and in both films this happens through the demands of everyday life.
Daniel Powter - Bad Day
Line to Daniel Powter Bad Day
I was shown this music video in response to my synopsis, the storyline bears great resemblance to ours. I deconstructed it in order to define certain techniques used which will hopefully better our film. They have used a great editing technique how to represent the passing of time by repeating an action for a couple of seconds but slightly different every time. The split screens to show the two people lives in parallel has an effective result in showing you the characters bond in every day life which in our film is a strong theme. Obviously it being a music video it does not have any dialogue but even if it wasn't I don't think it would need it, as the characters actions represent their emotions very clearly. For example certain body language, the way the woman holds her head if she is facing the floor this might suggest her being sad. These are techniques we can use when directing.
I first looked at the poster of Bridget Jones's Diary, although my film is only a short film and Bridget Jones's Diary is a full length film, i still looked at it because we share the same target audience. There is a medium close up of the three main character with the women (Renee Zellweger) the main focus, it is clear she is the main character as her body is positioned slightly in front of the two men. She is looking into the camera and has a slight smile. The mise en scene shows a book presumably a diary coming from the title the book is red which is smartly chosen as red symbolises love, infatuation and strong emotions. The colour scheme carries on to the title with the word 'diary' in red along with her lipstick. The colour blue is also widely used for example her jumper, and both men's shirts. The rest of the title is also in blue. There faces are light warmly and yellow suggesting heat. These three colours are the three primary colour which might be cleverly symbolised from the three main characters, as a source for many things to come. The backdrop is made up of faint handwritten text which is made to look like a page from her diary. 
