In my short film, how fast the evening passes, I aimed to capture the conflicting emotions a person can feel on the concept of change. This includes the understanding that change must occur for life to continue, and the uncontrollable feeling of loss that arises when knowing that the things you hold dear will never be the same again.
The concept of my film was created by my life currently; I’m about to go to college and everything I know will irrevocably change in just a few months. Grappling with this knowledge has been a challenge for me and made me reminiscent of my past and how I deal with change. Since my short film concept stemmed from a feeling, I began by researching experimental short films. This genre does not have a set guideline for what an experimental film must look like and gives ample creative freedom for me to use a feeling as the main focus of my product. Some films I researched include Forever, Suburbia, and Weltschmerz. Through my research, I saw how experimental films don’t follow a traditional storyline which helped drive my creative process. I also noted how the films never seemed to force one message on the viewer, but rather let the audience determine their own interpretation of the film’s message.
These films helped me build my sequence of events. The alternative narrative structure convention was one I decided to work closely with since it felt more natural to express an emotion through vague moments rather than a chronological sequence of actions. In choosing this narrative structure, I could delve into the varying stances on change through music and setting rather than plot and dialogue. I knew I wanted to capture the difference between the party with friends and the disordered, lonely party, which worked to convey the positive and negative emotions garnered from one experience. In suddenly cutting to between the two parties, it conforms to the experimental genre’s unique presentation of the storyline and depicts the simultaneous, contrasting feelings one can entertain.
Since my film was inspired by an emotion, I wasn’t creatively driven to include any scenes with dialogue. As such, I chose to highlight the setting, music, and emotions instead. This meant that for the scenes where I wanted the main character to be surrounded by friends, I knew my actors needed to be skilled performers and friends with each other so that their interactions would be realistic rather than scripted. As a result, the people who I could cast in my film were limited since my focus wasn’t on representation, but rather on the realistic dynamic of a close friend group. If I had more time to be selective about the people I had casted, I could have ensured a more diverse cast. However, my choice of all feminine presenting actors not only appealed to my target audience and added to the realism of the story through their natural relationships.
My primary goal was to depict my own understanding of change in a way that I would find visually interesting. Knowing this helped me to define my target audience. My target audience is defined as females, ages 14-26, who latch onto the past and/or have a fear of change. Because I am a part of my own target audience, I used this to my advantage when deciding on my branding and engagement plans. Since TikTok and Instagram are highly popular in my target demographic, I combined these two platforms to appeal to my target audience.
I also created a Spotify playlist and used only lowercase text with minimal punctuation to further appeal to my audience. Music was a large factor in solidifying the tone and message of my film, not to mention a major aspect of the lives of many teens to young adults. In sharing playlists with friends and crafting hyper-specific soundtracks for emotions or characters, communicating via music is an aspect of my target audience that I wanted to indulge in. As for the lowercase text, this not only established an informal, friendly connection with my target demographic, but mirrors the way people around my age talk to each other online. This way, the film didn’t appear sophisticated but down-to-earth.
Along with appealing to my target audience, I made sure to keep my film's branding consistent. I used the same fonts, graphics, and colors throughout my social media, postcard, and short film. In all three components, I used a typewriter font to ensure continuity. I also consistently used orange and red as my accent colors due to their prominent appearance in the short film. These two elements were most helpful in my goal of establishing the creativity and melancholy of my overall brand.
My accent color choice stemmed from the dramatic transitions from the bright and fun moments to the lonely, dark moments in my film. The images taken from these instances were used in both my postcard and the social media page to further my brand goal and brand feel. These components featured pictures of the disheveled party as a way to grab consumer attention and interest; however, I wish I had grabbed a wider variety of still shots taken from throughout my film. I used mainly the red-lit disheveled party images but had very few photos of the party in full color, the card game (both in full color and just red), the bedroom scene with the letter, and the middle school. If I had more images from these scenes, my content would be less similar to one another and would have provided a more fleshed-out brand. While this choice of primarily using party scene photos could be considered a way to avoid spoilers for the rest of the film, I think it instead took away from accurately conveying the feeling that drove me to create my film in the first place. In this aspect of my product--planning and social media--my branding felt underdeveloped. I wish I had spent more time preparing for this component of the project, since there are so many more opportunities content-wise that I believe I missed out on.
The progress I’ve made throughout working on this project has been tremendous. I have gained knowledge about the production and planning process that I would never have anticipated learning. Not to mention the confidence I’ve gained in myself, my creativity, and my work. Though there are definitely things I would change in all three components if I had more time, I’m incredibly proud of what I’ve created and the growth I’ve made through the duration of this project.
Songs for 4/10
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