Teaching with short films in Media Studies

As with English, although the exam boards offering this subject differ in the ways they assess it, there are common themes among all the syllabuses. In the course of studying the media, candidates are expected to develop their critical and analytical skills, and their media production skills. Media Studies tends to be based on a six-point conceptual framework, defining essential areas of investigation and interrogation.

There are six primary questions (originally devised by Cary Bazalgette of bfi Education) which underpin the examination of any media text:

  • What type of text is it?
  • How do we know what it means?
  • How does it present its subject?
  • Who is communicating and why?
  • Who receives it and what sense do they make of it?
  • How has it been produced?

These six questions translate into the core terminology of the subject:

The study of short films offers excellent opportunities to introduce or reinforce key topic areas and ideas, as well as providing valuable preparatory stimulus for practical work. The following suggestions show how the short films in this compilation may be used to explore some of these concepts, as part of a broader Media Studies course.

See also Using the additional materials for further suggestions.

Media categories

This term generally refers to categories such as newspapers, radio advertisements, films, computer games and so on. These are then divided into more specific sub-categories: newspapers include tabloids, broadsheets, compact-broadsheets and so on. By analysing these sub-categories - perhaps in terms of content, audience and purpose - they can be broken down still further into categories defined by distinct conventions, attributes and qualities. One of the skills that Media Studies students develop is the ability to define, with concise but critical detail, a particular category of media product, thereby distinguishing national newspapers from local newspapers, trade papers and advertisers from community newspapers.

All of the films on this compilation can be generically categorised as short films. This can generate discussion to define short films more precisely. Who, for example, makes short films? Why are they made? Who finances them? Who gets to see them?

While short films in themselves often defy easy categorisation, some provide useful starting points for considering genre, comparing them to more mainstream or familiar films.

Film Still

The First Time It Hits

  • The First Time It Hits, for example, has aspects in common with music videos: the soundtrack of the film is a music track and it is edited to the music, which is unusual for a narrative film. The cuts between the shots tend to be quick, creating a fast pace. Ask students to watch a number of music videos, list the conventions and attempt to define the genre. They could then watch The First Time It Hits and identify common elements. But there are aspects of the film that distinguish it from a music video. For example, the music on the soundtrack is interrupted (not unknown in a music video perhaps, but certainly unusual); the band do not appear; no one mouths the lyrics; the narrative of the video seems more important than the music and so on. Perhaps most crucially, titles and credits appear in the film, showing that it is not produced by a promotion company for a band. Studying a film in this way, comparing it to another similar category of film, helps students to sharpen their observation skills and their abilities to identify and define salient features of film texts.
Film Still

About a Boy

  • Another approach that might be adopted, particularly with students who have a wide experience of film, is to spot the genre conventions in films that at first appear to resist categorisation. About a Girl, for example, owes less to its near-namesake, About a Boy (Paul and Chris Weitz, UK, 2002) (though a comparison with the film does highlight interesting contrasts in terms of family compositions, characters, tone and so on) than to a video diary.

Students may recognise when the conventions are being adhered to (direct address to camera, confessional tone and so on), when they are being stretched (the sense of real time, which is provided by the continuous monologue voice-over, contrasts with the disruption of continuity afforded by the sudden shifts in location along the canal-side), and when they are clearly undermined (the final, unforgettable sequence which is presented without comment).

Media language

In the context of this resource, media language is equivalent to film language. Any film from this compilation provides an excellent means to study film language, and the short runtimes make them superior in many ways for this purpose than extracts of longer films.

  • About a Girl, for example, uses colour to interesting effect. The film-makers have deliberately bleached out the colours for the final sequence, giving it a much colder, harsher look.
  • The use of black and white in 7.35 in the Morning prompts the question, 'Why?' Did the director want to capture the look of old film or film noir? Or might his intentions not be purely aesthetic but semantic too: is the issue of 'love' simply 'black and white'? (In his interview (PDF, 98kb) the director says he chose to use black and white film because it makes it harder to categorise the film or predict the story - it 'defamiliarises' the film. Students could discuss whether he was successful.) Another interesting aspect of this film is its use of camera framing and movement. Not only does the film provide a range of shot types, but also the effects of the framing often seem ambiguous. It would be interesting to ask students to suggest which shots should be cut to remove the comic elements of the film; or which should be removed to make it more obviously a comedy.
  • The fantasy sequence of The First Time It Hits introduces pink and blue into the monochrome scheme - an element of gendered colouration that ties in well with the boy's somewhat stereotypical view of the girl of his dreams.
Film Still

The First Time It Hits

In terms of editing, The First Time It Hits is perhaps the most adventurous film in the compilation. It is edited to create a pace to match the frenetic energy of the soundtrack, and montage is used in evoking both the characters and the car park.

  • The enigmatic quality of The Most Beautiful Man in the World in part derives from its use of sound. Inconsequential snatches of dialogue, sound effects which vary in amplification and source (at one point the sound appears to be recorded underwater), and the absence of music to define mood or atmosphere, all combine to leave the audience with no definite way of interpreting the events on screen. The film therefore provides a good example of how sound helps an audience to make sense of the images it sees. Students might be asked to write the script for a voice over - from the viewpoint of the girl; or the girl when she is older; the woman or the man seen in the film - to anchor the meaning of the film more clearly.
  • While the fluid nature of The Man with the Beautiful Eyes, which in some ways blurs specific edit points, perhaps makes this film a less obvious candidate to use to discuss editing than others, it does include some interesting examples of 'graphic match'. Admittedly, the matches are not achieved by editing separate shots together, but the examples in the film are still useful to raise awareness of the possibilities of this technique.
  • Asking students to analyse still images from the early sections of any of these films would quickly highlight how the elements of mise-en-scène - setting, costume, make-up; positioning of people and props; facial expression, body language and so on - combine to create meaning.

Representation

Accident makes a useful starting point for an examination of representation. The film presents the audience with a cast of characters who seemingly represent a wide cross-section of the different nationalities, ethnicities, professions, ages and so on, that can be seen on any London street (and on many city streets in the UK). Many of the characters not only seem to embody stereotypes, in the way they dress, speak and behave, but also often respond to each other as stereotypes; making assumptions about each other based on no more than preconceived, prejudicial ideas. The film is challenging in many ways, forcing the audience to work against any temptation to see the individual characters as representatives of groups, while acknowledging that, as partial stereotypes, they do represent the cultural diversity of a city like London. Students could focus on specific characters and identify how their representation conforms to or diverges from stereotypical portrayals of the characters.

Taken as a whole, the compilation offers many opportunities to compare the representation of common groups and themes. For example, students could compare the representation of:

  • Women in Jus' Gaps, The Little Things and 7.35 in the Morning;
  • Children in Two Cars, One Night, The Man with the Beautiful Eues and The Most Beautiful Man in the World ;
  • Teenagers in The First Time It Hits, The Little Things and About a Girl;
  • Guys in Killing Time at Home, 7.35 in the Morning, Jus' Gaps and Accident.
Film Still

Killing Time at Home

Film Still

7.35 in the Morning

Film Still

Jus' Gaps

Film Still

Accident

Students should be encouraged to describe the nature of the representation, to define what elements within the film contribute towards creating that representation, and to contrast the representation with what they perceive is the common social view or how they themselves perceive these social groups. As teenagers, for example, they may feel that they tend to be misrepresented and might want to consider how the films reinforce or challenge common representations of their social groups.

Media messages and values

Study of any of the films in this compilation will lead students towards an exploration of their messages and values. Even before they begin to analyse and interpret the films in detail, they will be thinking about what they mean. They should consider several possible interpretations, and as their interpretative skills deepen, they will become more confident in handling ambivalence and ambiguity. Some students will want to know the definitive reading of a film and will be unsatisfied with the kind of response which allows, for example, The Most Beautiful Man in the World to be both a warning about predatory strangers and a sympathetic view of fathers excluded from their children's lives by separation and divorce. But short films, like many texts, are more often than not polysemic: their messages and values are not easily reduced and articulated in simple terms, and students need to be encouraged to suspend their desire to arrive at a single, incontestable reading.

Nevertheless students can be encouraged to try to understand the film-maker's 'preferred' reading, as this can lead to some highly detailed and finely argued debate. For example, they could:

  • Hot-seat a peer in role as a director;
  • Script an imagined interview with the director.

They will need to read beyond the surface impressions, looking for clues in the subtleties of lighting, sound, mise-en-scène and so on, which seem to support a particular way of responding to the action.

For example, what is the film-maker's attitude to the lovelorn suicide-bomber in 7.35 in the Morning? Is he presented as heroic, someone whose depth and sincerity of love is clear from the careful planning and unique - in every way - nature of his declaration? Or is he represented as a dangerous and selfish fanatic, someone oblivious to the terror he instils, and whose final, unrepeatable act results in an anti-climactic rain of confetti? What exactly do the staging of the explosion off-screen, the lack of gore, the clumsiness of his dancing, the black and white photography, the role of the musicians, or the fact that the arrival of the police is signified by a sound effect and not their actual appearance, imply about the film-maker's point of view? Why is the music chosen to close the film (with the credit sequence) so different in tone from the bomber's song?

You could try to expose hidden, unnoticed or unintended messages and values by asking students to imagine contexts in which the films might be screened. Could 7.35 in the Morning for example, be screened in Madrid or London after the terrorist bombing? The first of the Madrid bombs in March 2004 exploded at 7.35 in the morning. In this context, does the film lose its humour?

Film Still

About a Girl

Finally, in exploring media messages and values, students could extract from the credit sequences information about the people, institutions and agencies involved in producing these films. The dates of the productions can also be significant. For instance, the central character in About a Girl sings a song by Britney Spears who, as the makers of the film have commented, was famous at the time (2001) for being a virgin. This point of information clearly gives the use of this song an ironic dimension, which might be less obvious today, when motherhood rather than virginity is more a part of Britney Spears' image.

Producers, agencies and institutions

A vast amount of short film and video production takes place within schools, colleges and universities, but since the films are often linked to theoretical studies in media or communications, the majority never reach a wider audience. Short film-making is often seen as a training ground for feature film-makers. The film industry sees shorts mostly as personal ads and talent showcases for new film-makers. This is reflected in funding where younger film-makers tend to get funding more easily as they represent future talent in film production, distribution and exhibition. While the importance of short film as an art form in its own right tends to be under-recognised, there is a strong tradition of artistic film-makers and a trend towards seeing the short as a culturally significant art form with a unique capacity to reveal significant social concerns and artistic movements.

Short film production

Films, as all media texts, are produced within institutional contexts. In Media Studies students are required to look at how films are affected by the institutional, economic, and industrial processes involved in their production. To understand production processes fully, it is important to consider the ownership of production companies, the kind of films they produce, and how and where the films are distributed and marketed. Everything in the media world of institutions depends on money - this applies to feature films as well as to short films.

But whereas agencies and institutions exercise a massive influence on the production, distribution and marketing processes of feature films, short films are mostly produced independently. With the exceptions of advertising or music promos, industry constituencies do not see it as worth their while to invest in a mixed bag of films of variable length and quality with little earning potential. As a result, short films are rarely commissioned.

In this country, funding for short films is organised on a regional or national basis, by the UK Film Council, media development and screen agencies, regional arts boards, and local authorities. Traditionally, television channels like BBC2 and Channel 4 have been important in commissioning short films in the UK, but initiatives such as the BBC's 10x10 scheme which commissioned ten quirky ten-minute documentary shorts such as I Love My Nails (included on the bfi Education DVD Real Shorts) are few and far between.

There is also funding through private sponsors or commercial schemes (for example Kodak or BMW). Many short film-makers (such as Jonathan Glazer, Michel Gondry, Spike Jonze and Mike Mills) fund their own projects with money made through advertising shoots or music videos.

New funding opportunities for short film-makers in the UK have arisen with digital film-making. Before digital video (DV), budgets for 35mm celluloid shorts could range from £60,000 to £90,000, and such costs were difficult to justify for films seen only by a small audience. With the emergence of DV, many more short films are being funded, produced, distributed and exhibited.

For example, First Light enables young people between the ages of five and 18 to write, act, shoot and produce short films. To support digital short films, the UK Film Council launched the New Cinema Fund in 2001. Films made under this scheme have a budget limit of £10,000, can't be longer than ten minutes and must be shot using digital technology. The First Time It Hits is one of the films made within this scheme.

In other countries funding is more tied-up with production and distribution. The two films from New Zealand on this compilation, The Little Things and Two Cars, One Night, are funded by production companies that work with the New Zealand Film Commission, and then the Commission helps to market these films domestically and internationally through its sales unit, NZ Film.

Distribution and exhibition of short films

The rule seems to be that with more digital short films being made, it is easy to show a short film, possible to get it online, hard to get it on TV, difficult to get it into festivals, and nearly impossible to get a cinema release. The opportunities for distribution and exhibition for short films in the cinema are almost non-existent. Long features, and cinemas' desire to speed up their turnaround, squeeze out opportunities for showing short films in commercial cinemas.

Other traditional means of distribution and exhibition are:

  • Film festivals (see filmfestivals.com) enable critical recognition, raise profiles, and create a global market for films, but do not provide a regular opportunity for exhibition. There are some film festivals exclusively for short films, the most important being: Clermont Ferrand ( France), Oberhausen ( Germany), Tampere ( Sweden) and Brief Encounters ( Bristol). The ratio of films submitted to those shown is around ten to one in Bristol, and much higher in the international festivals.
  • Film clubs and film societies offer good opportunities to exhibit and to get feedback.
  • Television, especially digital television, offers a platform for short films. Although they are very expensive in airtime, both BBC2 and Channel 4 see it as part of their remit to invest in film-making talent through screening short films. But their scheduling - often late at night - makes widening audiences difficult.

Digital technology and digital exhibition

Digital technology allows more shorts to be made and to be shown. Digital shorts can be shown in more and different environments, such as in galleries, on planes and even in hair salons. The availability of cheap DV equipment has democratised film-making, and DVD and web-streaming have emerged as important new vehicles for non-theatric exhibition and for extending the lifespan of short films. It is now quite feasible to shoot a no- or low-budget short with a DV camera, to edit the film at home on a computer and then to distribute it via the internet. Regarded as the future for shorts in the late-1990s boom years, web-streaming is still developing, and although the number of sites have diminished, established internet sites such as AtomFilms and IFILM still stream acquired films and there are new ones emerging. The BBC's website Film Network is a good example, featuring over 150 shorts, with an emphasis on new British film-making talent.

Although web-streaming is still problematic - unless people have broadband access, viewing can be difficult and longer films need to be broken up in chunks - internet companies have created a market for short films in the last few years. With 13 million UK internet users in 2005, part of an estimated 300 million users worldwide, the net has rapidly grown beyond its initial provision of information, communication and consumer services. Over 70 per cent of domestic users now claim their online priority is entertainment. And increasingly they are finding it where their great-grandparents did, in short films and animations. The penny arcade and the Kinetoscope (an early motion picture machine where people peeped through a small hole while a film role was played)

ha ve been reincarnated for an internet audience in short film sites and web film.

Touring collections of shorts are popular with some audiences, particularly at regional film theatres that show arthouse films, and DVD compilations have also taken off. Onedotzero, for example, are promoting new computer-generated shorts and the use of new technology with DVD compilations and annual tours. London-based short film producer Luke Morris (director of the short Je T'aime John Wayne that toured with feature films a few years back) established the Cinema 16 DVD label, distributing a compilation of British short films and a compilation of European short films by established directors very successfully. Shooting People released a DVD of the winners of the world's biggest short film prizes, and there are more and more international DVDs showcasing short films to a widening audience.

Audiences for short films

Short films, unlike feature films, are rarely made with a specific audience group in mind. On the one hand, short films are rarely commissioned and are often produced independently. On the other, as it is much more difficult for shorts to reach an audience, it does not make sense to limit the market by creating shorts for niche audiences. Whereas the feedback from audience groups influences the post-production as well as the production of future feature films, this scenario is unthinkable for shorts.

Although in the past short films have been largely invisible to general audiences, audiences for short films are growing as new platforms continue to emerge. Mainstream broadcasters are realising the potential of shorts to attract 18 to 34 year olds, while broadband providers, 3G mobile phone operators and leading advertising brands are entering the market. As connection speeds increase and file compression improves, distributing and presenting films on the internet is becoming increasingly viable. Short films can now be seen by a worldwide audience 24 hours a day. Internet film festivals and web cinemas are signing up shorts for distribution deals offering an online presence while actively promoting films to TV networks, airlines and on DVD. The access of more people to broadband promises a medium that can not only give short film more exposure, but can also provide a forum for audience reaction - for example with rating systems as some websites offer them, or perhaps with options for audiences to choose their own endings, different soundtracks for the films, or even a possibility to re-edit the film online.

Get Adobe Acrobat Reader Documents on this page are available in Adobe PDF, which requires Adobe's free reader. If you are having trouble viewing PDFs, please consult our help page.