Research into Short Film

http://www.englishandmedia.co.uk/publications/downloads/pdfs/AddMatMedPack.pdf << Tom Shankland, Director of Bait: Full Transcript.

Bait
The director states that it was his childhood that inspired the plot for bait. Although the events are loosely based on the directors childhood, we can see that the moral lesson is intact, and the director still remembering this from his childhood shows that it had left an impact morally, and therefore he wanted to share that with the viewer.The director chose Durham for the setting, because he grew up there, he states "I wanted to do something about a charact erwho’s on the margin, who’s really having that struggle economically and socially, and who s a very good dad. That pressure between being absolutely poor and absolutely a great emotional father, how do you deal with that conflict? So they were the two things.
That was something that Jane really brought in, and then there was something that I brought in, and then that was how it started"

Why it is important to develop the script
From listening to the director descussing how bait was made, the main thing that I had learnt was that the most important aspect of a short film is the narrative and dialogue. A story makes a film in my opinion. If there is no story at all, then it wont gain the attention of the viewer, whereas if there is a good story which can grip the viewer, it will make them want to watch on further, the director and film suceeding in its purpose. The director of Bait tell us "I believe it’s really important to know what you want to say before you start writing scenes and dialogue,. Because the clearer you are about the purpose of the story, the
easier it is to know what details are important, and what moments you absolutely must have, and which moments are superfluous" From this I have learnt that when creating my own short film, the narrative and dialogue will be first priority.

The Child's & Father's point of view
After watching 'Bait' the first thing i noticed which made an impact was the perspective of both the child and father. We can see clearly, that the director has used a 'point of view' shot, this giving the short film an emotional impact, as we can see from the setting that the child and father are in a financial chrisis but still have each other, which morally is the most important thing. The director states "on the technical front a lot of the shots, if you’re going to have a close up of a boy, and what the boy’s looking at, if you bring the camera down to his eyeline, so if the camera often invades, is not much higher than the way a six year old would see the world" This feature has definetly made me think more about the camera angles that I will use within my short film, and how much of an impact certain camera angles can have on the audience.