WJEC Eduqas A Level & AS Film Studies

On a practical level, short films tend to be small scale and low budget. This means that the cast, sets and plot lines, for example, tend to be discrete and limited, very often revolving around one or two characters and their reaction to a specific event in a specific location. Low-resolution endings in short films are common, as well as a more experimental treatment of non-mainstream subject matter. AL students only must study at least three short films totalling a minimum of 80 minutes in length for this unit. One example selection would be five films: • La Jetèe (Marker, France, 1962) 28 minutes • The Wrong Trousers (Park, UK, 1993) 30 minutes • About a Girl (Percival, UK, 2001) 9 minutes • High Maintenance (Van, Germany, 2006) 9 minutes • The Gunfighter (Kissack, US, 2014) 9 minutes. All totalling 85 minutes. The reasoning for these choices is that these films have varied production contexts, in most cases strong generic features, and both experimental and mainstream narrative structures . They therefore have a good spread of formal qualities and aesthetic choices to study. The films chosen also fall into the following categories: • two fairly long-form shorts: the very experimental art house science fiction classic, La Jetèe , and the mainstream animation, Wrong Trousers • a social realist film, About a Girl • a high-concept postmodern comedy-western, The Gunfighter • a near-future science fiction film, High Maintenance . Detailed guidance on the Evaluative Analysis will follow but a good rule of thumb is that a third of it should be a narrative analysis of these films and an evaluation of their impact on your work. However, an ability to analyse film in terms of the three core areas covered earlier in this book is also essential and you would be best advised to revisit these relevant sections in this book before starting your short film study and subsequent practical work. The three core areas are: 1 The key elements of film form : cinematography and lighting, mise-en- scène, editing, sound and performance 2 Meaning and response : representations and aesthetics 3 The contexts of film : social, cultural, political, historical and institutional Of equal importance is your ability to revisit the knowledge and insights gained in your study of at least some of the six specialist study areas : 1 Spectatorship 2 Narrative 3 Ideology 4 Auteur 5 Critical debates 6 Filmmaker’s theories As we will see, ‘narrative’ is a major focus for the short film. A superb analysis of any film , let alone a short film, would aim to include some insights into the following fundamental questions: 312 Part 3 Production