Evaluation

The idea for ‘The Boy in my Loft,’ was inspired by a story I read about a woman living under the floor in a man’s cupboard for 5 years. The woman in the story came out when the man left for work. She would steal food, because she was not able to fend for herself, so thought she could take advantage of the unsuspecting man. This piqued my imagination and inspired me to create a short film based around this idea. I was interested in placing this idea in the modern day to explore aspects the haves and the have nots in 21^stcentury suburbia.

To represent the boy who is indeed living in the loft, it is important that first I represented the family living in the home. This is similar to the way that horror films present what is ‘normal’ by portraying normal family life and activities first which in turn allows audiences to understand what is therefore scary and abnormal. By portraying the family’s life as cosy and protectible it leads the audience in to a false sense of security. The family are relatively conventional, they have 2 cars on the drive of a suburban street, the property has a distinct family home look about it and in particular a realism that I wanted to get across from this area of mise-en-scene. Much like in Echo where family life is presented via the setting of a messy broken home for parts of the film. As I wanted audiences to see this family as normal, I dressed them accordingly in casual every day clothes and likewise added props such as a laptop, camcorders and a dog for this same reason giving a message to the audience that there is nothing abnormal happing within the house hold.  Again, a similarity in slap, where the clothes, settings and props used in the construction of mise-en-scene added realism to the piece and in turn audience engagement. This then was the ‘norm’ and when the living conditions of the boy in the loft are revealed, spectators can then see this representation as ‘other’. His character expression and movement are much more rushed, and wide eyed when he is able to sneak down in the moments, he believed nobody was home. I wanted to contrast the movement between the family and the young boy by making the movement very different. For example, while he is very nerves in his movement the family walk around the house with confidence. His nervousness comes from a fear of being discovered whilst the resident family have no such concerns. Now whilst the actual narrative can sound quite farcical, I wanted it to appear naturalistic, as if it could really happen. Similarly, to The Ellington Kidwhen the story is being told, and tight jeansin the way that the conversations and dialogue are delivered with such belief. The representation suggests a degree of persistence from the lead character as he is baffled to what is happening to the food and after challenging his parents sets out a trap and then cctv to catch the culprit. This touches briefly on family dynamics and relationships driving the narrative forward, similar to the untrustworthy relationship between the mother and dauter in Echo. I decided to go with a linear narrative, again like Echo, Slap and The Fly. This was because I was certain I wanted to make a short film in the silent film mould and of a comedy genreand therefore a non-linear narrativecould distract from that and certainly wasn’t the norm back in the 1920s. In conforming to this genre and also playing to comedy effect, I decided to use title cards rather than dialogue. I didn’t want the performance of the cast to distract from the story and believed that the comic effect and indeed help that the spectator gets from the title cards were far more effective too. They helped cement the three-act structure from beginning equilibrium, to the disruption; realising food was going missing and the subsequent attempts to discover by whom, and the ending when he reveals there is someone secretly living in the loft. Much like Arrivalhowever, I wanted to not tie up every loose end and question that audiences might have. Instead leaving it open for them to decide. As in Arrival, does she tell the man? Does she keep the baby? Do they stay together? With my film, audiencesare left asking who was he? Does the boy know him? Did anyone in the house know? How long had he been there? Why? And many more. By keeping it open I have also been inspired by the French New Wave film The 400

Blowswhere the still frame of Antoine's face leaves audiences wondering what is next for him once he reaches the seaside. I ended my film in a similar way to the 400 blows ending on a close up of the characters face. I chose to do this because I felt that it gave the audience a last chance to really empathise with the boy after seeing the conditions he had been living in and realising what he had had to go threw to survive.  One moment where I did debate whether or not to use flashbacks was early on when the lead character checks the receipt, as if to check he actually did buy the bread and didn’t actually forget. I did think about shooting a sequence of him at a shop buying it but kept the linear narrativeand used the receipt as a prop instead as I did not want to confuse the audience. When it comes to audiencetheory, I made a lot of micro element choices to create an engagement between the audience and the central character. I felt this is important as my target audience is young people age 15-25. This demographic use portable devices such as phones, tablets and laptops to consume short films on and sites such as Netflix for feature length films much more than cinema visits. Due to these streaming sites and YouTube being low cost or even free, their choice is wide and often within the first couple of minutes can become bored and switch over. I therefore cast a teenage lead, in a family, something audiences can relate to. He does day to day things like exercise and eating. The cinematography allowed shots of the home and close ups to show expression, 2 shots to show the conversations with parents, and use of the kuleshov effect to see the person and subsequently their POV. As mentioned earlier, the

linear narrative added a realism and I wanted to have a range of shot types in my cinematography. I liked the use of a shot from within the fridge especially and cutting to the footage from the video cameras set up to catch the culprit when the lead character is setting them up and checking they work. I particularly wanted to use an invisible cut in my film as I felt as though it helped drive the narrative without having to have      .                                                too many shots of the boy running down the street.  

In conclusion I feel that my short film ‘The boy in my loft, represents the social and education aspects of homelessness within the 21^stcentury while keeping in the style of a silent film as well as sticking to my chose comedy genre. I feel my film reflects the style of Charlie Chaplin because not only did I Autor the film like Charlie Chaplin, the character of the boy in the loft echoes The Chaplin character not only in black and white and silent style of the film and also because the boy in the loft is down on his luck in the same way Chaplins. character frequently was. As well as this I feel like I have shown my ability to produce a film with a strong narrative and story line. I have proved that I can use a varied range of camera shots and angles, editing skills so that my film so it runs smoothly and the ability to shoot high quality footage.