Jelly Baby Task

We were given a pack of Jelly babies and were asked to create a mock up start of a film in 5 shots, using only the content of the classroom to use as the mis-en-scene. We chose the film brief ‘Dramedy’, and considering we did this task at Christmas, decided on a storyline whereupon Santa’s sleigh crashed and Santa got stuck in a chimney, so Rudolf came to the rescue and took on his role. In order to make this appropriate for a young teenage audience, we used sick humour – whereupon Santa is decapitated – in order to make it funny. Not only does this engage the audience, but it also sets the genre as a comedy which uses a subverted stereotype to change the target audience from young children to young teenagers. The gender of the characters was self-explanatory, since the film featured well-known characters. We indicated which jelly baby was Santa and which were the reindeers by giving Santa a hat, and Rudolf a red nose, and used the same jelly babies for each of the characters throughout – in order to keep the film consistent and understandable.

This is our first shot, which is an establishing shot of a stereotypical Christmas scene, showing Santa about to embark on his journey around the world. This shot was easy to create, as we simply drew the background and let the stereotypical themes of a scene like this create the mood.

Our second shot is also an establishing shot of the second scene, whereupon the characters have remained the same, but the background has changed to a night-time setting and we have added a house to put the shot into perspective. This shot appears to work well, though it could be improved

by changing the camera angle, which would not only change the perspective from where the audience views the film, but also adds diversity to the shots.

This shot depicts a key event in the film, whereupon the sleigh tips and Santa falls out, but as mentioned above, it could be improved if we had changed the angle of the camera, which would have created a more dramatic atmosphere and also made the scenario funnier – since it would have put the audience in the position of one of the characters.

This is our fourth shot, and was designed to be the funniest one. As mentioned above, we created humour by taking this innocent character and creating an unexpected scenario, which to most children would be upsetting, but to young teenagers would be funny. This shot was originally a wide shot, whereupon the house, sleigh and reindeers were also in shot, though I felt this distracted the attention away from the main event, so cropped it to focus on the main character. I think it worked well because the hat informs you of which character this is, meaning the other characters don’t need to be present. However, if we were to have titled the camera, with it positioned at the bottom of the

house, a greater sense of scale would have been created, yet because the jelly babies are the only 3D objects in this shot, they would still have been the centre of attention.

This is our final shot, whereupon the audience learns that Rudolf has replaced Santa and has continued without him. Although this shot works well as an establishing shot, having researched how different shot types can create different moods, I think an OTS shot from behind Rudolf, facing forwards would have been more effective, as it would still have acknowledged Santa in the corner, yet would have also shown the other reindeers ahead and created a sense of movement, whereas this wide shot looks stationary.

I felt the easiest aspect of this task was creating a comedy, since the plot was straight forward and easy to present. However, it was difficult to make the comedy appropriate for teenagers, as the teenage age range is wide and it was difficult to create a film appropriate for 13-19 year olds. For this reason we focused on 13-14 year old preferences, though I think a younger audience (10-13) would have preferred it, and in particular the male gender. Another aspect which I found difficult, and which I would change in the future was the shot choice. I think we did ourselves injustice by sticking to a birds-eye view with a 2D background, as it looked dull and became repetitive towards the end. Had we zoomed in and focused on the characters more, changed the camera angle and used more 3D objects, I think it would have been much more realistic and effective.