Research on themes for our short film

Choosing the theme of any film is very important for any film, including feature length ones. It is a very key part for short films as they are so short. The brief of our project was to make a British short film; therefore we had to think of British stereotypes and themes pertinent to our British identity. So we would have to go against mainstream and well known themes, to make our short

film.

The first theme that we as a group thought of was class and status. We got the idea from the very well known British film, Brief Encounterby David Lean, as it shows many examples of how class and status affects your life and who you talk to. However, some people do not think that class and

status can be shown today, but we have recently been shown an example with the chaotic riots in London and Birmingham. Therefore if this theme ended up as the final one, people watching it would highly classify it as British.

Another theme we thought of we believed was a more commonly used one of youth violence and crime. However, we thought that portraying a message of responsibility to our audience could help this situation. Being teenagers ourselves we have seen this, and would be able to show a very moving message to our audience. We identified this as a British theme due to the riots in London and also the many victims of knife crime around the UK, and so, this would be related to Britain.

Furthermore, another theme that we thought of was multiculturalism and the ‘Big Society’. We thought of this when we saw that after the riots, people of them communities and even others, people with different cultures came together to help clean up. This also shows that Britain is a multicultural nation, and this theme is accepted as British.

We also thought of making a social realist film. This again is a more commonly chosen theme for short films as it there are many films that follow it, for example, Get off my Land by Douglas Ray, and Gravity by Colin Hutton.

The last theme we thought of was national identity and stereotypes. British people are usually seen with no expression on their face; however, some are shown as quite happy or ecstatic, for

example in the film Sign Language by Oscar Sharp. Furthermore, British people are shown as in somewhat awkward compared to other nations, for example, the film Veronique By Patrik Bergh, shows how British people can be awkward around the ‘glamour of France’. Therefore, using one of these stereotypes or others in our film will definitely be related to British film.