Short Film Research: Santa

Santa is a short film that I found on YouTube that is of a similar genre that my short film will be. It shows a young girl on Christmas eve that hears Santa coming down the chimney and leaves her bed to get a sneak peek. The scene seems to be very festive and childlike, there are shots showing the decorated Christmas tree and the red robe tumbling down into the fire place. As the young girl peers round the corner we see a sinister looking claw where the audience would expect to see every child’s dream of a friendly bearded figure placing presents under the tree. I felt that this scene gives a similar sort of feel to what I hope to achieve in my film.

I really liked the style of the scene, especially the Christmas setting which contrasted greatly against what we see later in the film. I hope to achieve the same feel by incorporating a lot of nice shots of children’s toys and games which will make my set look great before my film begins to get a little more sinister. I also liked the reveal of the claw before the camera quickly moves back behind the wall, mimicking the young girl. This shot gave me some thinking to do about the way I shall move the camera when I show my adult figure stood behind the door, perhaps I could follow the mother rather than continuing to show him once she has left the room.

The one thing that I found didn’t work too well in this short film was the length of it, it was only 1 and a half minutes long meaning that there was very little time to build up any sort of suspense before the reveal. I felt that there were a few too many shots of Santa that were intended to scare the audience which meant with each shot I became a little less scared because I knew that I wasn’t going to jump. In my opinion there should have been nothing between the reveal and the final shot because this would have made more of an impact at the end.

I think I will try to incorporate as much of the styling from this film as possible. However one thing I really liked was the way it was lit, and how it often showed the characters almost as a silhouette. This will be quite difficult to replicate as I don’t have any suitable lighting available or a set build to accommodate many forms of lighting as I will be using the lighting that is already in my house, although this will be something that I will need to experiment with!