Short examples

Black Hole

This is a short which is extremely popular on YouTube with over a million views. It shows a male, obviously bored with his job get given a piece of paper which is a black hole, this appears through the short to be a gift, he uses it to his advantage to get what he wants, however he becomes greedy and uses it to steal. The shorts seems to show the message of karma, how he was obviously bored with his life so he received something that would improve his life, however for him it end badly because he has used the gift in an unmoral way.



A review from the IMDB

"The Black Hole" is a short and deep tale of greed of human nature. It is impressive how the writers and directors Philip Sansom and Olly Williams were able to make a short of less than 3 minutes running time without any line and succeed in transmitting one of the seven deadly sins ( "Avaritia") so perfectly and with right dose of humor. My vote is nine.[out of 10]

These reviews are taken from www.cleancutmedia.com

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Short films require immense creativity and planning because an entire story must be condensed into 3-5 minutes. This piece is well done. Quick Commentary follows.

The Black Hole
Moving Towards Desire
What I find interesting in this short film is how the main character slowly gets more and more tempted to push the limits. He starts off just fascinated with his new discovery. He tries it out on the vending machine and ends up eating his reward. However once he gets a taste of the “power” of his discovery, he then decides to use it to enter a locked office to see what is inside. Then his eyes light up as he sees a safe and uses it to access some cash. Then rather than being happy with what he found, he decides to take it all. Both in his expression and his actions the small steps he takes towards what is wrong only escalates. I believe this is very true to reality.

Flight or Invisibility
Someone asked me recently, if you could fly or be invisible, which power would you like? I would easily choose invisibility, however I also acknowledged how I could imagine myself slowly getting myself into really bad trouble and morally questionable situations if I had that capability. Could you say with confidence you would never abuse such a power?

Getting from Point A to Point B – Subtle Power of Desire
This character probably never intended to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars and if he was told he would, he probably would laugh at the thought. But all it took is the access and slow seemingly harmless steps and there he was stealing the money he probably never dreamed of stealing. This is a short film so the progress went quickly, but we can see this happening in the real world across longer periods of time. No one starts wanting to steal, wanting to murder, wanting to commit adultery, wanting to get drunk, hurting people and betraying trust relationships. How many times have I found myself in point B and wondered how I got to this point. So how do we get from point A to point B? Gradual steps. It would be foolish for us to think we are not capable of doing really bad things (yes even murder!) just because we can’t imagine ourselves getting there. It is the small subtle steps that goes unnoticed that contribute to our moral degradation. It is so important for all people to be on our guard to protect ourselves from becoming insensitive to pushing boundaries and rationalizing what we do.

I found this short really interesting. What I liked the most was the titles, as they appeared through an actual black hole. The fit the movie and looked really effective. I also like the fact that there isn't any dialogue or music but the film is still good quality.

Strangers

This is another very popular short film on YouTube with over a million views. Like I said in my previous post, shorts are given the opportunity to tackle important and sometimes difficult issues. Strangers tells the compelling tale of two young men, one Arab and one Jewish who are motivated by fear to overcome their racial prejudice and hatred when suddenly confronted with a menacing gang of skinheads.



This review was taken from http://ereztadmor.tumblr.com/strangersshortfilm

I enjoyed watching the short film, “Strangers” and consider it a “must-see” film. This short film review imparts to viewers what I like about “Strangers.”The short film does not have dialogue and message was conveyed through facial expression, signs and symbols (of what each group represents). It is a story about a Jew and a Muslim, who has a racial division, and what brought them together.

The short film started with a man who stepped onto the train and sat in one of the seats near another man. At that point, the group to which each character belong to were being established. Both men looked at each other in an unfriendly manner. The man who entered the train and took a seat is a Jew. The viewer would guess this as he discreetly played with his necklace (sign of Israel). Meanwhile, the man already seated is a Muslim (as shown by the characters in the newspaper he is reading). Clearly, both men dislike each other from history (“Six-Day War,” June 5, 1967 to June 10, 1967, between Israel and the armies of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria).

Meanwhile, a third (3rd) group appeared in the train, the Nazis. The Nazi symbol was prominent when one of the men drew a Nazi sign on the Muslim newspaper. Another Nazi sign is shown at the back of the head of one of the Nazi. The Nazis disliked the Muslim man as they started harassing the Muslim man.

Only when the phone of the Jew rang did the Nazis stopped harassing the Muslim man. At that point, it was very clear that the man is Jew since his ringtone was Jewish (it would have been nicer if the ringtone were shorter). From World War 2 history, Nazis also dislike the Jews. The Jew man knew that the Nazis would harass him next. He made eye contact with the Muslim man to run. Both Arab and Jew ran avoiding the Nazis.

I enjoyed watching this short film as the story unfolds and each character’s group was slowly revealed. The suspense grew as I watched their facial expressions (along hearing the background sounds).

Over-all, this short film was professionally made. It has a good story, the actors performed well, and it is very well produced. Though the story is simple, it made a profound impact.

I really liked this film because it was well shot and the plot was really interesting and again little dialogue is used but the actions speak louder.