Smiling Man

"A little girl home alone finds herself face-to-face with pure evil."

An example of an effective short film is "The Smiling Man" the bases of the film is a little girl being left home alone and is led to a sinister death through a series of balloons. What I like about this short film is that it is so simple and not over complicated yet so effective. It does what all horror films do which is scaring their audience yet this is done under 10 minutes. This is done through using camera angles and sound to build up tension to leave the audience on the edge of their seats.


How will I apply this?
When I first saw this short film I was attracted to it but at the same time repulsed due to it being very disturbing. This is what I want to in my own short film I want it to be simplistic but yet disturbing and effective. This is done through the narrative of the short film.
 
To make my short film as effective as "The smiling Man" I'm going to focus on my narrative but also camera work and sound as this is just as important as the narrative. Here are some effective camera angles shown below:



The first effective camera shot is from a high angle looking down at the girl. What I like about this is that its telling the audience a lot. It showing the girl as being weak and vulnerable compared to what is in the house. In my short film I'm going to use high angle and low angle to tell the audience what characters are weak and powerful. But this is also puts the audience in the eye of either the "watcher" or "killer" that is in the house which is very effective.



Another shot which I find very effective is this close up shot of the "killer" what I like about this is that it shows all of the detail of the "killers" face and its very disturbing due to the cracked skin and red around the eyes. When creating my film I want to focus on detail so that the it is very high quality, I will do this through costume,makeup,editing and camera work.


This film has helped me in the development on my film and how I want to create about it. Im going to take a lot of inspiration from this short film by focusing on a simple narrative which is still effective and will still scare the audience.