In our last edition of Short Films / Big Ideas we looked at the creepy short film Pencil Face. To see what we said about this short film see our blog entry below. For those of you who are fans of creepy films, our next Short Films / Big Ideas post will be the Halloween edition.
However, today we want to look at a brilliant example of a 'meta' film. We've shown this a few times recently in our PDs because it's a great example of film narrative technique. The short film we are talking about is called Plot Device. The plot is thus: A film student is roaming Amazon's online bookstore looking at film making guides when he comes across a mysterious object for sale called 'plot device'. He buys it. When it comes, it turns out to be a large button. What does he does? Of course he presses it. He is instantly swept into a romance film. We know this genre straight away because we see a beautiful woman in a wedding dress running towards him (in romance genre fashion) shouting the words, 'it's always been you.' He presses the button again, and is transported into a new genre. And so he goes on from genre to genre until the resolution of the short film. It's 9 minutes long. And very funny. Watch it here.
There are several interesting things about this film. To begin with, it's an entertaining introduction to the idea of genre. Show the film to your students and ask them to pick out all the different genres or styles of films that are shown. What were the identifying features of each genre? What films have your students seen recently, and what genre do they belong to?
Secondly, the film is a very conscious example of the narrative feature of the 'plot device.' There are two types of problems that can happen in a text: 1) A character problem (called the 'inner' problem); 2) A plot problem (the plot device). In a good story a character has to struggle with and overcome their inner problems. However, this struggle has to first be activated by an external problem arising - an asteroid hurtling towards earth, a new girl on the scene who the protagonist really likes, an enemy, or the discovery of a mysterious object: all these are examples of plot devices - a narrative prompt that forces the character to do something and confront their own problems.
Have a chat with kids about this and then get them to think about the film they have seen most recently (or can recall the best). Give them each a copy of the Plot Phases handout which can be downloaded from our website here. This steps them through the stages of a narrative and will help them identify the different between the character problem (which they often won't be able to identify) and the plot device (which they often think is the main complication). After this, students can move on to creating their own short stories which contain these two narrative elements.
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