Similar films to our synopsis include 'The Machinist' ( Director Brad Anderson, 2004) which focuses on the insane experiences of lead protagonist Trevor Reznik portrayed by Christian Bale. Bale performs as an industrial worker who has failed to sleep for over a year causing him to question his own sanity.
The films genre is classified equivalent to our own, also recognised as a Psychological thriller. A second similarity between 'The Machinist' and 'Lily' is that both lead characters experience trauma which impacts their mental state. Both characters are also classified as outsiders as they are misunderstood by others. In addition to these similarity factors both themes include dark themes and death finalising their likeness.
'The Machinist' received excellent reviews placing second on IMDb's top 100 psychological thrillers including fan praise toward's Bale due to his determination within weight loss for the role.'The Machinist's success was also celebrated through the nomination of 10 awards as well as 10 wins.
After consideration I decided to research into similar short films considering the project we will be producing is a short film also. This will allow me to discover comparisons between story line, context, themes and cinematography on a smaller more comparable scale.
'ABE' (Director Rob McLellan 2013) is a 2013 short film, it is a tense psychological thriller following the story of a misunderstood robot searching to find love in all the wrong places. The antagonist 'Abe' has previously experienced rejection and since has vowed to test women he falls in love with and kill them if the love is unrequited. Whilst analysing the short film I realised many more genre conventions are used in contrast to a feature length film. This is because short films have a limited running time to convey their genre and themes to the audience juxtaposed to feature length films. For example 'The Machinist' featured 101 minutes of running time whereas 'ABE' only had 8 minutes.
Iconography within the short film includes knives and blood, the setting also fits psychological thriller stereotypes as it is in a dark abandened area. This iconography symbolises the theme of the short as well as creating obvious context which is easily translated by the audience, the robot wants revenge for being unloved.
'ABE' replicated the success of 'The Machinist' despite the short time scale. The film remained precise and clear throughout with an easy to follow story line. These aspects awarded the film with number 48 on IMDb's Most Popular Thriller Short Films. Following the internet's appreciation of 'ABE', receiving 60,000 views on Youtube, the short is now being created as a feature length film by MGM.
Through researching similar films I am now aware that through producing a short film well using genre conventions the context and themes of our short film will be clear to the audience despite a limited running time. I am now aware that the success of a film is dependant on how it is made not how long and in depth the story line is although uniqueness of a storyline does contribute to success.
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