Julian Paolo T.

Biyo

201701095

Short film reaction paper

The collection of short films opened my eyes to two lessons about the use of short films.
The first is the sheer versatility of the platform. Despite each film being only within the span of a
few minutes, they manage to tell vastly differing subject materials and themes. The three key
types of short films we were presented were those used for propaganda, for artistic purposes, and
for advertising. The first category is what I’d say is arguably the most straightforward of the
bunch. Propaganda films like Der Fuhrer’s Face were very heavy handed in the kind of message
they wanted to portray. Most propaganda films tend to exaggerate the characteristics of certain
portrayed demographics either to make them look better, or in the case of the aforementioned
film, worse. Examined under a vacuum, the short doesn’t stray much from similar kinds of
cartoons of its time period, the biggest difference really is the overt use of Nazi imagery done in
a way to paint them as slave drivers. On the topic of the short, and on the topic of famous
characters used in propaganda, it really depends on the personality of the character if it was
something I feel like was contradictory or not for their personality. In Donald Duck’s case, I
never really saw any strong political beliefs he espoused so seeing him in anti-nazi propaganda
wasn’t nearly as jarring and his actions throughout the short proved consistent with his character.

The second category of shorts, the artistic award winners, had more leeway to be less
direct with their message, and in turn could tell a more vague yet emotional tale that lets the
users piece together what the message of the film was rather than spoonfeed it to you. Films like
negative space and guida made use of a lot of repeated imagery and symbolism to tell you its
themes. That said, there were some films that overlapped with the heavy-handedness of
propaganda films such as the anti-consumerist message of happiness.

On the topic of consumerism comes the last category of shorts, the shorts used for
advertising. While all of the shorts under this category try to tell the same message of “buy this
product” or “invest in this service”, they do it by telling you a self-contained story in order to
emotionally draw you in before presenting their brand just like how heathrow ads with their cute
bear characters, and the chipotle ad’s cute love story.

That said, the one thing all three categories of films taught me was that within the span of
only a few minutes, one can still tell a full story and get their message across regardless of what
that message’s purpose is.