A main prominent convention seen in dramatic short film is found in the narrative structure of the piece of a recurring main theme of love. There are different types of love seen in the short films I focused on, in I Am Butterfly by Carlos Florez it explores the theme of family love. In Forever In My Dreams by Sawyer Hartmen, Love Of Mine by Navajo Joe and Gone Goodbye by Kieth Rivers they all focus on relationships and romantic love. In all four films I watched there is the theme of the love been taken away, by kidnapping in I Am Butterfly, death in Forever In My Dreams, and unrequited love in Love Of Mine and Gone Goodbye. The majority of the films used the main protagonist as the person who had lost love; however in Gone Goodbye the protagonist is the person who had left, giving us another side of a story, and positing the audience on the side of the heartbreaker, breaking the common conventions of dramatic short films. Gender doesn’t seem to make a difference when it comes to the level the audience empathize with the protagonist, however in I Am Butterfly the main protagonist being a young girl around four years old, does automatically make the audience more emotive. Many audiences will find the different themes and protagonist more emotive than others, many parents will find I Am Butterfly more emotive because of the theme of family love and the protagonist being a young girl. Other audiences, such as people who have lost a loved one, will find Forever In My Dreams more emotive because of the theme of love being lost through death. Younger audiences, focusing more with teenage audiences, will find Love Of Mine more emotive because of the main protagonist being a teenage girl; however many audiences at some stage of their lives could have felt unrequited love making Love Of Mine the film they feel most emotive with because they can sympathize with the protagonist.
The music is a major convention is gaining emotion in audiences, in most films it is either slow piano music, classical guitar, or modern soft rock. I personally believe modern soft rock or indie genre music would be the most effective in creating emotion in people, because people will listen to this music when they are upset therefore unconsciously conditioning themselves to feel upset when they hear this music, so when they hear this music when watching a film they will unconsciously already feel emotive. The use of flashbacks seems to be a key convention in three out of the four short films I watched. In Love Of Mine and Forever In My Dreams the flashbacks are used to show how they were once happy and, joined with the wide shots seen when we see them in present tense, how they are not happy now. The use of close ups, extreme close ups and wide shorts is an important to convey the emotion of the character, the wide shot to be used to show they are alone and the close ups so we can see the emotions in their face. The quiet echo of laughter is used in Love Of Mine and I Am Butterfly could be used to show a divide between the past and present (How they felt when they had love and how they feel now they don’t) making it an effective feature. The voiceovers used in Gone Goodbye and I Am Butterfly are key conventions because they audience is automatically positioned on their side and they will empathize with the protagonist because they will feel closer to them. However the use of no dialogue in Forever In My Dreams is an effective convention because combined with the theme of death it could be conveying his emotions, like he does not know what to say; however personally I believe using a modern soft rock song would be more effective than piano music but this could be hard to on a low budget film because of copyright and legality reasons.
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