Lucky 13: PJ, TINY PLANET EXPLORER
This was one of the first short films I viewed on Virgin Media Shorts for this particular task which I initially liked from the start over all of the others I watched. The film is in fact one of the winners of Virgin Media's shorts entry's, winning the title of People's Choice Award. The narrative is so original and I can identify they have revolved it around a specific camera effect to create the effect of looking like a world, which I believe portrays the plot point. I find it a very interesting and creative style for a short film, like every short film to have it's own original stylisation.
As it says above from the films own description, it is about "a boys journey through the universe to find a wondrous new planet to explore". He encounters mini planets on his journey and when it comes to settling down on his chosen planet, it was ruined by his lack of preparations consisting of insufficient items he packed.
I would say the social groups relevant for the film are teenagers wanting to achieve a dream of theirs or an ambition, but collapses on them possibly due to naivety or lack of in-dependency. I find the character is represented as quite a nerdy teenager (without stereo-typing) judging by his original but random possessions, for example a Nintendo game boy, florescent wayfarers, a yo-yo and others. I think the film writer wanted to steer away from representing a 21st century teenager to engage young adults that obtain memories from these items that they would have grown up with. I think he represents the identity of particular social groups. The objects suggest to me that the character is quite childish rather than being mature about moving away.
As I am already aware, the film categorises its genre as an Action/Adventure which I can agree on, but I believe it has aspects of comedy that is implied through the characters dialogue with a sense of humour. Short films often use hybrids that combine more than one genre within the film, some shorts can't even be recognised as a single genre but there are no boundaries. Steve Neale's theory of repetition and differences has a lot of relation to the Tiny Planet Explorer as it holds conventions belonged to other genres rather than only referring to action adventure. Neale argues that "difference is essential to economy genre", in other words, for it to survive. Texts will repeat some of the codes and conventions for recognition but may be altered in an unfamiliar fashion to be unique.
The effect of presenting the film in a linear structure is positive as it makes the film understandable. I think if it were to be in non-chronological order it will cause confusion for the audience, I certainly wouldn't understand the moral of the story if it were to be in reverse.
The film maker has an additional Youtube channel where he has a humble following of 100,000 subscribers. I did take a look at his channel and it does consist of many random videos run by his imagination. I can identify he is amateur to the film industry and does the majority of the film making in the comfort of his own home.
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