'Risk It' - Student Made short film

'Risk It' is a student made teen short film, I'm interested in the teen genre so have decided to research into it. The link is below...

I found that this film had quite a slow start, the scene was set early on of a boy coming out of a high school, however I think the student that made this dwelled on that and the whole process of walking home too much. For example, there was a shot of a school signed traffic light, then a school, followed by 3 school signs then a shot of a school bus leaving before we even see the boy beginning to walk home. I believe this can make the film boring before it has even started.

To add to this, for a film aimed at teenagers, the music is slow paced and almost too relaxing which paired with the above, is not a good recipe for keeping the audience enticed.

We see the main character (boy 1) spot a double sided coin reading either "risk it" or "play it safe" and we see him ignore the coin chucking it away. Then he has a phone call with his friend which seems slightly unrealistic as there seems to be an intense conversation about whether or not boy 1 is going to ask his date to be his girlfriend - something that would usually be a light hearted conversation for teenagers. This phone call ends as the friend advises boy 1 to "flip a coin or something" in order to decide what to do to, which is where the boy dramatically hangs up the phone and runs to find the coin he previously chucked away in order to flip it and then decide to risk it.

Overall I think the producer has made the narrative a lot more dramatic that it suits, making it unrealistic or something the audience won't take seriously. One thing I do think works well however, is the very artistic shots throughout the film, for example when the camera moves focus from the phone in boy 1's hand to the coin.

There aren't any themes in particular in this short film as I feel too many irrelevant parts were dwelled on and it was relatively short. Theres not much dialogue at the beginning, only music, in fact all of the dialogue occurs during that one phone call, which is definitely something I would change.

Although theres many different shots of different parts of the school, there are two main locations, the friends room where we see him (the friend) talk to boy 1 on the phone, and the street/way home for boy 1.

I do understand the concept of this film however I did not enjoy it. It had the potential to be a good storyline however the music and dialogue as well as the long, slow shots ruined it slightly.

If I take any inspiration from this film to include in my final product it will be the artistic shots towards the beginning of this film.