Small Moments
Tartan Shorts Production Company
Jeremy Raison


In class we watched an eight minute short film about 'morality and the small precious moments that we take for granted'. The film uses many of the codes and conventions of short films however at times challenges them.


The film uses a number of visual motives throughout; the main one is clocks and this links in with the concept of time- this is the main theme of the film. All of the characters, one way or another, are looking at clocks, checking the time during the duration of the film. 


Another key visual motif is colour. Colours are used symbolically in the film to forebode what happens at the end and to allow us to understand more about the characters:


RED: A bottle of red nail varnish spills all over the table, however at first glance it looks like blood. This forebodes the terrible ending of the film.
The little girl in the film receives a red balloon from her father. Although balloons are not at all menacing or scary, later on the colour holds symbolic significance.
YELLOW: The little girl in the film is wearing a yellow dress throughout the film. This colour connotes happiness, sunshine and youth. However this all shatters at the hands of time.


A technique used which challenged the codes and conventions of short films was the number of narratives that were included in this eight minute film. Commonly, there is one main narrative and we see this storyline through from beginning, to middle to end. However in Small Moments there are three narratives which in the end tie in to become one main narrative. 
There are seven characters which are all vital in their own way; this too is unusual as in short films, due to the length, there are usually only three to four characters. However, although conventions were challenged, Raison successfully made his film in such a way that at no times were there distractions or confusions between narratives.