Recent discussion in class has had me a bit concerned about preparation for my own idea, I’m not exactly very far into development of it. Worlds and their ‘internal logic’ have been a point of focus and I want to look into how these rules can be established within short films as opposed to feature length films. I feel as if features have much more time to freely dedicate to setting them up, whereas shorts are quite constrained and can therefore struggle to both establish a world and tell a compelling story. An example of a feature-length film that does a great job at showing its world to the audience is Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone. The film is afforded the entire first act of a 2 hour and 39 minute running time to display the rules and ‘social norms’ of the muggle and wizarding worlds.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (2001) Source: http://www.empireonline.com/movies/harry-potter-philosopher-stone/review/

Vernin and Pertunia’s strong negative feelings towards Harry and his magical background show that muggles fear wizards, and the ‘secret entrance’ through the brick wall to platform 9 and 3/4 tells the audience that the large majority of muggles are unaware and ignorant of the wizarding world altogether. These are ways of establishing a world without clunky expositional dialogue that takes the audience out of the film, but these require time, and even more is required to tell a story within this world that has been established. When thinking about how I’m going to establish a world for my final assessment, I’ll face the challenge of juggling between helping the viewer understand the world and not falling into the trap of writing poorly done exposition, and I hope I can pull it off well enough.