Over (Jorn Threlfall, 2015) Upon reflection of this short film was interesting however while I was watching it I was quite bored due to the very slow pace. although I thought this it does seem intentional that the film was slow in pace - to suggest that people are desensitised to horrible events and to show how things just go back to normal - which is part of the reason the film is more appealing to think back on than it thought on my first viewing. the use of extreme long shots through the film really detaches the audience from the events of the film (which while it also gives a social commentary about how we have become distant from horrific events, such as this, and we are quick to forget them). this adds to the mystery in the film, we are shown the 'crime scene' from a distance but lead to try and figure out for ourselves rather than - like a typical crime drama - being 'guided' through by a detective character. in some ways as an audience we are positioned as ...
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Tight Jeans. Tight Jeans is a light comedy short film directed by Destiny Ekaragha and released in 2008. The main characters are three teens who are impatiently waiting for there friend sitting on a wall, a white man walks past wearing skinny jeans and they start to talk about how he can wear such tight jeans, the conversation seems light and friendly and they make lots of jokes about it. the film very much puts us in an observing position as most shots are mid three shots of all three men on the wall with only a few closer shots and some eyeline matches to highlight the tight jeans before they are discussed The scenario of a light conversation between friends lends itself to the genre of light comedy and shows that the narrative for a short film does not need to be complex. personally I did not enjoy the film that much, I didn't find most of it funny and the simple narrative needed the comedy to hold my interest, however it did show me that, with oth...
The Arrival The Arrival takes the form of a monologue, a woman walks into a café and sits down before we start to hear her internal monologue, the audience quickly learns that she is pregnant and waiting for the father so that she can tell him. the main conflict in the film is whether or not she will go through with the pregnancy, at first she seems fairly confident that she wont but throughout this begins to change, midway through a train comes past causing a lighting change which coincides with he woman changing her mind. this film actually reminded me a lot of operator in the fact that it relied very heavily on dialogue to indirectly tell a story rather than explicitly showing it on screen, it think that this technique could be something I could consider for my short however it in no ways makes it easier as the dialogue would have to be very good to pull it off.
Operator. operator is a short set in a fire station call centre, the plot is centred around one conversation between an operator and a mother who is trapped in a fire with her son. on the whole I found the film very interesting; the cinematography was fairly simple in the main conversation, close ups to show the emotion of the operator, and we never see the woman from the burning house however the dialogue is very clever in that it moves the narrative on as well as creating strong imagery - by the end of the film I realised that I had not focused on the actual mise-en-scene that much and instead was thinking about the mental image of the burning house. I think that all of this is clever because it very much puts us into the operators shoes; we know as much as she does, we feel for the woman in the fire as she clearly does but we are also very detached and when the call ends we get an anti-climax and a feeling of loss almost due to gaining an emotional attachment to the woman. ...
Echo (2011), Lewis Arnold Echo is a short film that focuses on a teenage girl who uses a phone call seemingly to con people, she pretends to be on the phone as the person on the other end tells her that her dad has had an accident and is in hospital. As the film develops it seems to suggest that this event really did occur and that she repeats it as a form of grief rather than for the money. The director uses an interesting narrative structure for the film, as the name Echo suggests their is a use of repetition - the 'backbone' of the structure is three of these phone calls. The use of repetition in the short film format is a good technique as, strangely it allows the filmmaker to demonstrate variety; the fact that each repeat feels so different and the director progresses the story and character while repeating the same action/event is impressive and interesting for viewers. the idea of repetition is also shown in the mise-en-scene, reinforcing it as a theme. The f...