Still Life with Smoke and Mirrors

Director :  Graham Young
Year : 2009 


We open with a still shot of a window which looks through to an indoor pool.The camera begins to slowly pull back revealing that the window is in fact a mirror which is reflecting the pool back to us which slowly as the camera continues to pull back makes sense. All the time this is happening there is non digectic sound of classical slow music with ghostly echoey sounds of children, and also water dripping, evoking the sort of sound quality you get inside a indoor public swimming pool. The visual is quite static except for passing shadows that come in through both the skylight and the windows. We see a white flicker gliding across the space which reappears nearer us; each time becoming more recognizable as a paper airplane this is also supported by the shadow of an airplane passing over head with the sound of distant plane engines. The Paper airplane is an animated image. Surprisingly we see the slow gathering of what looks like red rain, blood? but as it begins to gradually fall it becomes clear that the rain is actually red petals which fall both into the abandoned pool which is devoid of water and instead houses a pink container, and of the sides of the pool. Again the red petals look to of been put in after the film was shot and are animated. The film ends. All the time there is the sounds of echoey children voices denoting a sense of a super natural presence also evoked by the paper airplane. The scene conjures up a sense that something terrible has happened and we are looking at the aftermath.