The Plan

Director : Matthew Kallish

Year : 2008

The film deals with the difficulty in breaking out of a rut. This is a story of a young man who tries to escape his current life and find another. This includes leaving his girlfriend, Claudia. 

The film is shot in black and white. The film opens with a shot of a highway as if looking out of a rear view mirror, suggesting leaving.

 There is a V.O of the young man explaining ‘his plan’ to leave. We see him in his room packing. This is a hand held shot focusing on the contents of his hurriedly packed bag, which implies a impulsive decision rather than a planned journey. We see him chucking together what he thinks he might need such as tinned food, tapes, camera, vodka, ‘What I may need to sustain life.’ Lastly we see him rejecting a call from Claudia on his mobile phone. We hear her message, which is both insulting and full of contempt for his plan, describing it as ‘a phase.’ His response is to look at the phone and the V.O say’s and ‘to leave Claudia....for good this time.’ Again suggesting that his life is in a rut and he is escaping.

This cuts to a shot of him walking towards a bank, with the V.O saying that he will take all the money out of his account.

Next shot is a highway taken from inside the drivers P.O.V (through the window screen) followed by a shot taken at the side of the road showing cars passing. The V.O then reveals his plan, to go to Vegas ‘and put it all on red.’

Cut to white with the film’s title: The Plan.

Through most of the film there is a constant sound of soft non digetic music which inspires a feeling of tension that something is going to go wrong. We see him on the side of the highway taking photographs we see what he is shooting as a wide angle shot. Next location is a rest stop. He appears from the rest-stop observing a notice board, advertising a casino. We hear a  voice, ‘that’s a good casino.’ The camera pans round to reveal a pretty girl, a short pice of dialogue prevails, later he takes a picture of her, she gets upset and walks away. He returns to the car park ask’s a truck driver for directions. Suddenly she appears in shot and steals his camera, we see this through a high angle shot. He runs after her through a maze of trucks he comes out the maze and we experience his confusion /isolation mirrored by the use of an extreme wide angle shot with him being the only person we can see.  He gets back in the car hears the phone ring- see’s that it is his ex girlfriend and triumphs over the temptation to pick up. It’s now night and we see the glowing lights of the casino with the inference that he is about to enter. 

The casino is shot in very tight frames revealing only the various gaming tables such as the roulette table. It is clever because despite never seeing a casino setting by using a soundtrack of a busy casino sounds and the cross cutting of hands moving across tables of games we are convinced of the experience. We hear the croupier announcing that there were ‘No winners’ on the roulette table and by that we realise our protagonist has been unlucky and lost all his money.

We go back to the rest stop, the protagonist is slumped on a bench. The shot is a mid shot which looks hand held and documentary in style, as does a lot of the film.  A sound of a mobile and the camera goes to extreme close up on mobile. We hear Claudia’s voice pleading ’ Come home Mitch, just come home’ Although his facial expression registers pain and defeat he looks really pissed. As the audience we are expecting him to submit and turn around and go home.
However, as he looks away with the mobile still to his ear we see his eye focus on something out of shot. He sees a picture of himself on the noticeboard.  The music which we could no longer hear suddenly comes back to underscore the feeling of renewed energy and hope. The camera goes into POV. He turns the picture over and sees the words, ‘Now we’re even.’ and the address of where the thief  lives. The film ends with an establishing shot of his car driving on the high way, we are left to presume that he is driving towards the new girls place. Interestingly the car drives in the same away direction it has done the whole film which again establishes that he is breaking free and not returning home.

Symmetry

Director:  Everynone 

Year: 2011

This film has a rigid presentation of a split screen of equal size. So in effect we are watching two screens. The images shown oscillate between  opposites, for example cop and robber to people and things that seem to go naturally together such as salt and pepper, popcorn and movies. 

The film starts off showing almost humorous opposites, like cat and mouse as well as visual plays on words for instance we see a paint box with brushes that an artist would use and on the other screen we see a decorators kit. 

The short film then moves into a more reflective area, for instance we see a toddler walk across his screen reappearing on the other screen as an old person using a stick to walk across his screen, alluding to the life cycle, again this idea is repeated with the end shot where the camera looks down at a new born baby and a old person, both are in hospital type environments but one has just arrived whilst the other is dying or even dead, we can tell this by the diegectic sound of the medical equipment making a series of beeps that gradually slow down to one continuous beep. 

The split screen often shows two images that are opposite but as with the toddler becoming the old man the split screen is used to make a point, we see two cars, one in each screen, driving in different directions which in this case is towards each other.  We see a young boy in an arcade pointing a toy gun at a an older man in the other screen who is in the country also with a rifle pointing back at the child.  So the split screen allows for the images to combine.

The photography is quite static in style for instance we see a corn field, the shot is still but the corn is blowing in the wind. The same shot is then set up at night.  Other static shots use the frame to make the story, for example we see half a boys face and half a girls face in their respective frames which then creates a whole face and shows the natural symmetry. 

For all the shots there is growing and continuos non diegectic soundtrack of music which seems to get faster as the film progresses. This creates a strong sense of an unfolding story and manages to make it a cohesive story. There is also diegectic sound, for example the squeezing of the ketchup, the sounds of children crying,

I feel the theme of the entire film deals with the different stages of life and the naturally occurring symmetries that occur even when they are opposites such as man and woman or child and an adult.

Cross Over

Director: Max Witting 

Year: 2012 


The film is shot in black and white which has a high contrast, this gives the film a reflective feel which is unusual when dealing with this type of subject matter, urban youth on an estate. Adding to this quality of mood is the stillness of the opening establishing long shot. The camera is still almost like a photograph which gives a strong sense of a forlorn landscape, with the only movement being a passing cloud. This then cuts to a shallow focus shot of a   of a branch of a tree just coming into bud, we can just make out a blurry block of flats behind it. Until now all we have heard is external diegetic sound but there is then a J-cut and we hear hip hop music we do not yet know where it is coming from. Cut to a boys bedroom, we see a young man, the room is back lit. The boy is exercising, he then goes to a mirror, we get the mirrors POV which is a slight wide angle shot which adds to the humour of the boy painfully plucking his eye brows. His phone rings, we hear him arranging a place to meet, ‘down stairs’. Cut to long shot of a glass tower block designed so that we can see the stair case. As he is descends we can only see half of him which gives a 2D quality to the film, possibly it represents his internal reality; for he can only show his manliness in a  cliche costume of baseball cap and hoody. Cut to Mid-shot of two friends sitting on a wall, briefly we see the friends beat boxing this signals an almost loving bond, cuts to a close up  transaction of what we presume to be a drug deal. Our protagonist joins them, after a moment the boy who got sold the drugs goes back into frame to complain, their response to his complaint is to cal him homophobic terms of abuse, ‘Batty Boy’ and set on him, however the violence is not shown in a way that is particularly hard core but more low key every day as though violence or kicking some one to the ground is acceptable part of the day to day. During this scene the camera is moving in round the group in an arc shot.There is a brief cutaway of ground and we see a gust of wind blowing a plastic bag we then return to the two shot of the friends walking towards the camera. The perspective changes to seeing them from the back walking away. There is another cutaway this time a still life of the estate which is in juxtaposition position to the live action and reaffirms the films opening atmosphere. The boys move on, there is a brief location shot of an another tower block a low angle shot which tilts down to reveal a sad row of shops.Friend enters shop acts friendly towards the lady at the till as she turns to get him some cigarettes he makes off with a bottle of vodka. The two boys run. shot cuts to boys running towards camera with the external digetic sound of a police siren.  The boys are out of breath and appear to have run into a covered car park. The lighting is very low key. The continuity editing is a maybe a little confused for the bottle of Vodka that they had just stolen is almost empty. The most surprising part of the film is when the friend drags the protagonist behind a pillar, quickly scanning the area and pushes him against a wall, turns cap around and kisses him.The two friends walk off away from camera and a sudden burst of non digetic hip hop burst out and then black to credits.