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.