Short Fiml analysis

HOIST - horror short film from Promesto on Vimeo.

This is a short 5 minute film called HOIST produced by Promesto. It is filmed in Greenwich foot tunnel under the river Thames in East London. This film creates lot of suspense for the viewer, one the main contributors to this are the location of the tunnel itself.

The tunnel looks like somewhere you would not want to be walking through by yourself especially at night. The darkness and emptiness of the location creates a great sense of tension, so i think they chose a great location for this short film. There is a lot of fast camera movement in this film which is kind of disorientating and confusing but also creates great tension as it makes you feel that your following the character and they themselves are confused and lost in the tunnel. When the camera movement slows down the music also heps to set an eerie mood which is slightly frightening. There are a number of different types of shots used the most effective are close up panning shots which follow the character as he is almost running away from a dark presence. Another thing that i think creates tension is that you never see the characters face it just seems like he is running away from something and it's just like you are watching a chase.

The only thing that disappointed me was the ending as there was great tension created which built up in the start and middle of the film which just lead to a to a confusion of whats going on at the end where a load of people just appear and there is lots of tilting of the camera angles at the end and blood splatters everywhere.

Weather shots write up

18th September 2009

This week we made short films about our given topic the weather. These were all one shot films, in total we did 3: A close up shot, a medium shot and a long shot.

First we had to draw out basic visuals and story boards including the camera framing, angles and movement. These helped with timing of the scene and assists crew members during production for framing the action.

Our first shot included a close up of a man with an umbrella going for a walk in the park on a windy day. As the weather was more calm than windy we improvised by throwing leaves at him whilst he walked and him having to act as if it was windy by acting out a struggle with his umbrella. For our first shot we framed the camera for a close up shot and was on a horizontal angle and showed the characters head and shoulders. We used continuous slow camera movement from right to give the viewer a good feel for the location and mood of the film.

Our second shot was of two people, a man and a woman sunbathing on a bench in the park. As it was a particularly sunny day this was easily done and really portrayed the warmth and welcoming of the sunny weather.This was our medium shot and was a continuous shot starting with a view of the sun behind a tree with its branches waving in the wind which gave a very calm sense. The camera was then slowly moved down on to the people enjoying the warm weather sitting on a bench in the park. The camera was again on a straight horizontal angle for the whole shot. This shot could have been improved by using more slow camera movement as it was slightly rushed and didn't really portray what we wanted it to.

Our third and final shot was a long shot, this included slow continuous camera movement from left to right filming a calm location by the river also including a swan and the cloudy sky. We started filming a cloudy sky at an upright tilted angle and moving down onto filming the whole stretch of the river and a swan swimming past giving the viewer a sense of tranquility and peace.

I think the shot that worked the best was our first shot because the camera movement and angling was done just right and all in time whereas our other two shots we're less focused and some of the camera movement was rushed and filmed to fast, therefore didn't really portray the feeling towards the viewers that we wanted them to.

We had half an hour to film all 3 shots therefore if i could change anything i would have liked more time and to have taken more time in filming, but overall think this was a good try for our first time.