Short Film Cinematography Critique: She Deserved It

I watched the short film "She Deserved It" from the short film horror series Black Box TV. This episode follows a young man faced with troubling decisions that can either make him both a winner and a loser at the same time by choosing either wealth or family.

I chose this short film because of the way it drowns out color in the beginning. The constant grays, white, and black at the beginning foreshadow a depressing ending before we even know the subject of the story. The color in the shots can also be connected to the characters because toward the beginning, the characters are fairly expressionless, showing no signs of having a familial relationship. However, as the story goes on and we learn more about the characters, their faces are less gray and more full of color as the characters really come to life.

The opening shots show us extreme close-ups of an injured, unconscious lady, and then we see the full shot of the dirty young woman in black clothes on a snow-white bed. This darkness on whiteness suggests the personality of the woman. She, representing dark colors, is a disgrace to an otherwise "honorable" family, representing white colors.

The shaky camerawork heightens the intensity of the film, as well. During this scene with the old man, it is very dark inside, with little light on his face, while it is light outside. This implies how the character is stuck inside his thoughts, unable to free his mind of the current situation. This is also supported by the shot of the old man gazing out of the window, suggesting the old man's desire to free himself of his family's disgrace--to relieve himself of his misery.

There seems to be a particular highlight on the man's glass in his hand, supposedly alcohol, that fuels his depression.

The way the young man and the old man are placed in relation to each other represents a strained relationship. The slightly worm's-eye angle is meant to highlight the importance of the situation while the Dutch angle is meant to peak our interest and remind us that something in this room is or is about to be "off".

The close-ups during this dialogue scene involve a worm's-eye angle of the old man and an eye-level angle of the young man, thus establishing the old man's authority.

Also, there is occasional rack focus, but much of the film is in soft focus. Its contribution to the overall meaning of the film is that nothing matters outside of the characters. This family is isolated in their dilemma, leaving no room for escape. Also, the shot of the young man and his reflection in the mirror "mirrors" the way the young man has to look back on himself to find what really matters to him.

It is also unique in this scene how upon the entrance of the old man, we don't see his face until heartlessly says, "it's quiet and painless". This ultimately reveals how we are meant to feel about the old man, especially with the worm's-eye angle looking up at him and eagle's-eye angle looking down at him.

The extreme Dutch angle in the last scene as the men walk in tries to make us feel how the young woman would feel by putting us in a similar physical position of the woman in relation to the men. We see this again when the young man is about to put the pillow on his sister.

The point-of-view shot of the young man as he walks in shows how hard killing his sister would be on him because he can't even stand to look at her in the face.

This is supported by the following jump cuts of the young man contemplating and walking back and forth, in and out of focus. The worm's-eye angle looking up at the young man foreshadows a new source of authority when the young man finally speaks his mind to his father.

Basically, the film's stylistic elements are neutral colors, shaky camerawork, and an emphasis on focus and angles, which all work to reflect the focus on character thought rather than the physical space the film takes place in. The pillow has no meaning because it is the young man's mind we care about until the end when the style is contradicted by the action (with the waking up of the girl and the gun) surprising the viewer.

"Discovered" Production Portfolio

Rationale

Jenevieve, Isabella, and I hoped to create a film about how one aspect of a girl's life sets her off to imagine herself as a horrible person willing to go so far as murder. We also wanted to add a twist, though where hat aspect, the mother, turns the tables on the girl. We wanted a style with an emphasis on expression and action rather than dialogue. It is meant for an audience more interested in the journey than the outcome, but still enjoys a surprise at the end, which is also why I feel it was a good idea.

Word Count: 100

Commentary

I was the writer, editor, and co-sound designer/editor. I had these roles in preproduction and postproduction because I was absent for the production aspect.

Challenges as a writer were coming up with a plausible story because our original idea involved a girl hearing voices that tell the girl to kill. I was inspired by “Black Swan” to write that version. I thought it was really interesting how she was overcome by her evil side. However, there was no motivation behind it in our version. Then I brought Jenevieve and Isabella with me back to the drawing board. In my original treatment, there was a scene including the mother. We were reminded of “Black Swan” and Nina’s increasingly bad relationship with her mother, so we decided to use that as a basis. The only challenge I found with the 2-column script was that I didn’t put enough shots in the dream sequences to carry out the actions in a more fluidly. Luckily, Jenevieve and Isabella improvised on those parts.

The most troublesome things I had to work with as an editor were some shots where the tripod can be seen. Those two tripod shots just happened to be ones where there was only one take. The first one is of Jenevieve's mom (mother) drinking the water with the crushed pills. I couldn't do anything about that one, so it is just standing very obviously in the background for about 3 seconds.

The next one I just cut out. It not only showed the tripod, but Jenevieve's brother, who played toxic exposure detective in the last scene, was sitting on the couch watching television. This was a shot when Marie ran to the garage door when she heard the mother coming. It was a match-action cut of the front of Marie heading toward the door to the back of Marie heading toward the door (which was the messed-up shot). I just cut out the latter and added the sound of a door closing in order for people to understand. I also had a little trouble with the last scene because of the shots I had available. For most of the takes, the potential murder weapons weren't even on the table, so I only had a couple of shots to use. Also, the shots of Marie I had didn't always match with each other. I just had to settle with the full shot that zooms in, but it went too fast so I slowed it down. The I cut to the mother, I cut back to a close up of Marie, and then I cut to a close up of the mother.

As a sound designer/editor, I had challenges with what music should go where because we had several selections, but we weren't sure if we should have some sort of leitmotif for Marie. In the editing process, I decided to create a piano composition from garage band for the reality scenes and eerie music for the dream scenes. Another problem I had was with the knife scene. In our script, evil mother is supposed to be chatting on the phone as off-screen sound that Marie is heading toward. When I heard mother's laugh in the raw footage, I thought it sounded creepy and I couldn't make it sound like diegetic noise in a phone conversation since it was just the laugh by itself, so I just added the sound of a phone ringing (findsounds.com) a few seconds before the laugh to make it sound a little less random. However, this laugh was useful as non-diegetic noise during the last shot of the film, a closeup of the mother smiling at Marie. One last challenge was with the tripod shot that I cut out when Marie is heading towards the garage door. I just solved this by fading to black and introducing the next scene. Another major issue was that Jenevieve and Isabella had trouble capturing the dialogue in the first scene. I had to use the gain effect on Final Cut Pro so that one could hear what Marie and evil mother are saying, but there is a lot of distracting static for those few seconds.

Problems for the film as a whole had to do with the production. First of all, I couldn't be at our location (Jenevieve's house) to help with anything, such as clarifying anything in the script that Jenevieve or Isabella didn't understand. This was resolved by interpreting the shots in their own way. We also had trouble finding an actor to be the father at the last minute because he was originally supposed to be Jenevieve's uncle, who doesn't have an accent. I worked out fine with Jenevieve's dad, though.

The person who played the step mother had trouble saying her lines because of her accent. She also had difficulties portraying the evil mother because she is normally very cheerful and kind.

The opening shots are a mysterious introduction to what the film will be about.

The dialogue has a lot of static. The song selection for the scene is solemn, which is fitting for the girl sitting down. The sound of the door closing does not sound very realistic. The sound effect and fade out/fade in transition is fitting, and the black and white effect is good for separating reality and dream.

Jump cuts help the time pass more quickly in the scene with the pills, but some of the shots are too long and should be captured from different angles.

The tripod in the shot is distracting from the point of the shot-- that the mother is about to accidentally overdose on her medication. The silhouette of the girl at the sink is effective in expressing her deep thought about whether she really matters to her mother-- blacking her out is like making her seem like she's becoming the evil one and it's dramatic.

The change in music along with the girl's expression helps get across what she is thinking about. The acting is good because she is twirling the knife in her hand as she ponders. The raising of the knife in her hand is unrealistic, however. The creaking is an interesting effect to add to the anxiety. The shadow on the wall is dramatic, but the phone ringing takes away from it. The laugh sounds awkward for the scene. The motion of the girl when she puts the knife on the table works well with the music because it emphasizes what the girl is planning on doing.

The zooming in on the washing machine and its sound is hypnotic and emphasizes that the girl is in thought.

When the girl wraps the scarf around her hand and glances up the stairs is good acting because it represents that she is becoming the evil one. The dark lighting on her face represents how she is unrecognizable from how she appeared to be in the first scene.

It is unrealistic that the mother would be standing doing nothing as the girl approaches. There is good acting when we see a glimpse of the girl's hand outstretched beside the laundry basket, as well as when she picks up the scarf and just holds it before finally leaving the room because it represents her intensity about the situation.

The laugh is effective in expressing the mother's truly wicked ways.

Word Count: 1,239

Supporting Evidence

-our treatment

- our 2-column script

-for the lack of adequate shots for the dream scenes, which Isabella and Jenevieve improvised with

- our beloved actors

- and their roles

- some major locations for the film: the garage with the washing machine and scarf, the hallway where Marie does a major part of the knife and scarf scenes, and the creaky stairs Marie climbs with her murder weapons

- blocking diagrams used to set up each scene so Isabella and Jenevieve were prepared

- some of our props (excluded: sunglasses, suit, scarf, and spoons)

- Jenevieve and Isabella's plan for shooting the film