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.
