TH
TALEN HAMILTON
MEDIA STUDIES A LEVEL
8098
Signs.
Ltd Productions
A lot of medium and close up shots are used in this film to capture the main characters facial expression. This helps to represent the character as there is no dialogue in this film to help the audience understand what kind of character he is. The shot above is a medium shot and just from these two screen grabs above you can see that the character is quite timid and shy as he has just been caught looking at the woman on the opposite escalator. His simplistic facial expression give us as the audience the impression that he is a man who goes to work everyday and doesn't enjoy his job or life, personally I feel that the director has chose his charcters very wisely in that the main prolific character has the ability to create this impression. In my short film I will try and use a character that looks awkward and non-amusive within my film, I will do this by creating character profiles of possible candidates for the main role in my film.
The mise en scene is especially important in this short film as the representation of aspects such as characters, props and costumes have to be really obvious as the film has no dialogue to help explain the narrative of the story. The narrative of the story is told through notes written on a piece of paper with a thick marker. The screen grabs above show the woman communicating with the man for the first time and the second screen grab shows how over time they’ve used the same communication technique from the notes props stuck on his fridge and the fact that he’s kept them means that he obviously has feelings for the woman. The woman must also feel remotely the same too as she is also sending messages back to him, however the mood of the film changes when the woman puts up a sign explaining she has something to tell the man, in which he reacts by confusion.
I don’t think that the lighting in this film is very well thought out as the shot on the left is at the beginning of the film where the character is sad and lonely and the lighting doesn’t represent that feeling, and then the shot on the right shows the character at the end of the film feeling happy and the lighting used is the same as the other shot. Time is represented through following the characters daily routine. The screen grab the left is of the male getting up and getting ready for work and the position of the shot shows the window in it so we knows it morning. The screen grab on the right shows the character going to bed and we can tell its night time by looking at the window situated in front of the main character.
