Short FIlm Analysis - Callum

Virgin Media Shorts - The Result 

The first film I looked at was a Virgin Media short film called The Result. This film starts off with a woman who looks small compared to the desk she is sat at. She appears to be professional as she is dressed in high class clothes, not casual clothing. Her high status is reinforced when she uses an intercom to call someone in.

The camera then cuts to the man called in, and shows him walking down stairs and through the door, at which point the camera focuses on the door plaque, reading 'Dr Sharp'.

Following this there is a series of shot reverse shot, including the dialogue 'we have the results' and 'its bad news', giving a sense that the man may be dying. However this presumption is broken when the Dr says 'You cannot sing', and the man is devastated.

This focus on sound immediately brings to the attention the lack of non-diagetic sound in the film; everything is silent other than noises that would be heard in the room, which echo around. At the end a young girl walks in, dressed in white and smiling. This could be seen as she is innocent and about to be crushed, or that she is a hope for the world that is apparently fixated on performance ability.

Short film 2: The Elevator.

In this film, the main character is initially unknown. It shows a lift that slowly gets more and more crowded by overweight people, until a man gets out a calculator and estimates the weights of people.
This is done by showing a close up of the person in question, then the phone he is using as he adds up their estimated weights.

This culminates in a result of 2001lbs, at which point the camera cuts to a shot of a warning in the lift saying 'Max Weight 2000lbs'.

 At the next floor, the door opens and a seemingly slim man is shown. He then moves and an extremely overweight man is shown walking towards the camera, in show motion with apocalyptic music.

The man exits the lift and gets in another, which appears safe. Once inside, people start coughing and sneezing, and on the next floor the doors open to a sign saying 'Swine FLu Clinic', which is shown in a close up.