Walk by Edwin Mingard
The simple description for Walk is 'a young woman leaves her friends and heads into the city at night'. I feel that this description is lackluster, I see a vivid short-film that personifies the city, the underground train station and also skyscrapers. It makes you look at things in a completely different way.
The everyday clothing and ambient lighting makes the film even more relatable, the constant change of perspective gives a better outlook on what's happening. Although, it’s not always clear. Sometimes it's fairly confusing. The film follows a girl, she seems fairly anxious at a dinner party with friends so decides to leave. She ventures to the tube station which is closed meaning she has to walk her way home. She constantly questions 'what is this place?' a sort of metaphor for her travels and her life. She's questioning why she’s at that place in life. She’s talking to herself, this was really smart as it shows that she's not fully aware of what’s happening around her yet her dialogue co-relates to her thoughts. The change from the camera facing the front and the camera facing the back gives us a more personal outlook but also gives us the third-person perspective as if we were following her. Often her inner monologue will affect the outside as people answered her questions, this is apparent as the sound goes from being muffled to sharp ambient sounds.It makes the audience ask many questions like “why do we invest in another person’s opportunity?” As you finish the film you begin to realise that a lot of the girl’s situations seemed premeditated like she states, she missed the train on purpose. This then gives the illusion that certain situations in life happen due to us making specific decisions which is very true.
Although being somewhat confusing it gives us a pretty clear outlook on life, the naturalistic filming, sound and lighting produces an immersive and thoughtful short-film.
https://www.depict.org/2017/walk/?category_request=2017
The Creator by Anton Dushkin.
This stop-motion film put together by Dushkin is a greatly philosophical film following the idea of people taking things from others until there's nothing left to take.
It begins with two plasticine people, they're both the same in stature and physique. One is red and one is blue. The red one realises it has the ability to form beautiful flowers from its body, the blue tries to copy but ends up ruining himself. As the red creates more the blue person begins to take them and rub them into himself making him bigger. It makes him look extremely messed up. The red man gets smaller every time the blue man takes something, a metaphor of when sometimes people make things that are beautiful but others take them in order to make themselves bigger and more powerful. The story escalates to a point where the remains of the red man turn into a large group of flowers, the blue man simply removes those last flowers and splatters them over himself. The blue man by this point is no longer blue, he's a mismatch of colours all blended and messy. Only a small piece of the red man is left so the blue man simply rolls over leaving literally nothing. The red man is completely gone.
It's deeply thoughtful and shows many ideas such as:
People taking things behind your back, People wanting to be like someone so much that they take everything away from that person leaving them with nothing and also the idea that every time a person makes something beautiful it's taken by someone else and made ugly but they don't care as it's made them a lot bigger, possibly a metaphor for ego.
I thoroughly enjoyed this film as it's smartly made. From the vast ideas that are all so implicit or the time taken to make such a short clip is unbearable. It shows many situations that occur in day to day life.
https://www.depict.org/2017/creator/?category_request=2017
The Dinosaur by Mateo Willis
At first glance this short-film seems like nothing, just a guy on a mountain getting up and looking into the distance yet when you begin asking questions it becomes far more concerning.
The film starts with an establishing shot, showing a vast mountain range which is great until the next shot. A medium shot reveals a man, lonely on the mountain sleeping with nothing more than a sleeping bag and a camp bed. A close up shows his face. It's very clearly cold as his face instantly turns red when he lifts his head from the sleeping bag. He's isolated. In this film it seems only ambient lighting is used, it emphasizes the idea that the guy is alone. There's no electronics around him or anything he could use to ask for help.
As far as costume is concerned he's naked, he stays inside the sleeping bag. Possibly to keep warm. The smooth panning of the camera widens the perspective of the mountains continually showing how large and barren it is. All you hear is the wind, an accurate representation of what you would hear if you were all alone in the mountain range.
The man does not seem scared or put off by his situation at all. He seems calm. In the later shots, he simply rests his head back down and looks up at the sky questioning what he'd witnessed. A subtle asset to the film yet the reason for its name is the Dinosaur that is shown down below, it's as if when the man looked down at it he then questioned whether what he was seeing was real or not. The CGI Dinosaur is almost unnoticeable unless you're really paying attention.
I really liked this film as only after watching a few times did I notice the Dinosaur possibly due to most of the shot being on the left so your attention is focused there.
https://www.depict.org/2017/the-dinosaur/?category_request=2017
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