Film 2- Megan

Touch

(click on title to view film)

 The short film 'touch' focuses on telling a couples life story through the use of their hands.

Narrative:

beginning of the film- flashback

It has a circular storyline: it begins showing an older woman closer her eyes as if having a flashback, before we see her life of how she met her husband and their life together. At the end of the film we see her granddaughter meeting a man through the same way as her grandmother did- beginning with a handshake.
I like how the film is silent until the end with the non-diegetic music in the background because it shows that love needs no words.

Genre:

Meeting

Intimacy

Pregnancy

Marriage

We can tell the genre for this film is drama/romance because of the way the two main characters are a man and a woman. An enigma code in this short film to hint to us about the genre is the way close ups are used to show the use of hand touching and tenderness between characters. From the title of the film 'touch' we can tell that the film is about how love develops through the use of touch.
Hand touching is used to show love through a variety of ways: handshakes, dancing, sex, pregnancy, marriage and children.




Cuts are used as ellipsis throughout the film to show 50 years of a lifetime in the space of 2 minutes. A way that time is shown to have passed is through clothes changing, aging and different settings.

Growth of their child through the use of cuts as an ellipsis

Audience: 

 

This film doesn't seem to have a main demographic audience, but rather a psycodynamic audience- this film is suited for people who are into love and romance which is mostly woman is their middle 20s-30s however that doesn't rule out that men and other age groups would also enjoy watching a love story.

 

Media Language:

Close up

Towards the end of the film we see the circular narrative occur where at the beginning the woman had her eyes closed, a close up is used to show her opening her eyes as if coming back to reality. We can tell it is back to reality as this is where the narrative of the story begins and diegetic words are spoken- firstly from a man who appears to be a painter- which we can tell from his paint splattered overalls- in his middle ages. The non-diegetic music is still in the background showing that she is still in her daydream of her husband being alive and a small part of her always is- we can also see this by the extreme close up of her eyes showing sadness.

Eye-Line match

Eye-line match is used as the painter and decorator is panning the room as a POV shot before we set eyes on a photo-frame of her husband, maybe symbolizing that he is always there. Shot reverse shot is used between the painter and the granddaughter as they meet to show interest between each other in their body language and facial expressions.

Circular Narrative

The last shot show is a close up of the guy holding his hand out for the girl to shake- just as the beginning of the short film begun.

What I thought:

 

I like the way the film uses flashbacks to tell the story: this is a technique that I used in my thriller opening last year and is a technique I would like to try again and improve. I also like the way the non-diegetic music sets the mood for the story- as if you want to cry because of the way the story is told without any words. Emotion is conveyed through facial and body expressions rather than words which I liked because it makes it different but in a more interesting way. I also like the idea of a circular narrative as it keeps the audience guessing where you're starting in the story and right at the beginning it makes you wonder how a character came to be in that position.