Short Film Research- Room 8

Room 8 is a short film that cleverly uses the idea of a location and scale to manipulate the characters form. By focusing on the single room, with the quiet older man reading a book, and the furniture being no more than a metal desk and bunk beds, we as an audience establish a sense of security within the 4 square walls.

Camera Shots


The establishing shots is extremely important in this short film, the low angle shots of grey brick walls, with barbed wire curled around the top instantly puts us, the audience in a position of misunderstanding, it possess questions of how and why the character has been placed into this situation, and what is the situation itself? The shot then fades to an image of a tall wall of a building, with equally spaced barred windows. It is at this point we realise the location of this short film, a prison. The scene then invisibly cuts to the main location of the short film, a prison cell. As the two character first begin to converse we see close up, and mid shots used between shot reverse shots, this convention use of filming is an effective one as it both shows us the point of view of the character, but also allows use to see how they respond to the speech or the point of view itself. Furthermore, it is not till later in the film we first see the face of the antagonist, prior to this we in fact only see the back of his body as it is hunched over the desk. This is a conventional method is used often in thrillers as it creates a shadowed or mysterious character to the audience, and often adds to the suspense we already are feeling, or on the other hand first hints at us that this person maybe the root of the evil beings at hand.

As the ‘box’ becomes more and more obviously important the use of gradual zooms seems to also increase, this most likely has been done by the director in order to aid the suspension we would already be feeling, it seems to again exaggerate the questions we as pondering as an audience, and creates a bridge between us and the character themselves as we visually see them doing the same. Also, it seems the use of extreme low angle shots are vitally used, this evidently has been done to keep the box, and ceiling in shot in order to allow the audience to see the effect it has, although in the process of this we also see the protagonists response to the situation and how the them go on to act upon this.

Sound

During the initial establishing shot, the use of the diegetic speech is critical to our understanding of the context in which this drama is set. The diagesis of the uncredited extras who act as prison guards gives us as an audience an ability to not only see the environment in which the film lies, but also sets a definite tone for the rest of the drama to follow on to. An example of this tone is within the non- diegetic screech of the violin as the main protagonist begins to understand what it is that this box can do.

Editing

Reaction shots are used heavily; this mostly is because of the nature of this drama, by this I mean the box and the character first witnessing the power it holds proves to be key to how the rest of the film plays out, furthermore by the audience being able to visually see the cause and effect of the situation they are able to relate, understand and most importantly emotionally respond to what happens within the story. Shot reverse shots are also used often in this short drama, this is important because of the lack of characters used throughout the story means that the two shown need to form some sort of relationship in order for the story to move onto the ‘box’. In addition this technique is also used when the box comes into the story, although the shot in not used between the two characters, but rather again to show the cause and effect of the box being opened.

Mise En Scene

Low key lighting is used extensively within this short film, this creates an initial, but also continually noticeable vibe of a dark and mysterious nature within this short film. This has been used as it seems to reflect the ideas surrounding both the box and the antagonist who we can assume owns the box.

Very grey- matchbox stands out more.