The film revolves around a very simple idea, it only contains one character a middle aged male who drives to a lake. The most important factor in the film is the narration that goes on throughout, it starts with the line ‘Dear Katherine, I’m leaving you.’ So straight away we assume this is a a man talking to his wife probably in the form of a letter.
The opening shot is an establishing shot, it shows a car from the rear driving away from the camera on a rather empty country road. The shot begins to crane up and above the car so the camera is now giving a birds eye perspective on the car. The narration continues and the audience gets a good idea that the male narrator will be the one driving the car, music plays throughout the film in the background, it is a quiet, calming piano peace which adds to the calming feel of the film. The music matches the environment perfectly, the quiet country roads, a lonely car and very soothing music.
As the shot is tracking the car from above, on the lane of the road the title of the film is written, this is a very subtle way of putting the title in without having to seperate it from the film in a seperate shot. The narration is about how he is leaving his wife and he is telling her why and that he should have done it years ago, he has a deep, soothing voice that again fits with the calming feel of the film. The audience concentrates more on what he is saying and his voice manages to keep your attention and keep you listening. The shot continues to crane above it, slowly moving behind the car a little then returning further above and slowly wavering left and right along the lane of the road. The shot gives the feel that he is driving a long distance and has probably been travelling for a while.
55 seconds into the film the same shot is still being used, the car begins to get further away from the camera but then it pulls off the road and into a car park. The camera pans road still showing the car from a height using the same shot. One thing we notice here is that the camera is moving around a little more almost as if it was in a floating motion, it moves up and down, left and right slightly as well as moving further and closer away from the car. Also at the same time as this is happening the narrator is talking about there being ‘strings attached’ which doesn’t become clear until later on in the film. A man exits the car and the camera, still on the first shot moves around behind him just like it was the car and cranes around in the floating motion as it follows him walking.
After 1 minute 40 seconds the shot finally changes. I have always thought that you need to use a lot of shots with a wide variety, cut together quite quickly to keep an audience interested. Thats why I find this film very impressive because it manages to keep the audiences attention for so long even though it has only used one shot. This is mainly due to the narration throughout as well as the music and the beautiful looking environment. The shot it cuts to is again a very wide angle extreme long shot establishing that the man is walking on a lakeside moving towards the lake. Like the other shot it is again a craning shot, as it starts by showing the man at a distance, it moves closer and starts to crane upwards like before. This shot however goes over the man and then continues on showing the ground from above before going over the water and fading very smoothly to the next shot.
This shot starts by tilting down a tree stump and then obviously still on the crane panning accross to show the man walking towards the camera, this time the camera is lower, it’s a long shot but from around knee height. As he moves closer the upper half of his body goes off shot and the camera moves along to the right bringing a stick into view. As we see this object the background blurs and the stick comes into focus this shows the audience what it needs to focus on and grabs their attention. As the man reaches the stick, he reaches and grabs it and as he does this he comes into focus as well. This is a very good camera effect that helps to make sure the audience is focusing on the right things and doesn’t miss anything.
Cutting to the next shot it is again an extreme wide angle shot which pans accross to the right as it shows a view looking out at the lake before the man then steps into the shot from the right, infront of the camera, he is looking towards the lake. This again does the technique of bringing specific objects into focus, as he steps in the lake goes out of focus and he is brought into focus keeping our attention on him. The shot then cuts to the front, where we see a close up shot where the audience finally gets to see the man’s face up close. His face shows little emotion although a little sad he looks more calm which goes with the feeling you get throughout the film. He looks down and an eye line match cuts to the ground where we see he was looking down to the ground as he moves the stick along the cracks in the ground.
The next shot used is an interesting shot from the side, the man is right at the side of the shot and as it is a long wide angle shot we can see above him and a large part of the lake. It is in this shot that a yellow balloon floats down. This is again a very clever object to use for many reasons. The fact that it is a bright colour makes it very memorable and makes the audience more likely to remember it after they have watched the film. Also it makes the beginning crane shots make more sense, where the camera seemed to be moving in a floating way the audience now realises this was deliberate and represented the floating motion of the balloon. On the string of the balloon we can see there is a rolled up piece of paper, and the shot cuts to a close up of the mans face from the side before cutting back to the long shot quite quickly as he reaches out to grab the string. He tries to grab it but the balloon moves further away as he reaches out, the next shot shows a close up again of the man’s face but the edge of the balloon is in the left hand side of the shot, he looks and smirks at it as if it was a living thing. Then we see a medium shot from behind showing the man and the balloon side by side which in a way could represent him and his wife who he has left. The narration comes back in with the line ‘Goodbye Katherine’ where we see the close up shot from the front again as the balloon starts to float upwards and away.
A close up shows the paper tied to the string and the stick close to it, these shots are cut a little faster as there is more action happening, we see the man trying to reach the string using the stick he picked up earlier. With the peaceful music still in the background we hear a wind noise and then a bang as the balloon drops down onto the stick and bursts. This is shown by a long shot which allows us to see the whole mans body as he jumps from the loud bang. Eye line matches show close ups of his face looking down to the ground and then cutting to the ground as he bends and picks up the letter. Extreme close ups are used on both the paper as he unrolls it to reveal that it is a letter and then another close up on his face to show his emotion as he reads it, we see a shocked expression as the narration reveals that the letter is the one he had written to his wife and it is the speech we heard at the start of the film. The close ups between the letter and his face keep cutting together as we see he is suprised and a little upset, he then screws up the letter in his hand and we see the medium shot from behind where he has his arm out to the side and he drops the letter. Which gives the audience something to think about. Some people will take it differently than others but I believe that it represents him regretting what he had done and that he won’t leave his wife.
As this cuts to the credits, the calming music continues. The reason I love this film is because it is based around such a simple idea, it doesn’t use a lot of shots and action it keeps things very simple and effective. Every element is very crucial, the scenery, the music, the voice all give a very calm feeling and the way the narration is used to keep the audice interested. Most of all the way it leaves a lasting effect on the audience, it is very thought provocating. Our film has a few similarities in the way that narration is used, narration will play a big role in our film, like the narration was the letter in this short film our narration comes from the video camera he takes on his travels. Hopefully we will be able to produce a pice of film that is as effective as this.
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