Flatliner is one of the other LAFTA entries that was submitted from our class created by Henry Spencer, about a man who has got lost whilst driving in the countryside and encounters hassle from a group of teenagers which results in a heart attack.
I felt that the whole thing was filmed really well and had a good simple story which worked well for a short film, however there were some aspects of the film that could have been improved. Henry demonstrated confident use of the camera by having long shots with very few cuts in between them, despite this I felt that it got to a point where the long drawn our shots got a little boring as they only showed the man looking at a map and getting out his flask. I felt that some actions could have been shown through match on action in order to cut the length of the scene. As well as this some of the shots were a little too wobbly, such as the one from the back of the car, but Henry almost gets away with it because we would expect some movement if we were in a car.
The choice of music was great and created a lot of suspense, especially the sound of the heartbeat which was suggestive of what was going to happen. However, occasionally the music was a little too tense for what was shown on screen, for example when he was wiping his windscreen, the music was a little overly tense for such a non-threatening action and maybe the music should have peaked a little later on in the film.
The short film could have been improved by maybe taking out a few seconds of footage (as sometimes it was a little too drawn out) and maybe by adding a few colour corrections to add to the feel of the scene. However, I really liked this film and I felt that it worked well as a short and it was brilliantly shot.
Jess Marshall's A2 Media Studies Blog 