Bombay Sapphire has a YouTube channel that has a number of short films, one of which I wrote about in an earlier blog post, the BAFTA award winning ‘Room 8’. I’ve been watching the rest of their videos recently and I’ve noticed something that can be seen in almost all of the films which really makes them have an impact on the viewer. Nearly all of them follow a similar structure because they have made a ‘one script, five films’ imagination series. Most of the short films feature two characters either getting into a problematic situation or discovering something and taking advantages of it’s apparent benefits. The scenes are usually fairly confusing as they focus on something that is supernatural or beyond our technological knowledge. But it is the final shot or image that makes a massive impact on me as a viewer, they are both visually impressive and also tie together the whole story in a brilliant way.
The one that I liked in particular was ‘Exit Log’, which shows two women on a spacecraft. The film is set in a time when time travel exists, and the technology is in place for astronauts in case of emergency. The time travel is limited to 3 minutes and characters are able to send a message to their previous self before resetting time. When the ship begins to break down one of the girls sends them back in time with the message “don’t let her reset the time drive, she will attack you”. Following the message the protagonist is unable to stop her friend, who, as is mentioned in the message, attacks her and resets the time drive. Finally, she throws the key out of a chute into space so that nothing can be done.
It becomes very unclear to the viewer why this has all happened or what the consequences are until the final shot. This shot shows thousands of keys floating in space outside of their ship, implying that they have got themselves stuck in a time loop. This is the moment that it dawns on the two characters what will happen as well as the audience, which is why the single shot is so powerful. Not only does the audience realise what has been going on during the rest of the film but it allows them to guess what this will then lead to, which of course is the characters being stuck in the loop until their eventual death. I think this is why these shots are so powerful in each film in the series. I want to try and create a similar effect in my film with the last shot, I want it to be something that has an impact on my audience and tells them an entire story. This will take a lot of work in terms of planning, framing the shot and positioning and timing when it comes to editing, but hopefully it will make my finished film more of an impact.
Jess Marshall's A2 Media Studies Blog 