Matthew Leigh G324 Advanced Portfolio

'The girl on the wall' is a Greek short film, created by amateur director, writer and producer Gabriel Psaltakis. It was found upon a browse through short films on youtube, and I feel that it is suitable for analysis due to it's genre coinciding with the genre I have chosen (comedy) while still maintaining artistic direction. The film also deals with ordinary people and settings (verging on mundanity) but with extraordinary events, which is something I wish to do in my own film.

Immediately notable is the lack of opening credits. As short films are usually a focused work of creative art, I can assume this is because opening credits are needlessly intrusive, and could probably end up taking up a large portion of the video, distracting the viewer from the carefully crafted content. Instead, the title is briefly overlaid a short montage of a young man eating breakfast. A medium shot is used to show the tired expression on the man's face as he sits at a table, and a series of close ups showing milk being poured and the bowl of cereal illustrate the act of making breakfast, without taking up needless amounts of time.

Throughout the film, straight cuts are used abundantly, presumably to keep the flow. However, intermittently, more elaborate transitions are used. These include fades and variants thereof, and are usually used to show the more significant changes in environment or time. For example, the video changes from taking place through the day to the evening (signified by low lighting, or perhaps simply a filter on the camera) through the use of a circle fade. This type of transition manipulation very effectively creates natural breaks in the film, making the change of location or time seem more natural, without breaking the flow of the film.

Animation is used prominently in the film, through a couple of graffiti characters. It is assumable that these were animated through the use of digital animation, and then super imposed upon the walls they appear on in the film through editing. They add vibrancy and colour to an otherwise quite bland colour palette, perhaps to signify the similar impact they seem to have on the main characters life, who seems to work a mundane 9 to 5 office job, illustrated by his tie, glasses and briefcase, and also his initial distaste for the graffiti artist. The developing relationship between the main character and the animated graffiti man is shown through a montage of wide shots, showing them talking, with the main character constantly changing position in the shot, signifying that this was not one, but many conversations that took place between them. This helps to develop the plot at a rapid pace, but does make it lose some depth. Fortunately, depth of the characters isn't really what the film is about, further accentuated by the very sparse use of dialogue.

The films use of natural lighting, and the fact that is mostly takes place through the day, give it a light airy feeling, emphasizing the fact that it's a light comedy. The vibrancy of the graffiti characters also adds to this effect, along with the bright and bouncy non-diegetic music.