DepicT! Analysis 2

Enough- Tor Kristoffersen

DepicT! '08 Winner

Looking at this DepicT! Short which won in 2008, I find this to be a really touching yet upsetting a gritty, hard-hitting and shocking short about a man looking back at an incident he witnessed, to later build the courage, go out and threaten the gang leader. With a really interesting twist the man gets stabbed and the gang leader begins to shout “Dad!” This interesting plot twist really makes this short work and at this stage the audience is connected on an emotional level with the man and the son. Looking at the narrative structure of this, I am not sure if it follows the ‘classic realist’ I mean I guess that it could fit If the normality is the man sitting in the arm chair have the flashback of the young lad being beaten up by the gang, the enigma is then the man getting up and preparing himself to go out, the pathway to resolution (in a strange way) could be the walking towards the gang and then the threatening, even thought threatening isn't really resolution and the closure would be the death of the man and the realisation that the gang leader is the man’s son. I feel that explaining the narrative makes it more applicable to fitting loosely around that narrative structure, though I do like the way it is all been planned and shot.

The sound in this short is really powerful as when we see the flashback, only in the flashback shots there is dialogue, when we see the man in his home, it is silent, until the banging of his glass on the table, this silence works really well because I find it to be entrancing to make me listen to the old man’s flashback and why he is so quiet. Up until the first forty-seven seconds (excluding the flashback) there are only minimal ambient noises which once again are placed in nicely to make us connect with the man, at forty-eight seconds we hear music which is supposedly diegetic, but you can’t see where it is coming from, but then it gets louder as the man approaches the gang, as he does the music stops therefore I am unsure whether or not it is supposed to be in the world of the film though I know that it had probably been added on in post production.

When watching this we start with an extreme close-up of a man’s eye shut, we also hear some dialogue of aggressive shouting and the noises of hitting, this is a sound bridge as we then see a shot of a gang beating this young lad, this shot is emphasised to be uncomfortable by the use of a canted angle, this already has us connected to the old man just in the starting two shots. The extreme-close up can be looked at as a sense of suspense, but in this case I will be looking at it as identification, as we are identifying with the man’s thoughts and this shot works. Another way to identify with the character is a point of view shot, the flash back that the man is having can be seen as a point of view shot as obviously that is his flashback and the way he

remembered him. We realise it’s his flashback when we see a shot of him shouting at the gang to stop but they just run away, in this there are a few more shots of canted angles which really make it looks disturbing as they finally kill this young lad. There are other signs of identification with the man as we see many extreme close-ups which force us to enter his personal space and sympathise with him. The title of the short is then cut in after the flashback and then cut back to the man in his home. We further identify with him when we see a photo of a young boy in a school photo, at the time, the audience is unaware who this is (unless they really paid attention) but this gets the audience intrigued to what is about to happen and who the boy is (unless they already figured it out). The main use of extreme close-ups really does get us to identify with the man and the narrative itself as we want to know more as the short plays out.

Looking at the continuity system of the short there are many ways that the editing has been done. This short doesn't break the 180° as we always stick in front of the man once he has left the house and when he approaches the gang. There is also an eye-line match once the man picks up a baton and then looks off screen, the eye-line match is to a photo of a young boy in a school photo. I feel that the rules of the continuity system are stuck to and this is kept quite simple with the use of shot types, by keeping them simple and just in front of the characters all the time.

Moving onto suspense, this links in with the continuity system but instead of the type of edits, the cuts that are used are pieced together with a quick editing pace, this really builds the suspense in the short. Even more so but because a lot of the shots are extreme close-ups, having a quick editing pace really makes the audience edgy as they wonder what is going to happen. Not only that but the use of cross-cuts where we see the old man walking towards the gang and then we have a shot of the gang, this is simultaneously going on as the man finally approaches the gang, the journey from his house to the gangs hangout has an editing pace which slowly increases, I find this to build tension to what he is going to do (above images). The shaky hand-held like camera movement really adds to the atmosphere and nervousness of the man and the audiences interest to what is to come. I also find that the suspense is created with the way that internal framing is used, the mise-en-scene is important too as the knife plays an important role to what happens, coming full circle.

When the man reaches the gang the shots are really shaky and they are shot through pieces of wood (at least that’s what it looks like) I find this to really add suspense as I personally want to see the whole thing and not bits through these gaps in the wood. Finally there is a low angle shot of the man on the floor (stabbed and bleeding out) and the gang leader calls out “Dad!” at this point the audience can process the young boy in the school photo was the gang leader and now the man had lost as the low angle portrays this. At this point in time the audience have connected with the man and now feel sorry for everything that has gone on to realise that it was his son who killed the young lad in the flashback from the beginning. I personally find this a really upsetting short but so emotional and powerful to be done in ninety seconds.