Here are some still images from my short film 'Crossing the Line'. I am going to analyze all these still moments of the film in terms of Mise-en-scene, influences and reason behind the use of these shots.
SHOT 1 - John has pushes himself through the invisible barrier. Only his legs are held back by this force. He desperately struggles to cross the line completely.
I knew I wanted a shot like this from the early stages of the project. I had the idea that to make it look like the main character (John) is stuck in an invisible barrier by having someone off camera off camera lifting his legs his legs into the air. I contacted a friend of mine to me to help with this shot, so that i could stay behind the camera.
To make sure that my friends hands couldn't be seen holding the legs of my actor I needed to cut his feet off the shot. I decided to do this because as well as being a convenient way to film the shot it also seems as though the barrier which is holding the character back is represented by the frame itself. To me the edge of the frame represents the media which is holding John back.
As this shot progresses the character (John) pushes his way through the barrier. As he is doing this the monochrome effect, which has been used throughout the Forest scene so far, slowly fades away until it is completely gone after he has crossed the line. This change in color represents him going from behind controlled by the media to being free.
SHOT 2 - When first entering his unconscious state of mind he opens his eyes.
This shot is the first time that we are introduced to the Forest scene. This shot is a close up of John opening his eyes. When John's eyes are first introduced to the light his pupils shrink which reflects his perception on what is real and what isn't decreasing.
The whole idea of this shot was influences by the TV show LOST. In the first ever scene in LOST there is a close up shot on a characters closed eye which is slowly opened. The shot in crossing the line has been done in a very similar way to LOST as can be seen below:
SHOT 3 - John makes his way through an office corridor to his business meeting. He is surprised by his boss.
This is one of the earliest shots in crossing the line. It consists of a tracking the main character around a corner. Once the character has gone round the corner his cheerful boss shouts 'Good morning!' out to him. Near the end of the film when John is leaving his workplace there is also a similar shot where mirrors this one.
To create both shots in this corridor where John is entering and leaving work I knew that I wanted to visually display johns urgency with a tracking shot. On the way into work John is late for the meeting, with the use of the tracking shot the audience can experience the urgency that the character is feeling as the audience are moving with him.
One problem I has when trying to film this shot was that I didn't have an easy way of creating a tracking shot without the camera shake as I did not have access to any sort of tracking equipment. After thinking about this problem for a bit I came up with the solution of using a chair with wheels to put the camera on while getting another person to pull the chair.
A second problem I has was getting the timing right between tracking back, keeping the character in a clear shot and making the boss visible when poking his head out of the door. This took a few attempts to get just right.
SHOT 4 - The camera slowly zooms out revealing the blood near Johns head.
Similar to shot 3, this shot also mirrors the first shot in crossing the line where we see a close up of John's head, he is smiling. In the this shot we zoom out from Johns face revealing the pool of blood next to his head.
The use of this and the shot at the beginning create a non-linear structured narrative rather than a typical hollywood linear structure. Crossing the line has a non linear structure because the end of the film is shown at the start of the film.
I added a brightness effect to this shot and the shot at the start to the ending a sense of happiness even though the protagonist is seriously hurt. As well as making the audience feel happy it also reflects the way the character is feeling.
SHOT 5 - A medium shot. John has crosses the line and is very happy. He stands and celebrates with the sun directly behind him.
This was one of the last shots filmed for crossing the line and is set just after John has crossed the line. Originally, I planned for it to start raining after John had crossed the line but later decided that it should be dusk instead. I decided that for the final shot in forrest environment the sun should be shining down to show that John's mind it now at peace. The characters body language was influenced by the ending of the film ' The Shawshank Redemption'.
