2013 Post 1 - Researching Existing Short Films Part A

Gasman (1998)

 

Gasman was an award winning short film directed by lynne ramsay, here is the films sypnosis below.

 

"It's the Christmas season. With her mom's help, Lynne, a girl of perhaps eight, dresses up; her younger brother Steven plays with a toy car. The children leave with their dad, who's affectionate with them. They walk down a railroad track where an unkempt woman waits with two children, about the same age as Lynne and Steven. The children go with them. They're all headed to a holiday party at a pub. Lynne notices that the girl acts all too familiar with her dad. What's going on?

 

In the Film Short "Gasman" the director lynne uses a range of effects in the films Camera, Sound, Editing, and Mise-en-scene. The most obvious effect from the ofset is the use of the camera to make it seam like a flashback/dream from the girls POV, the camera only very vividly shows charecters faces panning up and down frequently mainly showing a POV view of everything that it looks at this paired with the camera effect of adding a black faded border around the edge gives the effect as if the onlooker is asleep/dreeming as seen in the pictures below......

(Happy Scene = Well Light)

 

(Sad Scene = Dull Lighting)

 

Here the faded outer rim and the lighting effects being very dull and poorly lit help to create this effect very well. The film is also edited into scences of split happiness and sadness, the scenes with a happy "Memory" are usualy well light and fast paced scenes weres ass the scenes that are shown as being sad are the poorly lit ones and have been edited to have a slow pace.  Also in the mis en scene it is clear of the loactaion because of the background pictures, i.e a poorly industialised city and the strong scotish accent that the location is glasgow, yet another clue to the charecters social situation and class is the time period which is given to be the 1970s as given away by the style of the wallpaper and the style of the clothes they wear. this lets the onlooker know that they are viewing a working class family in the middle of the 1970s when there was an economic depression in certain industrial towns such as glasgow featured in this film.