Nigel - The Game Keeper Analysis

This short film isn't amazing but it uses the right codes and conventions to make sure it fits in the genre theme. The acting is what lets this film down because the dialogue is slightly off putting towards the actual drama of the sequence but other than that the cinematography editing and sound is made in a way that show the conventions well, the poor parts of this film really let it down and bring down the realism but other than that the short film actually works quite well.

The narrative to this is fairly simple; it is a typical chase scene with a kind of twist. I would say that it is almost a horror because there is no happy ending for the two in the forest and the 'Game Keeper'. That is my opinion of how far this goes narrative wise but it is pretty simple nether the less. We don’t have any character development or have anything to understand about the actual characters but we are shown who is the protagonist and the antagonist characters especially by their body language, props and actions in the narrative.

In either editing or just the camera, the shots are grainy and have lines that appear every so often. If this was done in the editing, it could have been done to make it seem older or even help suggest that a camera is recording them which may remind them they are looking in. Although this is true, the sound editing could be a lot better and perhaps even recording at the time, asynchronous sound, as we cannot hear the game keeper with his last line very well above all the rest of the soundtrack and increased ambient sound. This is a poor decision not to do as it ruins the immersion for the audience, I hope as a group in our short film we don’t make this mistake and record all the audio separately and get lots of ambient sound too so we don’t have this problem.

Body language and facial expression is used by the actor to show his confusion throughout the sequence, this shows that he is worried that he is being watched and the fact the audience is more knowing than him, creates suspense as we don’t know when he will find out. Although I shouldn’t comment on the acting skill of the actors, it lets down the sequence entirely for me. I hope we choose the correct actors for our short film so we can use correct body and facial expressions to convey our characters emotions well. 

Mise en scene is important in helping this short film advance, there is a nice setting which relates perfectly to the narrative and acts as a liminal convention for the thriller genre. There are suitable costumes used for each character and also hair and make-up. They tried to make the two younger characters look their part by giving them gelled hair and also coloured hair, which may just suggest that they come from an urban area therefore out of their depths this far into a forest. The props used are the phone and the gamekeepers gun. The phone is less of a thriller convention as you can call for help and it helps someone be safe, if it lost signal as it probably would in such a place then it would be a larger convention, no help. The gun is also a good convention, especially one with a scope as it suggests that someone could be watching and shoot them from a distance, and you wouldn't know who actually did it. 

In conclusion, I believe this short film uses camerawork well to connote the conventions that it wanted to but there are downfalls with the sound and overall quality, I hope we can avoid this in our short film and it has given me some idea of how we can actually improve our own work but also what we would have to do just to show the conventions of our genre and perhaps how one technical code can be almost enough.