Okay, I want to first say that I had NO idea this film was going to be about a school massacre, someone could of told me before hand!!! You should of seen me in my free next lesson in the library on my iPod touch doing a wiki search about the whole story!! All week every time I see someone in army gear or something I get the heeby jebbys and think that at any moment they might try and kill me.......any way, fear aside I thought this film was SUPER DUPER COOL (apart from the part where they killed everyone) I loved how it was made and how the director basically took everything normal from a film and turned it upside down.
The film starts with a long shot of the sky showing time passing. At the end of the film this scene really made sense, the film is set over a day and this is the sky that day. And what I think the director is trying to show is that the clouds and the sky never change, they always stay the same and that every night and day they just do the same thing, and the director was showing how everyday is the same and different at the same time........if that makes any sense. Basically he is showing that the day was normal and that something that would never happen.....happened.
Then next part of the film I really like, I’m not to sure which shot it is for it is a tracking shot and a long shot rolled into one. It is the camera looking down on a car but not in a Birdseye view angle but slightly lower. The camera moves slowly from side to side obviously in time with the car. The car is moving from side to side so the audience get a direct feel that the person driving is not in a normal state.
The next shot I really like it when John got into the car and started it, the camera moved like it was actually on the hood of the car. As a viewer, you find this quite strange for you know how smooth the camera is moving around the film and when you get this jerky movement it throws you off a bit.
Then the you get a tracking shot of everywhere John goes, from around the car then to the school and everywhere he walks. At first I thought this wasn't going to be very good and the film wouldn't make much sense but after a while you understand what the director is trying to show through camera tracking and that is what it was like to be in the hall ways on that day. Putting the viewer in the shoes of a student, and actually and almost be IN the film. I thought this was really effective for instead of just Point of view shot and camera panning, you got a real sense of knowing the characters.
There was a part of the film where there was a tracking shot for nearly 4 minutes, I thought this was good but also a little off putting. As a viewer your not really to sure what is going on by following someone around a school, and your not to sure what is coming next. But again you also get the feeling of going around the school just like any regular student.
The next aspect of the film I really enjoyed was the time sequencing by all the different time sequences put together to show that it was one day, there was small aspects to show how it was all knitting together. At one point there was some people saying congratulations in a scene and then you heard it in another scene. I thought this was a really good way in the film for instead of just moving around one day and only getting the view point from certin characters at certin points in the day you get the WHOLE day from most of the charcters percpective. Also I like how when every chacter is introduced there name comes up on the screen. This helps you know there name so again you can feel as if you know them personally and as if you went to school with them. There was this shot I really liked during the killing where the camera is not really foucsed and just sitting there when in the background you can see one of the killers walking towards the camera and at first he is blury and then as he gets closer he becomes more clear. I like this shot for you get a real sense of not knowing if that is the killer or not or just a random student.
Over all I really enjoyed this film and thought because it was diffrent it made it more........diffrent.......Any way I thought it was good and a nice change to a film.
Well done Izzy, you have made an excellent attempt at analysing this film, I am very impressed. The shot you were describing where the camera is on top of the car is a crane shot looking down from just above the car but as you rightly point out it tracks the cars journey. Well done, I am impressed you enjoyed the film too as it is quite hard going! Sorry about the fear!
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