This short film was directed and written by Robbie Fatt and is labelled as a psychological thriller. I think that this genre fits the film perfectly because the audiences thinking process throughout this whole film is: ‘Will they escape the room?’. I chose this film to analyse because it is quite similar to my screenplay that I have written for my Script to Screen unit. They are both very similar, but my screenplay, called ‘Secrets’, involves two people having to reveal secrets to escape the room.
One similarity that both ‘Red’ and ‘Secrets’ have is that the characters in both stories have a time constraint apart from the characters in ‘Secrets’ have an hour and the characters in ‘Red’ have only fifteen minutes. Another similarity that I spotted in both the film and the screenplay have is that it had a similar plot twist at the end.
In ‘Red’, it is revealed that the man that was told to be silent by the note in his pocket, otherwise he would die, turned out to be the antagonist and was the one swapping the ‘red’ t-shirt and the notes around to make it seem like it was a different time. He also turned the time on the clock back fifteen minutes from ten o’clock to fifteen minutes before ten or nine forty-five.
However, in my screenplay ‘Secrets’ it is revealed at the end that the main antagonist, called Millie, admitted that she was the one that set everything up and kidnapped the protagonist, called Jack, and locked him in a room with her. She did this as an act of revenge for what Jack did to her in secondary school, bullying her over her acting and spreading rumours about her terrible acting across the city.
One difference that is linked to the first similarity I made is that in ‘Red’, the time repeats itself over and over again. However, in ‘Secrets’ the two characters have an hour to admit their secrets and that's it, there is no repetition after that. One thing I liked about ‘Red’ was they used to colour red to connote that that character was lying to everyone depending on what colour t-shirt they wore.
The contrast between the two colours used on the t-shirts, worn by the actors in the film, red and white, could symbolise the difference between good and evil. The colour red connotes fire and anger, and the colour white connotes the exact polar opposite of red, white connotes purity and innocence. This could easily be seen as a guide point for the audience to establish what character is good and what character is bad.
However, this wasn't the case, the main antagonist was actually in a white t-shirt, which fools the audience into thinking the antagonist is good when they're not. Another thing I liked about this short film, that is also another similarity to ‘Secrets’, is that there is visible conflict between characters. In ‘Red’, there is visible conflict between all characters showing the tension between them all to escape the room. There is verbal conflict in ‘Red’, the characters arguing to each other about the notes and in ‘Secrets’, there is physical conflict between the two characters as one of them gets very angry at the other.
I thought the short film was very thought out, but the one flaw I notice when watching the short film was that the audio was very echoey. The director states in the YouTube description box of his video written in his words:
“Sound was the biggest issue because of the echo in the room and the fact we weren't booming sound. I probably spent about four hours editing total and kind of gave up on the sound. Ideally, I would have done ADR for all the sound, but I seriously couldn't be bothered taking that long.” (Fatt, 2014)
This shows why sound is the most fundamental part of filming altogether and anything to improve the video, as a whole, is well worth doing. If the sound isn't good in a film, it could change the audience's perspective on the film itself. One more thing I liked about this short film was the concept with the notes, this gave each character something interesting to talk about. If this short film was made into an hour-long film and had more interesting plot points and better audio, I think this short film would make a very good film for the members of the public to watch.
Bibliography:
Fatt, Robbie (2014) Red (2014 Psychological Thriller Mystery Short Film). At: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pLwDhH0I2Io (Accessed on 26.11.20)
No comments:
Post a Comment