Glen : Moving Image 2

"The Drought"

http://vimeo.com/kevinslack/thedrought

Title: The Drought

Directed/Written By: Kevin Slack

Produced By: Nicole Scarano, Kevin Slack and Allison Vanore

Source: I found this video on Vimeo.

Summary of the Short Film: 

                   This short film is about an elderly Brooklyn native who spends his days selling umbrellas and the side of the streets but struggles as the days pass because of the drought that Brooklyn is going through at the moment. Although the elderly man struggles financially and also physically he still continues to remain loyal to selling umbrellas, like Jonas said in the film "everyone needs an umbrella the rain may stop but no matter what it's gonna come back."  

Camera: 

                    In this short film there were a numerous amount of times when the camera shots would be a close up on a person. The film even starts off with a close up on the elderly man (Jonas) but the shot goes from an extremely out of focus shot that eventually focuses on just Jonas. There are also many over the shoulder shots that shows the audience what the subject is focusing on. Most of the short film is shot using a shallow depth of field that normally just focuses on key points in the film such as the person that may be speaking or doing something, to small details for example when Jonas is holding his radio or creating/fixing an umbrella. 

          The extreme out of focus shot that fades into a shallow depth of field focusing on just Jonas was most likely used to grasp onto the attention of the audience.

           This over the shoulder shot was done to show the audience what Jonas is focusing on.








             In this shot they use shallow depth of field to keep the focus on the craftsmanship of making an umbrella and the difficulty that Jonas has in the process which in a sense shows him getting older and beginning to find it hard to do something that he had been doing all of his life.

                Although this short film doesn't quite relate to the themes that I had in mind to do my films on I found it interesting because when I actually do take the time to pay attention to the different camera shots it helps me gain a better understanding on why they would use that certain angles and techniques for a certain camera shot. I also like how this video has an important meaning to the theme. I would rather create videos that are meaningful and do actually have close interactions with the subjects then gather clips of random people then adding a sound track within the clip.