Short film- Contraction - Christopher Hewitt & James Cambourne

The opening titles of this short film is accompanied with the ambient sound of gusts of wind. There is a greyish background and the title slowly formulates onto the screen in a technological font. The esablishing shot portrays a close up of a man staring into the camera as it zooms in on his face. There is a non-diegetic sound, a high pitched technological ringing which intensifies as the man closes his eyes. The screen cuts back to the greyish background, and the next shot shows a medium shot of a female on a rooftop, the camera moves from a over the shoulder shot and pans around her and we see the male lying on the floor, then the camera jump cuts to an aerial shot of the two. The camera slowly circles them. The next shot is aerial to begin and the woman begins to give the man CPR and the floor has been edited and lifts up everytime she pumps his chest. This gives the audience the effect of how the man is feeling, that he is jerking alive steadily. The brief of this film was to portray the conception of rebirth. The next shot is a medium shot of the girls hands on his chest and the camera tilts up to show her holding her head in panic. The camera switches to an extreme long shot, revealing the location of a group of roofs in a red-brick estate, perhaps homing factories as well as the mise-en-scene suggests. The camera switches back to the protagonists, in a long shot. The camera movement is jerky, which may be a attempt to get the camera to portray the atmosphere. We now here the diegetic sound of the womans breathing as she pumps the mans chest. The camera constantly moves from long shot to close up and back again. The man begins to move and the non-diegetic technological sound intensifies again. He sits up and the camera stays in an over the shoulder shot as the one and only piece of dialogue is delivered "where did you go?" The next shot is over the shoulder of the woman, allowing us to read the males face. She is gesticulating alot, but we hear nothing. This along with the ambient sound of wind and that high pitched ringing suggests that what we can hear is what the male can as well as he has just been "reborn". The way the sun shines over the camera may be pathetic fallacy as he is now alive and the metaphorical storm has passed. BBC Film Network