Short film analysis
These short films experiment with film form and narrative in many different ways. For example the short film called Wallace and Gromit: The Wrong Trousers has pretty structured narrative as it's linear and begins with equilibrium which is later disrupted and ends with new equilibrium. The narrative helps to create the atmosphere of the main disruption- stealing the diamond by a villain penguin. When it comes to character development we can talk about how narrative as well as the genre changed the characters, Gromit feels unwanted by Wallace mainly when he gets penguin and pays more attention to him than Gromit. As the movie comes to its end Gromit puts himself together and saves Wallace from the evil penguin, it helps Wallace to reminds how Gromit is a good friend to him. Film form is involved as well when it comes to lighting and sound effects, it gets darker and the music gets tenser when we see a penguin on the scene. The film form experiments in the use of dialogue which is that the only one who speaks is Wallace and Gromit "answers" him through facial expressions and body language that challenge the audience to keep attention.
Wasp has also linear story-line that jumps straight into the action and introduces us to the conflicts that the main character Zoe has to deal with. Conflict is introduced from the beginning when there is an aggressive scene where Zoe has a physical fight with other woman, presented by dynamic camera movements and close ups. Another conflict is her problem with money. Narrative however doesn't have any serious disruption, maybe arrive of Dave changed something in the end but when she leaves her children out of the pub it seems like a normal day for them. The ending is different than in Wallace and Gromit as here the ending is opened and left with an ambiguous atmosphere yet still some kind of hope for the children. Character development occurs for Zoe who before even tho she cares about her children was acting selfish in the way she wants to live her life a bit without having them 24/7 on eyes and even she lies to Dave about them. During the film she comes to realisation that she will always have to put them on first place.
As a change of those two short films, Elephant is different in many ways. Elephant basically experiments with everything it has. It has no narrative structure and no context and background, it jumps straight to the action. It has no character development as we are not even introduced to them. The main role here takes film form, that's the only thing audience has to focus on as that's the only given thing. Obvious lack on dialogue and no spoken words are not a surprise and honestly it's not even needed. After a couple of scenes audience realises there is a so-called loop of repetitive scenes in different situations. The ending has no resolution and is left with hang-cliff in the middle of another repeating scene, the audience knows what's about to happen even without actual ending. The movie leaves mixed emotions and the meaning can be found in context of the time and country it was made at.
La Jetee is another short film that experiments mainly with film form as it's made as a photo-montage of still photos that follow each other and tell the narrative through that. The film also has a narrator who talks throughout the whole film, so we don't see any performance taking place and no action. The narrative is not linear as the beginning starts with its actual ending, it slowly gets from the ending to the plot and connects with the ending again where many things solve and we understand things that are vague at first. Sci-fi genre and mystery are mainly created by the black and white colour of the photos and also seeing things like travelling in time, science equipment and nuclear war.
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