Elephant



This film starts off by showing the sky, this represents two things, the weather and time passing by, as the film gets going it uses a lot of close up shots, not just of the characters faces but the camera shots just over the shoulder or just behind the character, the camera never goes away from head height level, this could be to get the viewer more involved.

During this film panning shots are very frequent as the characters on screen never seem to be standing still for long and when they do it’s only for a few seconds, this adds a bit of realism as around the college if your not in class there are a lot of people just wondering about.

The clothing that is worn during the film seems accurate as if you compare pictures from the film and that of the news reports showing clips of the attack they are very similar.

I feel the best parts of the film were when several shots of the same scene were shown through out the film at different times, this lengthens the film, shows different versions of that clip and also gets people saying “didn’t we already see that bit”, this also shows us what each of the characters versions were of each particular event. The other part of the film I found interesting was the ending in which the gunman finds a guy and girl hiding, he then starts to play game which is only enjoyable for himself, the film then ends there, and again gets people saying “is that is, what happened after that”. This then gets the viewer to want to look up what really happened.

The rate of the camera seems to be of normal through out the whole film right up to the bit just before the shootings in which a boy leaves the college and get a dog to jump up and do a spin, in this bit it goes to slow motion for a brief second, then back to normal rate, this could represent the last happy moment in the film as this is right before the killings take place.


There are a variety of camera shots, for example when the shootings are well under way, a boy goes to the classroom door and looks down the corridor and gets shot, but you don’t get to see who shot him, the obvious example of the variety of camera shots are from the points of view of the shooters, they are shown shooting people from the front as if it were you being shot, they show it where is looks like your doing the shooting and camera shots who watch the shooting from a distance like down a corridor, where you see the shooter and the person who gets shot. The most common camera shot is a wide angle lens, as there are many cases through out the film which don’t just show the character but the surrounding environment as well. The movement of the camera seems very smooth as it seems to be carried all the time, it never seems like the camera man is running, if a character gets too far then he will stand still and film that person going off into the distance.

Overall I think this film is very entertaining and interesting in the way the camera and variety of shots are used, this film really does get the viewer on the edge of there seats and wondering what is going to happen next.