Halloween Night is a short surrealist film made by student Dylan Henderson. The film shows a boy seemingly trying out masks for Halloween in front of a mirror when his 'reflection' comes to life, and seemingly wants to mirror everything he does. This film is definitely flawed and has some certain examples that I need to try and avoid doing to make sure my surrealist film is slightly more surrealist. Firstly, the film does have some slight positives. The concept has that idea of the realistic scenario being turned into something slightly unexpected but I would argue the technical delivery of this dilutes it and stops it from being so successful. The themes explored could also be quite interesting, with possible ideas such as duality, societal expectations and even possibly the influence of music. However, the film really has some fundamental flaws. Firstly, the film does seem to fall into some really set cliches, mostly the 'twist' ending at the end after he wakes up, with it seemingly being a dream, but the reflection is still there. This twist felt so ridiculous to the film and almost went entirely against the point of surrealism, to go against convention but this really didn't feel like an unconventional idea and fell towards the tropes of many modern horror films. The film itself also didn't really have that dreamlike element you look for in surrealist films. It shows him waking up from a dream, however it doesn't really have that lack of structure or cause and effect. From the point of view of this established universe, the events that occur in the film do make some form of sense narratively (with many actions being explained in some very clunky dialogue). While the film tries to play with that idea of the dream, it certainly does not succeed. Overall, there are more lessons to be learnt on what not to do than what to do from this film. The film falls to conventions, something that surrealist films should never really do and just feels technically quite weak also. In my film, I will try to follow less conventions and also focus more on that idea of the dreamlike. As well as this, there will be no spoken dialogue (although I may use intertitles) in my film as I feel like it takes you out of the surrealist film, especially with the usage of white noise-like sound in the background. Themes of the film could be interesting to explore in mine, but I would hope to take a look at them much more successfully than this film did.
1 Comment
dr
3/12/2018 06:01:54 am
Proficient research. Planning is general - please put up a shot list and storyboard with some explanations of what you're trying to do. Thanks
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InfoBlog for A Level Film Studies. Consists of critical analysis of films from different time periods and genres. Archives
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