Analysis of a Short Film: The Alphabet by David Lynch

Cinematography: Mainly long shots to fit the full scope of the images, paintings and characters on screen as the film combines both stop motion animation and live action. These long shots also allow the viewer to see the full frame, meaning the tense and scary atmosphere of the film is not solely being conveyed through cinematography but by other means too.

Zooms are also used throughout to emphasize character's facial expressions. These can also be startling as the characters are all made to look very unsettling and zooming in only furthers that which is probably precisely why Lynch used zooms. 

Insert shots of letters of the alphabet are also used throughout seemingly randomly to show how unpredictable the film and narrative is, something Lynch always seems to include in his work.

 

Very precise and robotic pans are also used. This may be because that is all the technology and cameras Lynch was using at the time were capable of but it does not take away from it's uncanny and unsettling nature.

 < Pan

 

Mise En Scene: The atmosphere of the film is quite dark and eerie. This is created through many aspects, mainly the visual imigarey with it's muted and dull colours, as well as the stop motion movement of aspects of the film such as letters of the alphabet and the way the paintings seem to warp and change.

 

Sound: is used in a very typical David Lynch way. Mainly consisting of whooshes and the sound of wind, often with the voices of children saying letters of the alphabet, creating an uncomfortable and creepy mood due to the disembodied child voices with nothing but the backdrop of loud lonely wind.

 

Narrative: The narrative is, like in any Lynch film, quite hard to follow and decipher. The film does seem to have a clear beginning, middle and end, just with seemingly random pieces spliced throughout, again, adding to the unnatural and uncanny feel of the film. Lynch may be trying to show how the school system shapes students beliefs into the way they want. It shows a little girls mind struggling to accept these teachings, but the school is ejaculating the alphabet into her brain thus killing her own thoughts and ideas which is why she covers her eyes and mouth, then vomits the blood that represents the schools teachings.

 

Editing: The editing is very strange and Lynchian in this. Often quickly cutting to images of characters faces and letters of the alphabet to emphasise plot points and create an unsettling and unpredictable atmosphere. The stop motion also does this, making the movement feel uncanny and unnatural, further adding to the creepy vibes of the film.

Tile Sequence: A title sequence plays at the end of the film. It is pretty standard, just crediting those involved. The only really personalized aspect is the fact that the title is painted, just like a lot of the film.

What is Elliptical Editing?

Elliptical editing is the technique used in films and media to show the passage of time by cutting two scenes together and editing out the journey from one place to another.

One example of this would be right here in which rather than walking through the entirety of the house like previously, the characters appear to walk back in to the house and are then upstairs, making it apparent that they walked from outside to upstairs  

 

 
An example of this in a short film would be in Bottle Rocket where the characters are walking to a house and rather than showing the whole process of walking to the house, the scene is edited so a little bit of the scene is walking, then a cut to the characters jumping over a fence and finally a cut to the characters inside the house closing the door, making it obvious that they broke in but without showing the whole process of that in order to save time.



  

Journey Exercise Elliptical edit

Journey Exercise Elliptical Edit

 

 

 

Journey Exercise long edit

 

Journey Exercise Long Edit

 

 

 

Elliptical editing

Elliptical Editing

Elliptical editing is a technique used in film to show a passage in time by cutting two scenes together by missing out the journey from one place to another.

 

An example of this would be when a person is walking from their house to shop you could record them getting ready and walking out the door then cut to a point further down the pavement and then cut to him entering the shop to skip out the journey.

Example used in Batman Begins:

 

 

Here the elliptical editing is used to show Bruce Wayne travel across the land. Normally, this journey would take days to view, however by using elliptical editing this extremely long journey can show the progression of time and his journey in just under a minute and a half.

 

When creating our own journey through elliptical editing we will focus on the transitions from one scene to another to make the cuts un-noticeable to the audience and ensure our continuity doesn't break. Some key techniques used in elliptical editing is to cut scenes when the character is taking a footstep which conveys to the audience he is walking into the next transition making the cut barely noticeable.

Elliptical editing

Elliptical editing is when the clip length is shortened to a point. Usually this is done in chase sequences or to remove any unnecessary filler scenes.

Example:

To see Bruce Wayne travelling in natural time would take the film to an unprecedented duration not suitable for the audience therefore using cuts to demonstrate the travel but in a shortened way would purport a significant length of time however cut into a suitable 2 minute sequence.

The most frequent component of elliptical editing would consist of the jump cut which enables the film to be split into several short shots for a desired sped up effect.

What is a short film?

What is a short film?

A short film is a motion picture that is not long enough to be considered as a feature length film. A feature length film normally consists of 1 hour and a half worth of footage where as a short film is anything that is 40 minutes or less. Short films first originated in the 1920's and became very popular as people could heavily relate to the story due to the realistic events happening in the film and the realism of the main characters.

Short films focus on real life problems and how the characters overcome them or how the problem overshadows the character. Some of these issues are: depression, love, or financial problems. This juxtaposes from the feature length genres as feature length films have a broad range of genres to attract a wide variety of audiences. Additionally, because short films focus on real life problems and also tragedies, this attracts a smaller more niche audience to attract a targeted and specific audience.

Despite short films not being as popular as feature length films, they still receive a lot of recognition as there are a lot of short film festivals where producers showcase their films and earn awards. In addition to this, the Oscars and the BAFTA's award trophies for the best short film and best animated short film to emphasise how important short films are. Furthermore if a short film becomes extremely successful they may get funding from a production company to transform their short film into a full length feature film. An example of this is Whiplash as they won many awards for the best short film and the best director at the Sundance film festival, that Sony bought the rights of producing a feature length film of Whiplash for $3 million. This lead to Whiplash breaking box office figures for a short film transforming into a feature length film and all of the success wouldn't have been possible without the short film version of Whiplash.

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