Elephant – Gus Van Sant
The film elephant is a reasonably blunt film it doesn’t really have much going on in this film. The film is showing us several points of view’s from your average high school student. The film has a long build up to a traumatising ending which in my opinion emphasises how unexpected the final event is, however this does drag on quite a bit and I did begin to find the film rather boring.
However a few features of the film that I did like was how they repeated one shot several times as it re-introduce the timing of the film at which point they introduced a point of view from another character each time. I found this quite affective as it kept the viewer on track of what was happening, because if they didn’t do this you would assume that the event are happening over time and not at the same time.
Another affect of this film that I rather liked was how they introduced it with a sped up shot of the sky showing time passing as they also ended the film in the same way, In my opinion it breaks the film in and out, and show how un expected the event of the film are.

The film was packed with tracking shots and point of view shots. One of the tracking shots that stood out to me was when they was on the field as they had a kick around going on the camera stayed focused and then as people started to clear off the camera followed the guy in the red hoody (Alex I believe?) When I was actually watching this it gave me the impression that he was actually being followed by another character like a stalker. I was thinking it was like someone madly in love with him and I was even more confident of this when the camera stopped at the edge of the field and just watched the character walk back into the building. Then as the camera started tracking him around the school it became more obvious that he wasn’t being followed by another character especially as he approached his girl friend it was the moment for me when I decided no its just a camera shot otherwise his girl friend would have noticed.
Another camera shot I liked was when they did a 360 degree view of the classroom showing everyone in the classroom the reason I liked this shot was because it was unusual as you would only go up to 180 degrees normally and it showed everyone individually and well spaced that was in the classroom at the time, This brings me to another point that I noticed. The majority of the camera shots in this film were mainly fixed to one character giving them the spot light all the time there wasn’t many shots were more than one person was on focus, however there would be people in the back ground but they would generally be slightly blurred which showed that they wasn’t important at this time.
A point of view shot that I found affective was when Michelle was getting changed. This was because you could tell that she was a shy non-popular person from the way that she was getting changed all nervous. Another thing was the people that appear in the back ground was blurred slightly but you could hear what they was talking about but from watching the film trying to hear what they was saying felt like you was over hearing a conversation as they was mocking Michelle and this all made you feel as if Michelle is trying to council these people out of her life.

Lighting-
The appeal of this film wasn’t Hollywood at all and was like very standard and legit so the lighting was natural and realistic, nothing really seemed enhanced in this film as I believe that they film was designed to look as natural as possible as if it wasn’t filmed but you’re watching over the events that have occurred.
Editing-
Uses of editing in this film would be when they manipulate the film to bring it back to shot where they can then show the viewer a different prospective of what’s happening at the same moment of time from another characters point of view, another use of editing I noticed in this film was how they introduced every character with a blacked out screen with their name central screen in white writing. This was a simple form of editing but very blunt and to the point.
Music –
A lot of the music with in this film was non diegetic and would begin to build tension when nothing was happening, one of my favourite uses of sound was when they had the piano playing in one scene non diegetic and then cut to another scene with the piano still playing which then made the sound diegetic. I thought this was a good use of sound and bought 2 scenes together well.
Costume -
The costumes used for this film was very simple as it was a high school which meant that the students would be wearing casual every day clothing and the teachers would just be wearing a simple suit, the teachers were generally wearing dual coloured suits and the students was just wearing T-shirts or hoodies.
Use of off-screen space –
A good example of off screen space would be when they used the sound of the piano in the scene as showing a character at home then cut across to another character at home which linked on shot to another quite efficiently however it was unexpected that the next shot was going to be of someone playing a piano in their room.