A2 MEDIA 

At the beginning of the short film, we see quite a few close ups of the child sitting down on the table minding her own business. This then leads on to us seeing more close up shots but of the two parents arguing really by the side of her. The shots that are used aren't steady at all and it gives us an insight on what is happening. The worse the argument gets between the two parents, the more unsteady the camera movement is. Even though we don't really know what they are arguing about, we immediately know that something is wrong. This is called Exposition because it provides us with all the background information at the beginning of the short film.

 

After this, we then see a wide shot of the little girl, Nina, running out the back door because her mum told her too. Nina runs out the door all the way to the back of her garden where she then sits down and starts playing with her dolls. From the moment when she is outside in the garden alone, we then begin to see her narrative. We see that she is in her own little world and doesn't understand whats going on. This is also known as the rising action. We see her playing with her toys whilst the music gets more and more tense.

 

A short while after this, Nina begins to dig up the mud because she wanted to bury one of her dolls. We see a range of wide shots but also close up shots aswell. When she is nearly done digging we begin to see that something is really wrong because the shots get quicker and the background music gets more tense. After digging some more we see that she finds a hand poking out from under the mud. I think that at this point in the short film we reach a climax. The climax is used to mark a change in the film. In this sense, the climax is that she finds her brother under the mud but we don't know if this is a good or bad thing yet because we heard earlier on in the short film that he has gone missing.

 

When Nina goes back inside the house she tells her little brother to follow her but he gets scared then disappeared from the shot. Immediately we see that something is wrong because if he was fine, he wouldn't be scared to go back into the house with his sister. When Nina is washing her hands in the sink, we see an over the shoulder shot of the police women walking in behind her. The focus pulls from Nina to her in the background implying to us that something is wrong because the police women is inside her house. We see a couple of over the shoulder shots while the police women talks to Nina about why she is there. Once Nina hears the police sirens from a distance she runs to the front of her house and looks outside to see her mum standing there watching her husband being taken away in a police car. 

 

We see a focus pull from Nina at the window to her mum in the background smiling at her. This implying that we can see that something bad has happened but its over now as the father is being taken away. The police women follows the young girl in the front room where the girl asks her a question. Nina asks her about arresting her dad but the police women just replies with that she will okay because she has her mum with her. Later on in the short film the police women finds out that Nina has indeed found her missing brother and follows her out to the garden to where she says she has found him. Once the police women follows her outside we then get pulled out of Mina's narrative and into reality. We see this as when the police women looks at where Mina found the boy she realises that someone had killed and buried him. 

 

Overall, I think this short film uses a good range of shots to help us understand what is going on. At first, we don't really understand what is going on when Mina finds her brother buried at the back of her garden but at the end we can clearly see there are two narratives. Mina thought that her brother was alive and was able to move but the audience knew that there wasn't something quite right.