Technical Analysis II: 2AM: The Smiling Man

2AM: The Smiling Man

As you can see here, this is the title of the short film which is called '2AM: The Smiling Man'. The background is blurred out including the main character which is 'Depth of Field' as the title is the main focus as they want you to know the name of the short film they're showing you.

This is a long/establishing shot, reason for this is to show where is this character is, where the film is set etc. You could see that the film took place on street which look empty and also very quiet as no one else is there except the actors. You could also see that the costumes and props wasn't important as the guy was wearing just casual clothes (grey hoodie, pink shirt & blue jean).

There were quite few digetic noises which can be heard by both audience and characters in this short film such as wind, footsteps and the character's voice whereas there was a creepy music going on and off in the background, because of that, this is what start to keep the audience on the edge of their seats as it's very intense. The creepy music is non-digetic sound which mean only the audience can hear this and not the characters in the short film.

As you can see in the screenshot above, Depth of Field was added again as the main focus is now the character and the background is blurred as they are not important right now and want you to focus on the character. This main focus allow you to see the character's facial expression as he's getting scared/disturbed by the mysterious man who's walking up to him weirdly (The Smiling Man).

Another depth of field in this screenshot, as you can see there's two characters in this shot but one blurred out as the main focus is on the same character so this mean the audience should focus on that character and know that he's crossing the road because he's scared of the man walking up toward to him. This is 'behind the shoulder' shot which can allow two characters in one shot.

There wasn't really any high key or low key lighting in this short as Naturalistic lighting is being used to make it more realistic which made it even more scary and intense. They didn't really need any lighting as there was light from street's lampposts. I personally think it was better not to use extra lightning as you can see it look kind of scary as the man is looking toward us. Because of the lightning, you could see shadow of many things such as The Smiling Man, plants, lampposts. As shadow is black and black respresent evil,  it look like the man is up to something, this could cause the audience to be scared because you don't usually see a man looking at you and smiling creepy like a pedophile in dark at 2am in the morning.

The Depth of field was changed as you can see in these two screenshots. In the first screenshot, you could see the main focus is on the first main character as the background is totally blurred because they want you focus on him as he is turning his head around. Then the next screenshot, you could see that it quickly cut as the background become clear and The Smiling Man appeared out of nowhere while the first main character get blurred which mean they want you focus on The Smiling Man to see what is he doing as the main focus is now on The Smiling Man.

As he start to get up, the creepy music start to get louder and louder as it get scarier and scarier which can bring fear to the audience and possibly scream when something scary pop up out of nowhere. This is non-digetic as only the audience can only hear this and not the characters in the film. The soundtrack in the background can show that the film's genre is Thriller as the music in the background is very intense and thrilling. This created suspense.

There were quite a lot of 'Match on Action' shots in this films as you can see in these three screenshots, as the guy running away from The Smiling Man, the angles was cut twice (Close Up -> Wide Shot -> Close Up). This showed the audience that the guy running away is scared and is helpless and showed where he's running to. As the camera followed him and the creepy music along with the character's heartbeat, this is what going to put the audience in the character's perspective of fear. The editing built pace and dramatic tension to make it suspense and mysterious.