Cholera- Short Film Analysis

Cholera is a short film that was produced in Spain, with the speech in Spanish, though it does include English subtitles. This film is a thriller that explores the theme of human nature. The target audience for this film would be of males around the ages of 16-30. This film focus on human nature, a theme I am, in some ways, dealing with in my own short film, through the exploration of sin/murder.

This film has been shot as one continuous shot and so does not really involve any sort of clear editing because of this. Despite it only being a single shot, it does use a range of different 'shots' and angles. The use of a continuous shot helps to connote the tension and fear of the film.  The film opens with a close up on the central character, though it does also have the rest of the village walking behind him.

This shot uses quite a shallow depth of field, meaning that only the central character is in focus, allowing us to focus on his emotion and show his anger for who he is about to confront. This is quite a long shot that just follows them in front to their destination. In this there is the diegetic sound of everyone's footsteps, giving it the unnerving and almost militaristic feel. There is also non-diegetic music, the sound of drums. This fits with the sound of the footsteps to add the rhythmic and unnerving feeling. As the audience is looking onto the crowd, and cannot see where they are going, it again adds to this unnerving and fearful feeling as it is unknown as to what may happen.

This shot then pulls back to show more of the people, in better focus, but it also slowly reveals the gun as the audience moves further away.

This moves the audience away from the central character and brings them into the entire crowd and their overall emotion of slight fear and anger. This shot continues to follow the villagers as they move forward. At the end of this 'shot' the camera dollys around the central character to reveal a hut, in a wide shot. The whole film has a darker feeling, mainly from the use of the lighting and the colours. In terms of the lighting, the entire film is set outside and so all the lighting is from the sun, which appears to be either a sun rise or sun set, which gives the lighting a darker and perhaps tenser atmosphere, particularly if it were the evening, symbolsing it is to become night.

The colours used in the film are all a darker, faded dusty sort of colour, showing the gritty, dark nature of the film, whose narrative follows this group of villagers who go to kill a diseased man. The man attempts to run away but is shot again and falls into a lake or a river, which is soon revealed to be the 'Municipal water supply', which could relate to the title, 'Cholera'. This film has a dark theme and follows the dark side of human nature in which a group of people go to kill a man, possibly because they are scared and because he is diseased. The film use practical makeup to portray this ill man, who looks as one who may be described as a monster, a terrifying being, perhaps from a nightmare.