Low Tide

Low Tide is a short film directed by Hussain Pirani and Joe Simon about a young couple who are coming to terms with their relationship as told through a series of flashbacks and one interlocking scene- playing roulette with a gun. The inspiration I will take from this film will be the simplicity in the dialogue, the naturalistic way in which the couple discuss their relationship along with their shared past and their hopes for the future, and its cinematography.

I really love the shallow depth of field in this scene which is particularly visible when we see shots of the gun, as one part of the gun is in focus while the rest is blurred. It is established that she is the pushy one while he remains more submissive in the relationship, which makes us question why she acts in this way. 

The cross-cut to the next scene is punctuated by non-diegetic sudden crescendo in the atmospheric eerie soundtrack into a piano solo and a montage of the couple out and about together, which we presume is a flashback. The juxtaposition is really striking and shows the audience the kind of relationship they had before and what they have now lost. 

There is a variation in the shots used in each scene, which is quite important considering that the whole film is a series of conversations between two people, so one could quickly fall into the trap of simply using shot-reverse-shots. The establishing shot at the beginning of this scene makes the landscape look eerie and almost haunted, coupled with the empty swing set representing their lost childhood. 

The conversation that happens at this house is very naturalistic and is something that I find myself doing sometimes; just imagining who would live in that sort of house. This scene is only made up of two shots, a close up and a wide angle long shot which I would definitely use if I had long establishing shots. I like that the simplistic editing and camerawork reflects the simplistic dialogue, but if this editing speed was used for my five minute film it would be to stagnant, slow paced and a little boring for my audience, so I would like to use more of a variation in my own work.

I love the pathetic fallacy of this scene- the waves crashing on the rocks and the cold colour palette reflect the instability of the relationship and and their emotions. The low-key lighting means that the scene appears more dramatic, and the dark tones reflect the trauma she felt that eventually lead her to abort her baby. 

The final scene is in stark contrast to the previous two scenes due to its general change in tone supported by the high key natural lighting, very warm, saturated colours. The juxtaposition is made even more ironic by the fact that the final scene takes place on the same beach as the scene discussed above, but with a completely different change of mood. There is still ambiguity surrounding the time of each flashback which came first, and what the real resolution is at the end. The mise-en-scene really reflects this happy time in the relationship, and though we know they don't end up together, we get to see the couple at their best before the credits roll.

This is one of my favourite shots of the film, mainly because its colours are so bold and unique, and are so different to the mise-en-scene in so many other contemporary films. 

To be brutally honest I have seen this film many times now, and still don't completely understand the exposition of the plot! It's such a shame as everything else is done really well in this film, and I still felt sympathy for the characters even though I didn't understand what the gun meant, why they had it in the first place, why they were playing a game with it and why she seemed to be fearlessly pushing him to play along. Unfortunately the difficulty with short films is that in the short amount of time you have you need to leave a lot of things unsaid and make the audience work for themselves, but if this is executed poorly it can mean that the plot is easily misunderstood. The saving grace for this short film is undoubtedly the cinematography and visual style, perfectly matching the tone of each scene. I hope that I can take inspiration from it particularly in the way it is structured as a short film, but also learn from it and understand what to make obvious to the audience and what can be left open for interpretation.