Textual Analysis: 2AM: The Smiling Man (2013)

‘2AM: The Smiling Man’ (2013) uses a collection of camera angles and movement to highlight rises in tension throughout the short film. These shots include; medium shots and closeups to examine the character’s emotion and fear, handheld tracking and over-the-shoulder shots of the character for a voyeuristic feel, low-level wide shots to magnify the vast space around the character and focus on the isolating setting, slight high angles to depict inferiority and superiority between the antagonistic pair - conforming to Levi Strauss’ binary oppositions theory, and extreme long shots that illustrate the distance between the two characters. With framing, the smiling man is positioned in the right third of the frame, connoting a mysterious, menacing characteristic. I gained inspiration from these techniques and decided to use a selection of these shots when producing the storyboard for Anything But Social to depict the seclusion she experiences, to concentrate on how she is made inferior by her binary opposites - the cyberbullies, and to make her body language and emotions of sorrow a focal point for the audience.