Connect (Samuel Abrahams, 2010) is a 5-minute short film which follows a woman on a bus experiencing a series of imaginary events as she lets her mind run wild whilst immersing herself in music. After daydreaming a man shooting an old woman in order to take her seat, our protagonist forms a brief but powerful connection with another passenger on the bus – holding hands for a brief, but intimate moment. Afterwards, the man gets off the bus and the woman imagines the passengers dancing.
Throughout its extremely short runtime, the film uses a number of interesting techniques in order to convey its message to the viewer. Firstly, blocking and framing is cleverly used in the opening scene of the film as the woman boards the bus – a centrally-framed closeup of the woman is held as a barrage of people storm onto the bus. The other passengers are filmed with a shallow depth of field, creating a sense of claustrophobia.
Colour grading is used to establish a dusk urban setting, with the bus’s artificial lighting representing the harsh way of life the woman is struggling through. During the closeup of the two hands touching, a glimmer of light briefly passes by the lens of the camera – displaying that this is a moment that the two characters will greatly cherish.
Overall, I enjoyed Connect a considerable amount for what it offered, but I believe that the film’s duration was much too short for it to tell a meaningful plot or convey any particular theme. The film demonstrated to me the effect that closeups and depth of field can have on the viewer.
Otis Morley’s A-Level Film Studies Blog 