Textual analysis on 12:12

The short film ’12:12’ is directed by Jeremy Cathey when he was 17; he had made this short film in a genre for thriller as we are given Hermeneutic codes, which the director has deliberately, put making us wonder why the actor is still up at this time and who was on the phone etc. This short film doesn’t look professional as he brakes the 30 degree rule, perhaps he done it on purpose making the audience confused, judging by that I also think that this was a small budget film as it doesn’t use many effects and the acting isn’t all that. This director was aiming for a small niche target audience between 16- 26, as they didn’t have a high enough budget to aim for a bigger target audience.

In this short film, we see a young teenager about 17 or 18 (hinting that this is aimed for the younger audience), still up at 12:11am and when it hits 12:12am this ghost haunts him but only for that one minute and after that minute every thing is back to normal. This director used a wide range of shots as he uses a close up on the characters face at the beginning showing how bored he is, and then uses a fast tracking shot towards the phone signifying that this is unusual or greatly important to the character, towards the end of the film when the ghost has cornered the actor, the director uses an effect that shows this is supernatural, there was good shots of the ghost at the beginning as we just see glimpses of it in the dark for one second and then when the light turns on its gone. The editing is slow phased up until we see the ghost, which builds the tension, when the camera is hand held and is following the character it builds tension as the camera moving from side to side makes it look more threatening, the mix of shots helps sets the genre as the director uses canted angles that suggests to the audience that this isn’t normal.

The mise-en-scene is all right as every thing looks like a standard house for a teenager but the ghost’s mise-en-scene is bad as it just wares a shiny mask and just casual clothing which ruins the audience believing that it is a ghost, but the lighting is good up till we see the ghost in the bathroom as I personally think it is too bright to show the ghost in and should dim the lights for that scene, the lighting in the rest of the film is brilliant as we see the ghost in the dark making the ghost look more scary than just in his causal clothing.

We could take some of the ideas used in this to aid our short film as we could us the lighting as they did but only show our killer in the dark so we wont see much of him but enough of him to be more scary for the audience.