Echo - British Short Film

Echo is a 2011 British short film directed by Lewis Arnold, about a girl who receives a distressing call from her mother about her father being in a dangerous motorcycle accident. The film however shows this incident three times consecutively, with there being something different about each time. In the first incident in the timeline of the film, we see the girl receive the phone call and be helped into a cab to the hospital by two strangers, with a small amount of cash for the journey, but moments later she gets out the cab and walks home with the cash in her pocket, having successfully deceived the strangers. 

In the second incident, we see the girl halfway through trying to scam a stranger, with her crying and with the stranger about to call her a cab. However the girl fails to deceive the stranger as she is seen by her younger brother who comes over to see what's wrong. Realising she has been found out by the stranger, she is forced to walk away, with the stranger yelling after her.

The third incident once again sees the girl just having received the call about her father's motorcycle accident, but the film ends before we see if the girl is scamming the stranger for their money, or if it is in fact a real situation where her dad is seriously injured. 

the use of an unchronological timeline in Echo helps to create confusion for the spectator, as we are never sure if the girl is always being deceptive, or if she actually has received a call about her father being badly injured, and that she is then repeating the events of getting that same phone call, in order to gain a bit of money off strangers. It also leads the spectator to question the actual chronological timeline of the events in the film.

Cinematography: 

the camera movement in the first incident is quite shaky, as there is quite a lot of emotion being emulated by the girl, despite it being faked, and so the camera movement is rather erratic and uneven. In the second incident, as there isn't as much emotion being displayed by the girl, and because she is forced to end her charade midway through, the camera is quite smooth, and the camera is positioned mainly in mid shot in order to try and show both the girl's and the stranger's reaction to her brother turning up halfway through. However, in the third incident, the camera is at it's shakiest, as it appears to be the girl's real reaction to the phone call, so the emotions are at the highest in whole film, with the camera positioning being mainly positioned in close-up to show the girl's expressions and emotions. 

Mise en Scene:

The colours of the film are all very muted and unsaturated, to show the dullness of the girl's life that she resorts to scamming strangers for their money, but also to portray gritty realism of it's setting, and also its depressing tone.