Over

Over  

    Over is a short film directed by John Threlfall, following the discovery of a body found as it fell out of a plane onto a street in London. 

    The film adopts a very interesting and abnormal narrative structure with all of the events happening in reverse chronological order. This lends itself to the story as the moment of drama, as the person falls out of the plane, is left to the end of the film whereas chronologically it happened first. 

    This unconventional narrative structure also creates a sense of ambiguity surrounding the death and keeps the spectators guessing as to what happened. It could have been a murder, or a car crash or a suicide in the spectators' minds, right up until the end of the film.

    Technically the film is also very interesting. It is composed of 9 static wide-shots which provide the spectator with a very impartial point of view to the events, being positioned almost as a neighbour watching the changes throughout the day. A sense of realism is created through the naturalistic lighting, the use of deep focus and the very generic mise-en-scene and setting all of which help emphasise this perspective by helping to immerse the spectator.

    From the start of the film, hints and references are given to the cause of the death. In this shot, one of the first shots in the film, a plane can be seen flying in the background which is of course a reference to how the man dies in the end.

     A selection of close-ups of different objects is used at one point in the film which creates a connection between the spectator and the victim by offering a more personal look at the objects that were on them when they died. The objects tell something about the story but at this point in the film it is still very ambiguous as the spectator tries to figure out what happened.

    At the end, what exactly happened is revealed through the composition of the shot and the sound. The man falling from the sky creates shock and is very sudden, but the use of sound with the plane heard above and then the plane appearing in the top of the frame allow the spectator to piece everything together to figure out what happened.