Can i Emrys Short film Critique/Review

Introduction 
The following piece is an essay that I wrote whilst in the BFI Film academy. I thought I would post it on here to show it to a larger audience then the two people who have read it up until this point.

A link to the video reviewed in the following article: https://vimeo.com/65452739

Review and critique of a short film.

Cân I Emrys

To begin with I am going to introduce the film and give you a brief summary of the film, what it’s about and some other basic information that will provide context prior to delving into the critique and analysis of the film. Cân I Emrys which translates in English to A song for Emrys is a 2013 welsh documentary short film directed by Osian Williams that tells the story of Emrys and his musical connection with Manon Llwyd, a musician who goes into the retirement home that Emrys is in to play music for the elderly to try and bring music back into their lives. The idea behind this is to bring music into these people’s lives to try and give them some form of escapism in the same way that a lot of people watch films as a form of escapism. For context escapism is where you do something that helps get your mind off of things and helps you forget about the world that you live in and instead takes you to a world where you are able to you find happiness and where all your problems disappear and all that is left is serenity and you feel as though you are in a much better place. Anyway back to the point by introducing music back into these elderly people’s lives Llwyd is giving the elderly people some escapism through the music which in turn can hopefully provide a better quality of life for the residents at the home.

Ok, so now I am going to begin with my analysis of the piece, I am going to break down this analysis into 10 sections these are the following: Genre and style, Narrative structure, Sound, Camera techniques, Editing style, Setting, Location, Mise en scene, Target Audience and my opinion and conclusion. To begin with I am going to talk about the short films Genre and Style. The Short is a Documentary and so as one would assume it fall into the documentary genre, a documentary is a factual piece of film that illustrates a real life story. This short fills that description by being a factual piece about a 93-year-old man who is quite lonely in the retirement home that he lives in and how he is affected when a musician who works with the retirement home plays one of his childhood favourite songs on a harp. The Style of the piece is similar to a lot of documentaries. The short is shot in quite an overly dramatic way. Now what I mean by this is that a large majority of the shots in this documentary are shot to make the retirement home prior to the introduction of music into their lives as quite depressing, miserable and quite drab, However this is clearly done to further add to the narrative and emphasise the point of the piece as a whole.  

Secondly, I am going to be talking about the Narrative structure of the documentary. The piece follows a linear narrative. For context a linear narrative is a narrative that goes from start to finish following the events chronologically. The narrative of the short is quite straight forward and the structure of the narrative is quite simplistic and easy to follow. The narrative is presented from the viewpoint of the musician Manon Llwyd.  And follows her side of the events throughout the documentary, the audience receive all of their information and the exposition through her. The narrative of the documentary is very simple and straight forward due to two reasons, the first reason is that it is a documentary about one specific event and so it doesn’t really have a whole lot of wiggle room when it comes to imaginative narrative (what I mean by this is when a film uses a unique and different narrative compared to a linear narrative). The second reason is that due to the documentaries short runtime, there isn’t a whole lot of time to create a narrative that doesn’t follow the traditional narrative structure. These two factors are responsible for the narrative structure being very linear and straight forward. However this is not a disadvantage to the short because while from what I have described it might seem like the documentary using a linear narrative is a negative, in fact it works well with the format of the piece and lends itself quite well to the story that the documentary is telling and presenting.

Moving on from this I am going to be talking about the use of sound throughout the documentary. This will cover not just the dialogue but the music, audio quality, how the audio is used to emphasise elements of the story and how the music is critical to setting the tone of the documentary. However since the music Is the most important piece of audio featured within the documentary I will mostly just talk about the music and how it emphasises the points within the narrative and how it is critical to the effectiveness of the emotional moments of the documentary. Firstly, I will talk about the music, now the documentary features two types of music. First there is the music that is played in the beginning that sets the tone of the documentary but there is also the music played by Llwyd during the advert, I just wanted to make it clear before I begin analysing the audio in the advert. Ok so the music used throughout the short paints a very melancholy picture. The tone that is set by the music presents the retirement home as very down beat and melancholy with the piano adding to that and this carries into the representation of Emrys, the music paints a very lonely picture of Emrys showing him on his own and showing him looking quite melancholy.

This is done to further emphasise the point of the documentary as well as increase the impact that the ending of the documentary has on the viewer. What I mean by this is that by using the music in the opening to present the tone of Emrys’ life in the retirement home as very lonely and quite miserable which I have no doubt that it could be, the melancholy presentation allows for the audience to feel empathy for Emrys so later when we see him cry after hearing one of his favourite songs from his childhood the impact of that moment is more likely to land due to the opening music and how it sets the audience up like pins to be knocked down by the bowling ball that the ending is intended to be. Continuing on I am going to move into talking about the camera techniques that are used within the documentary and how the different shots and the way that each shot is framed helps illustrate, emphasize and get the narrative across to the audience visually.  I will be analysing not only the good camera work but also the bad camera work.

So to begin with I am going to start off with the different shots featured within this documentary and these are: 1 wide shot, 2 zooms, 2 low angle shots, 1 panning shot, 4 medium close ups (MCU), 4 close ups, 5 two shots however one is reused, 4 over the shoulder shots, 4 reverse shots plus the 1 two shot and 1 time lapse at the end. This comes out to 32 shots with 10 different shots. The camera work and the shot types are various and make for interesting cinematography. The camera work and techniques make for an interesting watch and helps make the visual style of the short far more intriguing for the viewer and with the use of more creative and unique shots within the short helps the short from becoming visually boring and helps keeps the audience in the short. However, the camera work at times and feel a little dull, this is specifically when the short shows Llwyd re watching the footage of her interaction and “musical connection” with Emrys. The scene contains a very basic over the shoulder shot, reverse shot which while it gets the job done and achieves what it needs to however it feels quite bland as there isn’t much creativity behind the camera work in this specific scene which does make it seem a little lazy.

I am now going to move onto discussing both the positives and negatives of the editing style as well as the different editing techniques and how they were used. So to start with I want to address my biggest problem with the editing in this short and this is the colour grading throughout the short documentary. Now for context I am going to explain colour grading just in case you are unfamiliar and just so we are on the same page, colour grading is when you change the colour and the tint of footage this alters the visual look of the footage, using colour grading you can change footage that was shot in the day to look like a shot that was filmed in the night, you can also use colour grading to give a shot a unique visual style. When it comes to the colour grading in this short specifically the colour grading choices made by the editor, I understand why they made the choices that they made, however my biggest problem with the colour grading featured within the short is that a lot of the shots seem as though they are either too over exposed or ironically too under exposed. You could make the argument that the under exposed shots I feel are used to try and paint a more downbeat picture, but this is clearly false because the shots are quite inconsistent in terms of which are over exposed or under exposed. It just feels and looks sloppy which is irritating. Besides that the editing is quite standard, there isn’t much in the way of overly interesting editing, the editing gets the job done but it doesn’t really try to stand out and it seems as though the editing is being used so that they can just compile the files together and make the final product which while that is what it is used for by a lot of people there is so much potential with your editing to make something that stands out to the audience and creating a unique style and personality that will make the film feel unique.

Following on from this I will be talking about three things which are the following: Setting, Location and Mise en Scene. To begin with I am going to talk about the setting of the documentary short, The documentary features two locations in the entirety of the piece. These two being the retirement home and the home of Llwyd. The majority of the documentary takes place in the retirement home where Emrys (The subject of the documentary) lives. The reason that the documentary takes place within the retirement home for the majority of the runtime is because the documentary is focused around Emrys and since he spends all of his time in said retirement home, the documentary is thus filmed there. The second location that is showed within the documentary is Manon Llwyd’s house, the reason that this location is used is to focus on Llwyd watching the footage alone as it adds to the dramatic effect. The setting of the documentary is in the retirement home as this is where the story is focused as the documentary follows someone who lives within a retirement. The difference between a setting and a location is that the setting is where the story takes place, while the location is where the documentary is filmed. I am now going to talk about the Mise en Scene in the documentary. I am going to list the different things that I am going to talk about in mise en scene, and these are the following: Actors or in the case of documentary like this cast, props, , make up, lighting and other things featured within the frame. So to start off I am going to talk about the cast, now since the film is a documentary there are not any actors featured within the film since it is a non-fiction piece. So I can’t really talk about the actors but I can indeed talk about the cast however the cast for the most part don’t say a single word, the only person who has dialogue within the entire film is Llywd. She does a good job even though she isn’t really acting so there isn’t much to talk about in that department. Moving on from that is the props, costumes and make up which similarly to the cast isn’t that extensive in terms of things to talk about since yet again the film is nonfiction. However, I can talk about the lighting featured within the documentary. A majority of the shots that are in the documentary utilise the external light from outside that shines in into the shot. The shots that were filmed in the retirement home for the most part exclusively utilise the external light from outside of the windows, However the shots that were filmed within Manon Llwyd’s house there is a nearly exclusive focus on artificial light produced from the lights that are behind the camera.

I am now going to move onto giving my opinion on who I believe this documentary is aimed at. Now my interpretation from watching this documentary a multitude of times I believe that the documentary is aimed at people in their 30s and 40s. My reasoning behind this is that the documentary’s protagonist is that a woman somewhere in her 30s/40s, now the message behind the documentary is that even at an old age you can still find joy or alternatively even in the bleakest of existences there is always something that can bring you joy. Anyway the reason why I think the documentary is aimed at people in the age range of 30 to 40 years old is because the project that Llwyd is apart of is about bringing the joy of music to older people and while the documentary is telling the story of the connection between Emrys and Llwyd through music, the underlying idea from Llwyd’s perspective is that the documentary can hopefully encourage people in her age group to get involved and join the project that she is apart of.

Finally, I am going to be deciding and concluding whether I would recommend the documentary or not. The short answer is that yes, I would indeed recommend the documentary Can I Emrys. The long answer, I would recommend the documentary because while the editing feels basic and some of the camera work isn’t the greatest but the elements of the documentary that I did enjoy, these being the sound design and music, the narrative, the good camera work and the varying camera shots featured throughout and the lighting (for the most part). While the documentary isn’t flawless, like almost every film made the documentary does have good elements and what is good, in my opinion is very good and thus I feel it is worth a watch and worth the recommendation.