I always like Eric’s film. He has a very good eye for art. For all his previous film projects, even though not completely perfect, I found that the composition, the color, the shots’ angles were very artistic, fluent, and beautiful. And these components are definitely the foundation of a film.
For the beginning, the title shot was, no doubt, a big success. I think Eric got inspired by the film title we watched in class. He used a long-take to show all the photography gears on a desk, the shot was very fluent and classic. Also it was an introduction of the whole film. The story was built on a photo shooting trip. There is no other better way to show the beginning but the cameras and lenses.
In addition, I liked how Eric jumped from the dream and the reality, by using color fading. First, he showed half screen of the camera and half screen of the guy’s face. The movie language was very clear: he is dreaming. And at about 1:13, the guys eyes faded into color. By doing so, we all know: now the real world scene begins.
In the taking picture scenes, I really loved the background music. I found it was a romantic way to show the photographers’ passion and the beauty of the nature. The director used different film techniques here, such as fade in and fade out, on focus and out focus, separate screens, as well as a bunch of different shots, wide shot, close-ups, long shot, etc. Therefore, even though the 4 mins long scene was all about two guys taking pictures, we would not feel very boring of it.
The shot I liked the most is about 4:50, when the two guys running together into the sun. The director used some effects to make the shot to be up-side-down, and it gave us a very surrealist feeling. I considered that to be a release of passion from the two young guys.
As for the last scene when all of these came back to reality, and they were just dreaming it or imagining it, I still have different opinions about it. On one hand, I think it’s a good closure of the first scene when the guy woke up; on the other hand, I wonder if this is really necessary.
