Over - John Threllfall (2015)

Over tells the real life event of an illegal immigrant, who died while trying to cross borders, in reverse chronological order. This short film completely subverts expectations because of this reversal of events, the whole time we are left guessing as to what happened. This makes the eventual climax so much more unexpected because we focus on one spot for the entirety of the film but from different angles except for where we actually see the action come from (the sky). Personally this was one of my favourite short films we watched because it uses the medium of short film so well to capture this short moment of tension that couldn't be done in a feature film. To me the lack of information with gradual clues kept me guessing throughout which meant during the climax I was caught completely off guard because I was looking for some sort of clue rather than expecting something to happen on that spot. Particular micro elements I liked were the reverse clockwise long shots around the spot which parallels to the reverse chronology of the event, and the ambient sound of just regular people on a regular day which allows me to feel a connection because it suggests this sort of incident can happen in any place to anyone.