The Ellington Kid - Dan Sully (2012)

The Ellington kid takes place in a kebab shop while a friend recalls a story/myth he heard from a friend. Dan Sully's use of flashbacks and story-telling narrative to present this myth works really well in a short film because it imitates the fast pace and tension of an urban legend without it feeling too dragged out and unrealistic. The story doesn't exactly have a conclusion as we are told to 'use your imagination' to guess whether it actually happened however it ends with an ominous shot of a worker sharpening his knife which hints that it might have.  One specific micro element that stands out is the iconography of knives which is present in both the beginning and the end of the film. I feel like the focus on knives relates to the current knife crime problem which makes the extraordinary story still seem somewhat realistic because of what is going on in real life. Another micro element is the ambient music during the story of the Ellington kid which builds up tension until Beefy interrupts the story. The ambient music works really well to separate fiction and reality, this makes us just as curious as to how the story ends as Beefy.