Field Report 1

On October I went to the screening of the independent production of Self-Determination. The film was about a failing marriage, presented through the point of view of the wife. She struggles with the temptation of alcohol as a solution for her pain and the responsibility of being a mother. The film consisted of a lot of long shots with very few noticeable cuts. By doing this the audience is able to relate to the wife's long drowning days of constantly thinking about her husband and what he might be up to. When something like this is consuming your thoughts and weighing you down, things seem to go by slower and appear more mundane.
There is very little dialog in the film, which also adds to the way the silence fills the space and allows for only thoughts, in this case troubling ones. Also by having scarce dialog the acting becomes more noticeable and emotional. For instance, at the end of the short film, the husband comes home from being gone all night and walks in to the house to see his wife standing there, just furious. She doesn't say anything, but just glares. We get a close up of her face, her nostrils are flaring and her lip is quivering. She doesn't say anything before the film cuts to black, but we know the situation was not going to end peacefully.