'Money Box' by Muzappar Osman - Short Film Research - Sam Swinson

'Money Box' by Muzappar Osman - Short Film Research - Sam Swinson

About the Film (Director, Release date, Overall plot and Issues):

This short film is a 5 minute short that was created by Muzappar Osman. It was released 25th March 2014. I found this short film on Vimeo which is a video sharing platform.

This short film is about a man that has a little amount of money. The protagonist takes his money to a cold drink vending machine and tries to buy a drink by inserting his money into the machine. However, he realises that he doesn't have enough money for a drink so he ejects the money from the machine. Then the protagonists realised that the machine gave him $10 when he only put in $1. So the protagonist does this again and again until he has $1000. Then he gets too greedy and he puts all of his money, $5820, into the machine, but, the power goes out in the city and the machine turns off. This means that the protagonist has lost all of his money.

This short film is a very original way of dealing with the issue of greed and money. It is done in such a way that gets the audience to think what they would do in the situation the protagonist is in. This film makes the audience think whether money makes a human better or more powerful than a human with less money.

Concepts:

I will be applying 3 media concepts to this short film. I will apply:

• Narrative
• Media Language
• Audience

Each concept will be colour coded to make it easier to see where I have applied each concept to the short film.

Analysis:

Narrative & Media Language:

• Todorov's 5 part narrative theory and Barthes narrative theory can both be applied very well to this short film.
• The film begins with an establishing shot of New York city at night when it is snowing. 
• This is an extreme long shot (Figure 1) that shows the audience where the protagonist is.
• This is the Equilibrium part of Todorov's narrative theory where everything is normal and there is a sense of balance in the story world.
• This is a circular narrative which is used to emphasise the of the protagonist because the only difference between the start and the end is that the audience has seen the protagonist lose all of his money.
• Additionally, this is an unrestricted linear narrative that is told, and the plot is in a chronological order.

Figure 1

• Then there is a mid shot of a cold drinks vending machine (Figure 2).
• This shot has tilt camera movement that tilts upwards to show the whole machine.
• This is a use of Barthes Action Code because the audience can predict that something is going to happen with this vending machine because the shot is a long duration.
• Additionally, this creates Enigma which is another of Barthes codes because the audience is questioning what the importance of this vending machine is.

Figure 2

• After this, there is an extreme long shot of the protagonist as he walks slowly towards the vending machine (Figure 3).
• This creates enigma because the audience can see the protagonist's face due to his costume hiding it so the audience is wondering what kind of a person the protagonist is.
• On top of this, there is non-diegetic background music that is slowly building up which matches the pace of the editing so far in the film.
• The non-diegetic background music is very eerie thriller-style music which adds to the enigma.
• The protagonist body language as he walks connotes that he is sad or slightly depressed or upset.

Figure 3

• Next, we see a mid shot of the protagonist as he puts a note into the vending machine, however, we are not sure what the amount of money is (Figure 4).
• This adds enigma because there must be a reason as per why the audience is watching the protagonist put some money into a vending machine. 
• This means that using Barthes action code the audience are trying to predict the importance of the vending machine, for example, it will give the protagonist something he doesn't have.

Figure 4

• Then we get a POV shot from the protagonist perspective of the amount of money that he has put into the machine which is $1 (Figure 5). 
• This suggests to the audience that the amount of money is significant to the story.
• Also, as there is a cut to this shot there is a crescendo in the non-diegetic background music to suggest the importance of it and emphasise this to the audience.

Figure 5

• Next, we see that he cannot afford any of the drinks in the vending machine and we see a mid shot of his facial expression that shows frustration (Figure 6) suggesting that he is very thirsty.
• Then there is an extreme close-up on the money as it comes out of the vending machine because it is a $10 note (Figure 7).
• In addition, there is shallow depth of field to bring all of the audiences attention to the money which connotes its importance.
• This is a surprise to the audience and they are just as confused as the protagonist is and this adds to the enigma.
• On top of this, as the not comes out the non-diegetic background music fades out. 
• This is the Disruption part of Todorov's narrative theory because the vending machine is changing or disrupting the equilibrium.

Figure 6

Figure 7

• Then there is a big close-up on the protagonist's face (Figure 8).
• This shows his facial expression which suggests to the audience that he is confused and he is trying to work out what happened.
• This is the Recognition part of Todorov's narrative because the protagonist is working out what the disruption is.

Figure 8

• After this, there is a close-up shot showing the protagonist putting the $10 back into the vending machine (Figure 9).
• This adds to the enigma because the audience is wondering whether the protagonist will get more money again.
• Then there is a close-up as he ejects the money from the machine and he gets $100 from it (Figure 10). 
• This is a shock to the audience because the protagonist is getting 10 times what he puts in.

Figure 9 

Figure 10

• Then we get a mid shot of the protagonist as he is collecting the $100 from the vending machine (Figure 11). 
• We can see his facial expression and it shows joy and happiness, but, the audience is starting to suspect at this point maybe he will take this too far and keep wanting more money.

Figure 11

• Then there is a clever sequence where the protagonist lifts the money up to his face and the camera tilts up in a mid shot with the money (Figure 12).
• Shallow depth of field is used to put the focus on the money then there is a focus pull and it changes to a wide depth of field and puts the focus on the happy and intrigued facial expression of the protagonist (Figure 13).
• Then there is a cut to an extreme close-up of his eyes looking around which connotes he is planning to put more and more money in the machine to get more back (Figure 14).
• At this point the audience can sense and predict that he should stop putting the money in the machine, but, he continues to.

Figure 12

Figure 13

Figure 14

• After this, the protagonist goes to his bank to get out, even more, money and we can tell he shouldn't have done this through Bathes action code.
• This is because the non-diegetic background music crescendoed when he gets his card out and as if so something bad will happen.
• Then there a close-up of him putting the money into the machine (Figure 15) and there is almost complete silence which represents the 'calm before the storm' meaning that everything is going to go wrong. 

Figure 15

• Next, we see an extreme close-up on the machine showing that the protagonist has put in $5820 into it (Figure 16) and he is very happy because he thinks he will get lots of money back and this was shown by his happy facial expression in the previous shot.
• Then we return to the opening establishing long shot, however, all the lights in the city go out (Figure 17). 
• This suggests that all the power has gone out in the city.
• This is the Resolution part of Todorov's narrative theory because the city has gotten rid of the disruption.

Figure 16

Figure 17

• Then we cut back to the protagonist with a big close-up (Figure 18) and is facial expression shows that he is panicking which connotes that he has lost all of the money that he put in.
• At this point the protagonist doesn't know what to do so he starts getting angry and hitting the machine, but, when it powers on again there is a cut to an extreme close-up showing the amount of money in the machine as $0 (Figure 19).
• This is then New Equilibrium part of Todorov's narrative theory.

Figure 18

Figure 19

• This is a film is a circular narrative because the film starts and ends in the same location, but, the only difference is that the protagonist has lost all of his money.
• This emphasises the theme of greed because at one point the protagonist had lots of money, but, then he got greedy and lost it all. 
• This makes the film a very effective narrative because the issues and story are clear to the audience.

Audience:

• I found this short film on Vimeo under the narrative and filmmaking & photography categories.

• Demographic:
• the demographic for this film includes both males and females and mainly people above the age of 18.
• this is because the film deals with the issue of money and greed which can only really be understood by people who earn money or people that are old enough to gamble.
• Psychographic:
• this film is for people who like the social realism genre of film.
• also, it is for people that deal with greed or think that having money means everything thing.
• this is because the film shows that money is an object that can be easily taken away from people and it shows that money is not the important thing in life.
• additionally, people who earn an income would be able to understand this film better and materially deprived people will learn a good lesson from this film.
• The target audience would find this film pleasing for a number of reasons:
• the film takes and interesting approach to greed by using a prop that people see on a day to day basis.
• it intrigues the audience by making them ask themselves what they would do in the protagonist's situation.
• also, it keeps the audience in suspense with the build up of thriller-style non-diegetic background music and the use of Barthes enigma and action codes.
• This short film won multiple awards:
• AWARD OF MERIT STUDENT FILM
  
• CATALINA FILM FESTIVAL 2014
  
• BEST NEW COMER
  
• WORLD FILM AWARD FILM FEST 2014
  
• Silver Whiskers Award
  
• INDIEWORK NYC FILM FEST 2014
  
• Nominated for Best Student Film in Norwich film festival 2015
• Production Team:
• Director - Muzappar Osman
• Producer - Muzappar Osman
• Writer - Muzappar Osman

Short Film on Vimeo:

MONEY BOX- 5 min short film from Muzappar Osman on Vimeo.

Inspiration (relating this research to my short film):

What in particular you found inspiring, or CREATIVE about the use of the concept in the film?

I liked lots of aspects of this short film and found lots of parts of it inspiring in different ways:

• I like how this short film approaches the greed issue by using a prop that most people have seen an used before, but, they show it in a different way to connote meaning, therefore, I am going to try and add this kind of prop connotation into my piece.
• On top of this, the way that the short film showed an ellipsis in the plot was very clever because it still had the protagonist doing the action, but, they were overlayed over each other and blurred slightly to speed it up and skip that part of the story.
• I would like to try and add an ellipsis like this into my short film because it worked very well.