When I found out that we were analysing animated short films, I was excited – analysing text and media was something I loved doing in A-Levels and GCSE. I was super nervous about the presentation as I was worried I was going to mess up or forget to say something while I was standing at the front of the classroom. My group were super nice and I feel like they helped me with my nervousness and my confidence I loved working in my group to do analyse this short! For my group, I worked on the mise-en-scene however, I done research for lighting, camera angles, framing, sound and the hero’s journey!

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Our short titled, ‘The Hunter’ follows a detective as he tracks down a wendigo, finally killing him at the end. For the short, I believe the lighting, framing and mise-en-scene heavily emphasised the genre – film noir.

Chiaroscuro lighting helped to convey the main detective as mysterious due to the lowkey lighting and key lighting (Ref. 1). The focus was mainly on the background; you only see the bottom half of his face until he starts the fight with the wendigo, showing his confidence in killing it (Ref. 2 and 3).

(Ref. 1)

(Ref. 2)

(Ref. 3)

 

There was also symbolism through the lighting itself, as we can see the Wendigo standing at the top of the stairs with light shining behind him. The staging also helps to show a sort of ‘heaven and hell’ symbolization where the wendigo could be seen as the monster/ demon in that case, making him look very powerful and dominant. The camera angles used also help show how vulnerable the detective was in comparison to the wendigo as it was towering over him.

 

(Ref. 4)

(Ref. 5)

‘Noir is closely connected to a visual ‘style’ of uncertainty…’ (Pettey, 2014, p.18). As he gets closer to the house, the camera is framed behind a pot, giving the sense of surveillance and uncertainty. The framing for the camera as well is mainly focused on the floor/ bottom half of his body throughout, adding to the detective being mysterious and creating suspense for what he looks like. In the establishing shot we see, showing the interior of the building, the lighting is very misty, again adding to the danger and uncertainty of the situation the detective is in.

 

(Ref. 6)

(Ref. 7)

The character himself is very enigmatic. He is the cliché film noir detective, ‘Thinking of film noir, we immediately summon up the image of a hard-boiled detective… ready to combat corruption… or a group of reckless gangsters…’(Pettey, 2014, p.143). He consistently gives off a confident demeanour through his facial expressions, showing how experienced he is having done this before as we can already tell through the corpse in the first scene. Another way his confidence is shown is through the last shot of him walking away from the corpse. It seems like a full circle as it is a mirrored shot compared to the first you see with the corpse on the floor. This also references the ‘hero’s journey’ as it seems like a recurring narrative.

At the start, he’s relaxed and then he gets called to the adventure, literally, through the rotary phone. The corpse lying on the floor suggests this same scenario has repeated. The difficult challenge for him is when the wendigo knocks the gun out of his hand, leaving him vulnerable however, he kills it, overcoming the challenge. However, this same narrative could be repeating itself. As I mentioned in the presentation, wendigo folklore suggests two ways to kill a wendigo – burning it or shooting a silver/ iron bullet through its heart. In the short, the detective shoots it through the wendigo’s head meaning it could still be very much alive and feast off more humans, to become stronger.

 

(Ref. 8)(Ref. 9)

The sound also helped cover the film noir genre. At the very start, you can faintly hear sirens, starting it off already with danger/ uneasiness. As he’s walking to the phone, non-diegetic violin music plays with the sound of footsteps and the phone ringing, making it very suspenseful. In the car and whilst the detective is searching the garage, non-diegetic music starts again indicating that he is in action and the fact that he is on a mission. Finally, in the fight scene, fast-paced music is in the background, increasing the tension between the Wendigo and detective fighting. After the wendigo is shot, it starts to slow down and then becomes tense again while showing the corpse on the ground, again potentially referencing the fact that it could still be alive.

Towards the end, we can see during the fight scene that the detective has some type of telekinesis power through shooting the gun however, we can see that seconds before the fight, the wendigo has white eyes as well as the detective. Reading up about wendigo folklore, I learnt that it is normal for wendigo’s eyes to turn red or white however, during my research I found a movie called ‘Village of the Damned, 1960’ (Ref. 11) that had very similar eyes to convey the sci-fi horror genre which I believe is what ‘The Hunter’ is doing too.

(Ref. 10)

(Ref. 11)

When first watching the short, I noticed a few scenes looked very similar. Shown below are shots/ scenes I believe may have inspired ‘Creative Seeds’ behind their making of ‘The Hunter’ as the game ‘Resident Evil’ and its other editions are very similar in genre as well as sci-fi.

 

(Ref.12) Gas Station, Resident Evil 2

 

 

(Ref.13)(Ref.14)  Gas Station, Resident Evil 2

(Ref. 15)

 

 

(Ref. 7)

(Ref. 16) Spencer’s Mansion, Resident Evil

 

Overall, I really enjoyed this assignment. It was super fun to analyse the animated short and my group were really nice! If I was to go back and give myself some advice about this assignment, I would say to myself to be a lot less nervous for presenting as it was actually really exciting to be able to stand up at the front and share some hidden details I found for the mise-en-scene and also tell myself to just have fun while doing it. I can’t wait to see what else this module has in store for me as I feel like it’s bringing me out of my shell and helping me with my presenting!

 

Research slides:

References:

Pettey, H.B. (2014) Film noir. Edinburgh University Press.

Ostberg, R. (2023) Wendigo | Description, Legend, Creature, Until Dawn, & Facts. https://www.britannica.com/topic/wendigo.

Rilla, W. (1960) Village of the Damned. Available at: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054443/?ref_=tt_mv_close (Accessed 28 February 2024).

Euan Moore (2020) Here’s How Much Resident Evil’s Spencer Mansion Would Cost IRL. Available at: https://www.gamingbible.com/news/games-heres-how-much-resident-evils-spencer-mansion-would-cost-irl-20200904