Please enable JavaScript.
Coggle requires JavaScript to display documents.
Elephant, COSTUME: The killers aren't made out to be extravagant or…
Elephant
-
Sound
The lack of dialogue (aside from the scene with the boys on the football pitch) serves to build a continual tension throughout the short, as well as emphasise the bleak tone.
The diegetic sound of the bullets is the only notable sound present (aside from one brief dialogue interlude) which highlights the film's themes of violence and senseless death.
There is a lack of protest as the victims are murdered, this could represent how shocking and sudden the murders are.
The constant bullet noises with no conversation in-between proves that there was no way in swaying the shooters choices as the choice has already been made. Although, when the shooter and the boys are in a field they have a moment where they play football which seems to highlight the shooters humanity for a second until he then end up killing the boys anyway in cold blood.
Cinematography
As well as establishing a sense of disconnect between the gunmen and their victims, the ‘walking shot’ guides the change of antagonist or protagonists shown each time. Though it does provide this idea of emotional disassociation between perpetrator and the crime, the shot is usually followed by a still shot of the body to remind viewers of the reality of this situation which is amplified by the fact that the director based the fictionalised assaults on real murders from the time.
The lingering shot of the victim killed in the restaurant displays how oblivious he was to his forthcoming death and how he had just been an ordinary person having a meal. This creates a sense of dread and again realism as in reality people couldn’t enjoy small pleasures as these due to paranoia surrounding the killings.
The medium long shot walking alongside the third gunman implies the viewer is almost an accomplice of the gunman as we are walking with him. This invokes feelings of guilt and sympathy for the victims from the audience.
Mise en scene
Almost all the locations in which the shootings take place occur in isolated locations, barely any witnesses. The locations are run down, barely any furniture and are just altogether quiet.
-
Performance
The performance in Elephant is focused on the body language, each of the shooters have a snippet of them walking to their scene, some may get out of a car then walk to the building etc. Each shooter walks swiftly and seemingly invisible, there is almost no interaction with their surroundings.
The gunmen are not humanised in any way with their movements and emotionless manner seeming almost robotic. There is no room for the viewers to sympathise with them, only for them to watch the bloody acts of violence unfold.
Editing
The setting is mostly in minimalist and domestic locations but the cool blue colour grading adds a degree of coldness and foreboding. It expands upon the distinct separation of human emotion and action in the short film, furthering the distance through the lack of warm tones that could imply sentiment or safety.
COSTUME: The killers aren't made out to be extravagant or especially threatening through their costume; instead, they're all wearing normal clothes that make them look like otherwise regular citizens. With the knowledge that this film is representative of the horror of "The Troubles" within Northern Ireland, the choice to make the killers otherwise indistinguishable from everyday people demonstrates both how the perpetrators of the bombings shouldn't be treated as untouchable or infallible, as this would deny them accountability, as well as nodding to how you never knew who was a loyalist.