Analysis Of 'Spunky, the video game influenced monkey'

The silent crime thriller spoof, entitled 'Spunky, the video game influenced monkey' is one of the last places I expected to find an influence, but while watching it, I realised that it could very useful for our thriller opening. It opens with a black and white image using a hand-held camera, possibly through the eyes of the killer, while atonal music plays in the background. The hand-held camera is a technique often used to see through the eyes of a person, and showing something through the eyes of a person without showing them can be very disconcerting. The first shot is of a staircase, and although it is not a spiralling one, the idea of the staircase and its twisting narrative still stands. It then shows an unsuspecting man watching TV, and the music gets softer, then flicking back into a louder discord when tension is built by repeating the same shot of the camera moving towards a black closed door (creating a mystery; what is behind the door?), then showing the man on the sofa again (and once again the music softens suddenly, as if to show a contrast between the two shots, and then again to the hand-held camera, each time the killer getting closer to the door, and with the last cut, the music rises one octave to suggest that something is going to happen. With the next shot, we see the darkly lit antagonist, the monkey, playing on a games console. The same technique with the door is used here, flicking from the monkey to the actual screen of the game until the monkey is seen for a fraction of a second walking past the camera, and is gone. Getting up without warning tells us that something is wrong, and the lack of speech makes the audience want to fill that gap by speaking ourselves, and trying to stop him, even though the silence tells us that nothing we can do will have any effect. We next see the black door open from the inside, and the monkey looks round. Next cut, and the monkey is walking in the direction of the camera, a sinister expression on his face, quickly getting closer until he gets out of focus. Another edit, and the monkey is side on from the close up camera , walking slowly, carefully, deliberately down the stairs like a man walking to his death, another warning that a death is going to take place. The camera switches to the man on the sofa to remind us of the victim and how blissfully unaware he is. We see the monkey walk past on the other side of some frosted glass, only his shadow visible, adding to the tension and adding a sense of mystery. The man looks around, and the camera cuts to his view, where the monkey was, who is now gone. This sequence is done very quickly, far faster and out of rhythm than the rest of the short so far,. The tension rises another notch. The man gets up, and walks towards the doorway. The camera switches to behind him, and the monkey flicks out of view of the corner of the camera, while the piano lets out a powerful discord. Long shadows are cast along the walls, and the monkey jumps onto his prey, the piano unleashing more and more discords, the camera flicking erratically to different angles to stop us seeing completely what is going on. The shadow of the man is projected onto the wall as if to show the darkness that has a grasp on him, like the shadows grasp on the wall. The music slows down as the man stops struggling and slowly falls to the ground. Harsh lighting is used to show a picture of the other side of the room, as if we were there, looking away in horror, but the powerful whites and blacks of the scene reminds us of what just took place, as the camera skips to the man, and now the louder music falls on him, the loud chimes of death. We then see a powerful shot of the man's legs and the monkey, looking down at his victim. To withhold some of the suspense, we do not see the corpse until the camera suddenly jumps to it, sprawled out in a corner with the bag on his head. The monkey then walks past the camera, getting very close to it to obscure our view, then throws himself down the stairs, so our exit shot are some short, powerful shots of his corpse from different angles. This end scene, as in many thriller films, is when we see everything about the characters, and everything is explained. This is used in detective thrillers (Sherlock Holmes), psychological thrillers(Revolver), basic thrillers (Phone Booth), nearly every thriller ever. This is the part of the film where the the bad guy is unveiled, the truth discovered. In this case, we finally get to see the entire monkey clearly, instead of rushed or blurred shots.

The most powerful and interesting idea used in this video is the two different scenes, the monkey and the victim. The shots used are more erratic, as is the music, while the monkey (or related scenes) is shown, whereas they suddenly calm down for the shots with the man in. Another technique is the camera constantly changing position while the hectic murder is taking place, which reminds me of the effect used in 'From Dusk Till Dawn' (see "First Ideas"), which I would like to use in my own intro.