Critique for Chris
The short film "Featuring Nature" opens to Chris laying down in the grass. There are overwhelming city noises and cell phone noises playing. As Chris gets comfortable the camera pans in to a close up on his face. The screen fades black and the noise fades away. A tranquil watery landscape is then shown with only the sound of the wind blowing through the air. Several other scenes are shown including a tree and the clouds passing by. The screen returns to Chris and there are no city noises any longer and the camera zooms out from his face.
The film embraced a perfect world as a return to nature. All of the settings shot without the city noise were almost completely void of man made items. There was a bridge and tops of buildings but these were not the focus of the shots. Chris has his eyes closed when we are taken to these settings. This may mean he is only thinking of these places instead of seeing them but regardless when the camera returns and the noise is gone, the viewer sense of nature taking away the stresses of life.
When the camera initially zooms in, the stop motion creates a kind of jerky zoom. I thought this complemented the audio that played and made me feel as though the noises were creating a pounding headache. Each scene is shown as a still shot with only slight movements caused by things like wind and water current. One of the most interesting scenes were the movement of the clouds from using a long delayed shot time for the stop motion. I think it was a good idea that no soft music was added because that would not have fit with the theme. Overall the project gave a strong argument for appreciating the natural world around us.