Bridge, Embrace and Blow Up

Like every thing I’ve seen thus far from Hillman Curtis, I really enjoyed watching these three shorts. In Bridge, there is sexual tension from the very beginning with the two characters. The music in this did not make me nervous like the other two I watched, this had much more of a fun, flirty feeling to it. One thing I did notice about all of the shorts is that the director really focused on the hands of the characters in each. Either when they were touching or holding the other character, or in Blow Up when he was adjusting his camera, the director always pulled focus on their hands. Also in Bridge, I loved the rotating shot on the characters while they were sitting face to face on the ground, that was a really effective shot.

I think Embrace was trying to make the viewer feel as anxious, scared, and nervous as the characters were, especially the girl. Her choppy breathing set the scene for how scared she was and eventually hr breathing evened out once he talked to her and soothed her with stories. However once she asked him if he was alright, the sirens started and she looked directly at the camera, which left me feeling even more unsettled than before.

Blow Up was the first short I watched. I was drawn to it for the black and white shot and I was expecting a fight or something unexpected to happen like ‘Spider’ because of the close shots and the music. The direction was really effective when it paned back in between her lying down and him adjusting his camera, it was a really fluid shot. Also, I loved the part where he was talking about his father’s beliefs saying, “the deeper he looked into things, the clearer the face of god became” and he was looking down into the camera lens, reinforcing the idea of looking closer into things. It was a really well told story and I loved the progression of the story once he started taking photos of her and she grew increasingly vulnerable and introspective as the shoot continued. I loved how it ended as well, where she was questioning him about the project and asked, “What are you trying to uncover?” Something I think should always be asked when making art.