'The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello' (Film analysis)

The Mysterious Explorations of Jasper Morello is a short film developed by director Anthony Lucas. What immediately is fascinating about this short film is the fact that it's made out of silhouette animation. This made it so distinct features of the characters in the film could not be made out, just their figures. This created a sense of mystery and foreboding around the clip. Thinking this was an ambiguous idea for Lucas to come up with, I was even more surprised when he set this silhouette animation film in the context of a post-modern metropolitan world, with flying ships.

The main protagonist Jasper Morello is a navigator for the futuristic flying ships depicted in the short film. He is recruited for a 'mysterious' excursion away from the city  of Gothia where he lives with his wife Amelia.

Morello is developed fantastically as a character, where throughout the short film tension rises between him and the ships Captain, Griswald, because of a supposed crash that happened prior to the trip at fault to Morello.

Amelia is established as a character more interestingly than most. This is because the majority of the film shows the journey Morello takes away from her and the only dialogue she gets is on radio chats with her husband. She is established as an object of sympathy, later dying from a plague in the film before her husband comes back to save her.

The setting, location, props and costume choices are vital to my interpretation of the film. In fact they are, in my opinion, what gives the film its best qualities. Lucas creates a fantasy world and throughout the short film gives the audience constant surprises of strange aesthetic creatures, floating islands and mysterious abandoned flying ships. Lucas is showing us through these iconic visual elements in his film that he is taking us away from reality and into the world of the 'mysterious explorations of jasper morello'.

 As you can see above the lighting and colour of film completely affect the tone. The city of the main character is called 'Gothia' first of all, a play on the word 'goth'. This symbolises the colour black which is visually represented in the city and in fact all objects in the film. Even the people are structured as looking like shadows. In the photo above there is also an eerie mist floating along the lower part of the screen, with a yellow tinged grainy backdrop to the city. Dull and lifeless colours appear throughout the short film, which is representative of the actual plot, based around a plague that is sweeping through the city of Gothia.

In terms of what we see on screen, a lot of the shots used are establishing or mid shots. I believe Lucas did this because, the environment the characters of the short film are in frequently changes. Establishing shots such as the one below, allows the audience to view the environment, as well as seeing what the characters are doing within it.

Another shot I would like to discuss is a reverse tracking shot. Lucas does this an scene of the short film where a storm has descended down upon the flying the ship the characters are in. The shot starts showing a man outside on top of the ship working equipment, and zooms out to show the whole ship and the storm around it. This shot creates an interesting atmosphere. At the beginning of the shot we get the sense of the character shown struggling with the storm and as it zooms out we get more of a sense of the sheer magnitude of the storm.

 

 Editing certainly affects my interpretation of the short film. Using the storm as an example again, Lucas implements a fast pace type editing style which really works to magnify the sense of panic and disruption the storm is causing for the characters. This is because the shots quickly change between characters on the top of the ship, to run turning the wheel and then another working the other equipment.

 

                                                                                                                                                        

In terms of genre this film would be a hybrid of multiple genres. I would call it a sci-fi fantasy drama. Considering it contains dramatic actions, such as violence and strange creatures (Through that it could also be considered an action and adventure). It would be a sci-fi and fantasy genre in the sense there are creations like flying ships and an alter universe on the whole to the one we recognize in our society.

Short film link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vORsKyopHyM&safe=active