Ryan Vs Dorkman (short movie analyzing)

Hi this is my first post on this website and I wanted to show you a film I have chosen to study for my film project at University. I watched the film and analyzed, so I can get better understanding on how to create a well balanced story.

This short 5 minute movie is called " Ryan Vs Dorkman" and took two special effect artists and other members to create this movie in 5 months, which they spent 4 months on the special effects. This is a simple conflict story structure about who is the best lightsaber fighter. I think the place they chose to film the scene creates a great atmosphere and it keeps in theme of the Stars Wars future style machines. This shows they have done their research in to the movies and know how to film the movie with the right angles of the camera and frame rate.

This film kind of has a well balanced story structure, but the only thing wrong here is "who are the characters?". We only get the basic of the characters and that is that they are fighting to prove who is the better fighter, but we don't know their names or their background story that leads to the conflict. Plus who is the good or bad guy in this movie, which makes it hard for me to choose who to cheer for in this fight.

The skip from frame to frame is really fast and during the fighting scenes, especially at the parts where the lightsabers connect.

The frame rate is slowed down where one of them backs off for a moment to stare and the situation and think about 'what is he going to do next?'. When they do this, the camera is moved closer to the faces, so you can see the reactions and to know what they are feeling at the moment, which is a great idea for the sequence. This effect is used in the star wars films, and it is also used in other fighting films (e.g. Xmen, Spiderman and The Last samurai).

Overall I think this movie has given me a better insight in to creating a well balanced story and I highly recommned this movie to anyone. You can view it here