Joyride - Abi Black

Joyride immediately came across as a thriller, mainly conveyed throughout the use of sound. The first shot is taken at night, of a man alone having gone out to try and fix a pylon and so automatically a tense atmosphere is set. The main actor has been made to look like an ordinary person, also connoting signs of social realism throughout. When driving home alone the man stops sharply in the middle of the road, and combined with the music this helps to build up suspense and tension at what he has come across. As we then see him get out of the car and walk up to what seems to be in the road a man appears with an axe, typical iconography of a thriller.

I found this film to be unique as it has formed a hybrid of genres, and throughout the film as the viewer we are constantly left on our toes as it is filled with action. I personally found the use of camera work particularly inspiring as we were given many pov shots, which I think gives off a more believable approach and allows us to feel sympathy towards the character, but also scared for him. I also found it unique as it doesn't follow the usual ending as we would expect.

I think the advantages of having this as a short film is that it is a lot of action within that amount of time, and keeping it fast pace like that doesn't allow it to become boring but also doesn't allow much time for the audience to question what is happening, and whether they feel that this could be believable or not. I think that the structuring follows the usual format, up until the ending where we are left with knowing that the character who's story we had just followed died after just escaping, almost conducting a sense of irony. I found this to be inspiring as it did shock me at the end, and it would be interesting to experiment with this in our own work.

I found the use of sound interesting, mainly because it was kept so simple. The use of the non-diegetic sound was mainly made using a piano and otherwise very simple computer generated sound. It was mainly used to build tension throughout the film, and along with the diegetic sound of what was going on on-screen built up a tense atmosphere.

I think the main theme addressed in this film is abuduction and theft as the title suggests. I feel that it does position the viewers to feel sympathy for the main protagonist, which is achieved by him just appearing as this working class man on a call out trying to do his job and ending up being met by antagonists and getting abducted. The antagonists also appear to be working class and I think that typical stereotypes are used, such as them being men but also dressed in dark clothes and having the "skinhead"