Short Film analysis- Tea Leaves

My own example of Avant Garde, Tea Leaves by Matthew Grinter
2006

http://www.bbc.co.uk/filmnetwork/films/p0059021

Camera movement in this short film is simple panning movement which appears to be panning around a whole shop but in slow motion in a 360 degree turn. You can hear non diagetic indie/jazz/calming music with echoes of the people in the scene talking and there movements eg) footsteps. This calm atmosphere and slow camera movement helps the audience focus more on the action of the characters in the short film.

The setting is in a cafe and the lighting is dim once again adding to the relaxing atmosphere, the shots are also quite gritty giving that fly on the wall real life look. The art of this short film is its use of sound and slow motion, we hear no narrative and there is no set story to the piece, it is more of an experiment or a way of showing what happens in the life's of different people that you might see in a cafe.

The camera pans around the cafe but stays in the same position, giving each shot the same framing, you see different people in the cafe. At the start you see a man knock over a cup of tea which then spills to the floor, a man playing with dominoes and then they knock over with the camera following there movement, a woman then picks them up, a couple having an argument, a waitress bringing a drink out to someone, a woman going over to a man with a cigarette in her hand, a man walks into the cafe and bumps into another man making money drop to the floor and then we end up back to the man with the cup of tea that we saw at the beginning. There is some sort of Aristotle narrative and the camera stops to show the significance of being back at where the shot started.

The camera then zooms out of the man and fades to black. After watching I believe the short film is to show how much can happen during the time someone is served tea or the fact that the first man spilt his tea set off everything else we see in the film for example everything moves to the right, the spilt tea, the camera, the domino's, the woman and the waitress and the man walking out of the shop. It is a sort of video pattern which makes it an Avant Garde film.