1. Story Elements:
   • Who/what is protagonist?
     The protagonist in The Elevator is an off-brand Jimmy Fallon trying to get to his floor by using the elevator.
   • Beginning: What is the crisis or challenge that sets her/him on a journey?

The crisis in the video is that he is on an elevator with people who are overweight and he is afraid that the elevator will break, thus resulting in it falling many stories.

*         Middle: What struggles does s/he face in confronting the crisis, and how do these struggles lead to change? This depends/develops the story.

He must find a way to get off the elevator before the elevator crashes down, or at least something worse.

*         End: How has protagonist or situation changed? What s the “new normal”?

The man eventually gets off the elevator and goes to another elevator. As the elevator begins to go up, it is revealed that the people on the elevator are infected with the swine flu virus.

1. Manipulating Light: How does the impact of light, color, and texture of the image help to set a tone with the movie? Consider the following:
   • a. Use of focus and depth of field to establish style and communicate
     Although there wasn’t much that stood out cinematography-wise, the focus of the shots did give the audience information that was needed to progress the story.
   • b. Qualities of brightness and darkness in the images
     The contrast in the video wasn’t used affectively as it could have been but still it held up for the YouTube video quality.
   • c. Use of color in the frame
     The colors were bland (lost opacity it feels like) and didn’t invoke a message or theme to the video.
   • d. Recording medium (film, digital, and so forth) and overall look of the images
     The video was obviously filmed on a digital camera, otherwise the images would have been sharper if filmed with a film camera. Overall, nothing sticks out and the images reflect that.
2. Framing: How does the framing and movement of shots and sequences serve the drama or visual artistry of the story? Consider the following:
   • a. Screen aspect ratio and impact of the dimensions of the frame

The aspect ratio appears to be 16:9 which is the standard for films, so if anything that adds a feel of a movie to the video

*         b. Movement of the camera

The movement of the camera is very limited, definitely used a tripod for most of the shots.

1. Visual Style: Describe the overall effect of visual style in the movie. You may also imagine a contrasting approach to the cinematography and include a description of the effect of such a visual scheme on the finished movie.

Honestly, I was disappointed with the film. With a talented filmmaker such as Greg Glienna, creator of Meet the Parents, you would expect more of a film that didn’t look like it could have been made by a high school student. The framing of the shots does give information to further the story of the video but there is no uniqueness to it. There are many things he could have done shot-wise to make the film better and stand out from other basic YouTube short films. I don’t know if he also edited the video, but nonetheless, the editing does give the necessary information to further the plot overall but the editing is also boring and doesn’t stand out from any other video seen online. If anything, the viewers would lose interest in the video after a few seconds, like how I did and many other students while first watching it. The overall visual style of the film was nothing more than a basic student film from high school, even though a Hollywood director made it.

• Saved: 4-Storytelling With Light, A4, Analysis