Since this short film uses significantly less dialogue than other productions, it uses audio in a different way. It’s intriguing as a viewer to watch something you don’t know the outcome of. In most movies, through narration or exposition, they explain to the viewer what will happen or what can happen, but Dog doesn’t do this. In every scene, you can get a general idea of what is happening in the present based on visuals and audio in a form other than dialogue. However, the future of each scene seems rather undetermined or hard to guess, or at least for me.
Dog’s take on societal norms in the film is a repeating theme when decomposing. The grim scene where the dog is bagged up and beaten by the man is the complete focus of the audience for over 40 seconds. In today’s society, this practice is incredibly taboo and causes viewers to feel something different when watching. Like the first time you ever watched a horror movie when you were young. This makes the film very interesting and separates it from “normal” media.
The opening to Monsters Inc. is rather similar to Inja in how audio and visuals are used to push the narrative. The film starts out slow with very little dialogue of a boy in bed. With several sustained shots at objects in the room paired with eerie music, the scenes generate a great atmosphere to be immersed into. The monster is introduced as a shadow rising up with the horns respectively. Even when it shows us a full shot of the monster from the side of the boy’s perspective we only see it’s shadowy front leaving us in a mystery over what the creature is. The overall seriousness of the film drops significantly after the monster freaks out and injures himself. The music changes tones and the lights come on changing the atmosphere greatly. I thought the intro to this film was pretty similar to Dog because of the lack of words in the first few minutes, and the dedication to music and ambiance as a way to put the viewer in an unknown place. It’s not till the end of the intro that we are introduced a crab monster that seems to be very knowledgeable about the children, exclaiming that just one touch could kill you. The abruptness and seemingly random, but perfectly timed entrance of this character makes me believe he will be important to the story, also based on the exposition he provides to us.
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