This is me

This is me – Genre

A setting is introduced in various close up shots of hospital equipment, accompanied by the sound of machines and a patients heavy breathing. The title is soon after displayed next to the patients’ foot, it is unclear why the title would be presented this way but gives a sinister and strange feel to the short film.

A crabbing shot moves around the patient at eye level with a voice over of the patient tells the audience what is going on. He introduces himself as “Bertie Timpson” lifting the sinister feel from the short film. Introducing his wife in a comic way by saying she’s here for her “bimonthly….she hasn’t come down for a nice little chat” the use of camera highlights their relationship showing in close ups her egg timer set for 10 minutes, her facial expression shows she is fed up and she reads a magazine looking at potential cruises. We can see this is a comedy due to these semantic attitudes from each character. As we return to close ups of Bertie he talks about his condition again in a sarcastic and humorous way saying phrases such as “more tubes than London underground”.

The setting then changes to a flashback of Bertie zooming out from a close up to a long shot we see he is in his garden sunbathing accompanied by a non diegetic soundtrack of Hawaiian music, this further showing the comedic genre along with how he explains how he got into his condition. An extreme long shot shows the area which is lower class but he believes its “west London’s best kept secret garden suburb“ as the camera is placed in an high angle medium close up the shadow of a plane passes across him. Adding to the comedic intentions of the short he raises his glass and speaks on screen for the first time “commonly known as the Heathrow flight path”.

The setting again changes to the outside of the airport where we are introduced to “Max” who is introduced as an ‘inconvenience’ by Bertie and has a t-shirt saying ‘I am 4’. An extreme close up shows a small toy airplane in max’s hand, we cut back to Bertie as he says in a raised tone ‘and this is why its manufacturers said strictly ages 5 and over’ as this is said we see max eat the toy, this beginning the story of how Bertie is in the hospital. A non diegetic soundtrack begins playing elevator music as we see the indigestion cycle of max over his top, showing that along with being a comedy it is a factual genre too. As Bertie explains everything in a voice over we see everything he speaks about, starting with the flight number, destination and seat number as he speaks his tone of voice gets more frustrated showing its personal and the cause of his coma. Max goes to the bathroom on the plane, and we cut back to Bertie in close up. We then see an image of the aviation lavatory systems & ‘blue ice’ which is animated to show how waste is deposited.

To conclude the story we see the toy airplane falling down towards the earth before a quick cut to the wife shouting at Bertie before approaching him showing he has the airplane wedged in his forehead as he says ‘shit happens’ keeping the comedy aspect. We return to the hospital where he explains his wife got 10 billion from the airplane company, he finally says ‘they didn’t know what hit them, neither did I’ as the camera pans over to the bedside table we see the toy airplane on a stand with the plaque saying ‘the end’.