'Audio Tour' Review

Title: 'Audio Tour'

Directed By: Stephane Klass (2010)

Length: 3:57

This film follows Sophie, an art student as she visits a museum, with a twist. The headphones tell her about everything she looks at, including men, fights, and even herself. She shows a range of emotions throughout the piece which have been carefully captured.

The piece is very different to others I've seen. It's almost magically, not realistic as the others have been. I like the style, it is heavily scripted, but works well for the theme they've gone for. 

So the piece starts off in a realistic manner. You follow her into a room, and the dialogue describing the painting begins. The dialogue is clear and loud throughout, as in, not in an outsider's point of view - where it would be muffled and much quieter, so we're close to the character straight away, as we're hearing exactly what she is at the same level and time. The lighting is warm and used well to represent the location of a museum well. It looks to have used mostly natural light throughout the piece, but I feel some extra has been used within the location just bring up the colour a little.

When Sophie looks at the man stood next to her, the description turns on him, describing him and why he comes to museums. Straight away this is strange because it's not realistically possible, so it throws the audience straight away, as well as the character. So she decides it's too strange and tries to run away from the museum.

When she's left the museum, she seems relieved. We're now in an external location, and a more natural light has been used throughout the scene, maybe to bring the audience once again into the false sense of realism, but as soon as the dialogue comes back in, that realism goes out of the window. However, the idea of this machine telling you about anything you look at becomes interesting over scary, so the character follows it through and looks at certain objects, such as bins and benches.

At the end, the character looks into a window and sees her reflection. The machine tells her about herself, saying she's 'forgettable', which gets the audience and the character emotionally, and is captured well with a close up shot of her reflection as she is being told these things about herself.

I did like this piece, I liked the shot change from her point of view to following her on-screen, as it gave the audience the emotion and the location at the same time, it allowed the image and sound to match up as much as possible, for example, when it wasn't talking about something, we'd see Sophie walking, but when she came to an object, like the bin, the shot would be taken of that object to match up and make sense to the audience.

You expect that the sound pace stays the same as the visual, however, it changes in the middle when she runs out of the museum. The visual is fast paced, whereas the sound is calmer and slow, which shows that they are separate, Sophie doesn't control the sound and sound isn't panicked like she is, the machine is almost controlled and calm, whilst Sophie isn't. 

Overall, a good piece, very different from the drama's I've experienced!!