Mid Term Submission

In the first scene, when the hacker starts hacking into Manny's reality, there are long takes of high angle shots. The long takes show the hacker's significance and his code in the film. With the long takes, it consists of many high angle shots, showing that someone is watching him in the film, despite his attempts to remain anonymous. The first shot of the film shows the hacker's back in the left third as he is accessing Manny's reality, this will induce feelings of curiosity about the identity of the hacker and him seeking anonymity. There are other shots that only reveal a small portion of his face, but there is no clear image of his own face for the audience to see. The insert shot of the screen with the text "ACCESS GRANTED" after panning from the code on the screen foreshadows the upcoming events in the film. After this, the film cuts to an over the shoulder shot of the hacker picking up a geometric object before fading to black. This gives the audience a view of the creation of the geometric object through his eyes. The green color of the text on the screen serves as a visual theme of hacking or coding which is conventional for many Sci-Fi movies such as "The Matrix". There is no dialogue revealing what the hacker intends to do with the geometric object in the opening, which will be uncovered later in the story. It serves to also arouse curiosity and tension about what he plans to do with it in the audience. As the next scene fades in after the hacker scene, the camera moves up from the side of the bed and then tilts downward to serve as a high angle shot of Manny sleeping on the bed. This reveals that somebody of greater power is watching over him. The film stutters and shows very brief cuts of a tree. This will confuse the audience at first, but by the end of the opening, it becomes an eyeline match after Manny falls down onto the sidewalk later in the opening and it also serves as a nightmare he experienced before waking up, thus making it a foreshadow. After the film stutters, it cuts to him again on the bed waking up from the nightmare, the colors in this shot are duller than that of the previous shot. This color change shows the dull life Manny, goes through and shows slight changes that the hacker made of his world. The next important shots are several insert shots of various items around the house that show his academic performance. This comes with him interacting with or organizing it as if it was his own and showing indifference to his achievements as if he has higher standards for himself. This shows the personality and background of Manny's character as a compulsive perfectionist with a stoic personality. This stoic personality can be seen with the choice of clothing as it is darker and monochromatic. Afterwards, the film cuts to a wide shot of him opening the front door to leave the house. The setting around him has more color in comparison to his clothing in this shot, this shows how he contrasts with the world around him. As Manny sees the same things he saw in his nightmares become reality, the pacing goes faster and there are shorter takes of the tree and multiple cuts to him waking up frantically. Afterwards, he blacks out and the loop restarts. He becomes more disturbed as he wakes up before he gets up from the bed, commencing the whole loop again. I chose the title of the film, "Limbo", because the plot of the story is that Manny has to do specific actions to break the loop and free himself from the hacker's grasp while the meaning of the word limbo is an unfinished state. The title font is an allusion to the game, "Limbo".