Terminus is a short film directed Trevor Cawood and was in the original selection at the Toronto international film festival 2007. The director Trevor Cawood has also directed many adverts such as Citroen ‘Runner’ which involves a Citroen car transforming into a robot and has also worked with Nissan and GMC adverts. Cawood has also done adverts for Verizon.
The film is about a man is driven mad as he and his colleagues are tailed by strange, ambiguous beings. There is not much dialogue in this short film which adds to the strangeness of the film. The man in the film is followed by what looks to be a body make out of stone cylinders (a stone cylinder for the face, arms and legs etc.) These ’ambiguous’ creatures are emotionless and follow the man wherever he goes like to and from work and in his office, doctors and even when he sleeps standing a metre away while staring blankly at him.
The short film starts off with the creature walking up to the man reading his newspaper. There is a shot here looking up at the creature from the mans point of view to show how big this creature is as the creature stares back emotionless. There is then a reaction shot of the man loosening his tie and giving a quick glance at the creature looking uncomfortable. There is then a shot of the creature as he starts to do a dance in front of the man, there is then another reaction shot of the man looking increasingly uncomfortable as he tries to read his news paper with the creature in the background. The man gets frustrated and gets up to leave but the creature wont move and continues to dance in front of him. There is fast editing here has the man is trying to run away to show he is frightened by this creature.
As the film continues there are shots of this creature following the man on the subway to work, while he is going up the escalator. Here as the man is going up the escalator the man is clenching his news paper in fear and looks very uncomfortable while this creature stands behind him. It then cuts to a shot of his office building, the man is on the telephone while this creature stares at him. There is a over the shoulder shot from behind the creature looking down at the man as he says “I don’t think ill be able to make it tonight” to show that this creature has taken over his life and can virtually do nothing without it following.
There are then shots of him trying to run away again and at the doctors etc. to show again he can not go anywhere without this creature following him. The film continues on as the creature follows him everywhere but also other objects similar and different to his are following his work colleagues. The man is then hit by a bus as his creature catches up with him as he has been running away, the creature stares at him as he lies under the bus still emotionless. At the end of the film the creature that had been following this man walks over to someone else sitting on a park bench and does the same dance he does the man at the beginning of the film to the person on the bench and the film ends there as the cycle repeats.
Through out the film there is very little dialogue and is very quite as maybe the man feels uncomfortable talking normally around this creature. There are a lot of diagetic sounds through out this film such as the train going by. Office sound like phones ringing, photocopiers etc. The non-diagetic sound used are very strange and surreal and is used to build tension as the man is running away or trying to avoid this creature.
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