Last Day Dream film analysis.

Last Day Dream is a 40 second short film written and directed by Chris Milk and produced by Samantha Storr. The clip shows a man’s last few moments before he dies. This film is extremely short however it appeals to you straight away and keeps your attention. It’s basically showing all of the man’s most memorable events in his life. There are sequences such as him and his wife looking at their new born child, him holding his first child, the audience seeing his wife through his eyes and then we see a clip of somebody, I presume him, in a car accident and we see him touch his head and get blood on his hand. This to me signified how he died, but we as the audience don’t actually know because it doesn’t tell us. It kind of leaves it open for us to come to our own conclusion on how he dies. I like how open it is.

We don’t actually know that the flashbacks are what the man’s having, however I presumed this as the woman in the clip below is shown with the man at the start looking at their new born child and then later on we see clips of the woman on her own, one time in a wedding dress and another time at their child’s birthday party and then the woman graduating. However it could actually also be the child as we could be seeing things out of his/her eyes.

For example the first clip, the child could be looking up at his parents as a baby and that could be his earliest memory and it could build on from there.

The effects used in the clip make it look quite dreamy and obviously because it’s supposed to be flash backs I think it works really well. The corners of the clips are quite blurred and distorted so it really adds to the feel of it.

There aren’t any establishing shots in this as while there’s a sequence of events of all different periods in his life and then the last shot we see is a man’s feet in the ocean, so it’s not anything significant to us as the audience.

I had to watch this clip a few times before I started understanding the sequence and discover who’s eyes we were viewing this from. To me, it’s from the sons perspective. , it’s also his last memory. His parents looking down at him. However in this one instead of being happy they look extremely sad and he’s holding both of their hands. I linked this with the car accident scene that’s shown.

Each clip we see is the memorable moments in the man’s life. To me, the music speeding up represents how quickly life is and each clip becomes quicker and quicker. I really like how the first and last scene mark the beginning and end, at the start of life, people are surrounding you and caring for your every need and it’s the same when you die, except this time the facial expressions on the faces we see are completely different which I think is quite clever and moving.

The man goes from being born, his birthday party, his first kiss with a girl, to getting married and then to the last scene, the same camera angle looking up making it even more real, of him suffering. You can see this by him holding both of their hands and the look of anguish on their faces.

I like the effects used throughout, by making them blurred at the sides it’s literally as though he’s just remembering them and he really has to try and remember every detail about them.