Short Film Analysis - Lichen

"Through chance and coincidence, infinitely small decisions can produce new life."

"Director Kevin Lim's Lichen is an ode, not to a Grecian Urn, but to the smallest most seemingly-innocuous items that make up a relationship: an egg; a champagne cork; Lego Batman (yes, you read that right). To the outsider, these everyday, mundane trinkets mean next-to-nothing, but to those with insider knowledge - those who "get" the joke - these objects are priceless. Playing like a mixtape with tracks dedicated to love, loss and memory, Lichen is a love story for romantics and non-romantics alike."

• Length – It lasts 8.17, meeting the conventional length of a short film (5-10 minutes).
• Characters – There is two main characters in the story. This meets the convention of keeping the number of characters to a minimal in short films and allows the audience to be able to relate and connect to the characters in the short period.
• Budget – The film consists of many different locations; something that would not normally happen in a short film if the budget of the film was low. The film was also made by the film company Soda Honey Films, a company that is made up of a collection of film makers. This suggests they have slightly more money, therefore a larger budget, than students which some of the other short films I have analysed have been made by.
• Twist - The film takes a typical romance story but rather concentrating on the big aspects, or a "Grecian Urn," that make up the relationship; it concentrates on the smaller aspects such as a "Lego Batman." Things that you need to be an insider to understand.
• Technical Ideas/Recurring Themes – Mainly just a camera and tripod used with no CGI meeting the typical code for a short film. However, there are other effects in the film which we can clearly see have been added in post-production. There is no voice over, and similarly many of the other short films I have analyses, there is no speech.
• Camera Shots – Many close up shots are used throughout the short. We always see a close up of the smaller aspects of the relationship because the short concentrates on these such as the egg, or the champagne cork. The use of two shots alongside each other allows us to know what both characters were doing at the same time before they meet again. 
• Mise-en-Scene – As we see the women put the Lego Robin in the Batmobile next to the Lego Batman this signifies and foreshadows what is going to happen in the next half of the short. Everyone know that Batman and Robin are a pair; suggesting that the two main characters will become a pair, a couple. The use of twinkling lights in this shot makes the scene romantic. This is then passed on to one of the next clips through the use of the flashing 'OPEN' scene where the couple are standing outside of a restaurant, clearly on a date. There is a lot of red used throughout the date scenes, especially in the restaurants, giving connotations of love and passion. The use of the birds flying around in the sky gives connotations of freedom and often death, which is foreshadowing the end of the short as the shot of the graveyard clearly shows this.