Analysis of 'Alive in Jo'burg'

The film is very objective because it covers a whole cities view of the occurrence. Also the audience is recieving a very restricted telling of the story at the start beause these thongs that are out of the ordinary have not been explained, the seem to have been accepted. This restricted theme continues when we see a small battle wage between South African troops and these alien things.



Soon we see these things treated as humans, but not humans like we would know. They are treated worse even by those living in third world condidions, they are looked down upon those who have it worst in Johannesburg. when we view this it has an underlying message that beople wont realise about social status and the treatment of those beneath us.



The film is shot like a current day news story to give it a gritty feel, but soon we realise that its more of a documentary with the story being told in the past tense by a man in a very sombre mood with a regretful tone. This documentary style is backed up with clips from old reports on the Zimbabweian population decided to seek asylum in South Africa.



The titles for this film are very long. This is different to most short films because typically the cast and crew are minimised to keep costs managable, however the firector of 'Alive in Jo'burg' is Neill Bolmkampf. He was alrady an established director and he wanted to used alot of money to help advertise his idea for the film 'District 9'. This film was used to pitch the idea of 'District 9' to producers and studios, and it did the job required.

In comparison to feature films the narrative structure is very different in regards to the endings. Feature films demand payment when going to the cinema and if you leave the cinema confused and unsatisfied you will feel robbed of around £8 and will think twice when going to see another film by the director or containing someone from the cast. Short films are 'allowed' to leave you guessing because the audience recognizes the fact that a whole film has the time, money and well established writers to tie up loose ends whereas short films may not.

To conclude, I believe that 'Alive in Jo'burg' is a bad film to use to get ideas for our groups film because the motives and finnancial power behind it are so different to ours. We can however take plenty of help from the narrative structure of the film. When a short film has no real ending its okay because we didn't invest time and money into watching it, whereas with a feature film if someone pays upwards of £8 and spends two and a half hours watching a film they expect some form of resolution.