THE COIN MACHINE SHORT FILM 3

The Boss Short Film Analysis By Greg Glienna 

We are introduced to a car which seems to be pretty pricey, to our main male character who is in a navy shirt and is well groomed. It seems to be quite a nice area, with semi-dethatched houses and nice cars and roads.

He approaches a cleaners called “Aqua clean”, this suggests he has money, this implies that our male protagonist is part of the middle class status.

The close up of the character putting in his money, expecting to receive some coins, his face drops when it comes straight back out rejecting his money. His facial features exclaim disappointment and confusion. What's more humorous about this shot is that it specifically says "dispense coins only when flashing". The fact the close up picks up it is flashing and it still rejects his bill shows the genre as being comedic.
  


This scene is all about all the other people who approach the coin machine and it works for them. The main character is behind them watching their every move.

The extreme close up on the first shot is to explain how the new characters bill was completely screwed up in his pocket and it still managed to dispense money for him. 

His facial expression and body language is key, as he literally stops what he is doing just to face the fact that the machine really doesn't like him.

The next guy does exactly the same thing and un-scrunches his note and places it in the machine. The camera work is clever here because it's being staged to look like its actually the coin machine. 
In the background our main character is actually trying to iron his money on a corner, which isn't meant to be the focal point of the shot. This suggests he is trying to be discreet about it.
We can see that its quite a long walk from the door to the coin machine, which makes the humour rise, as it seems he has only come in to get some coins for parking. The lighting isn't extremely dark or light, its pretty mutual, to look like the lights on the ceiling are lighting up the entire area, rather than special lighting to highlight specific features of this short.






The setting then expands further showing us the rest of the dry cleaners. There is a female character next to him, which he doesn't take much notice to.

The eye-line match is particularly significant because it shows how our character has just thought of an instant idea, this makes the audience follow his train of thought also, as we can make the rest of the story up from here.
The fact that the note is actually framed shows some sort of importance and significant to the dry cleaners, which shows our characters desperation.


His reaction to the new note that has now also been rejected has made him very frustrated with his facial expressions. The fact that his top few buttons are undone suggests he only wanted to quickly get some change and leave...obviously not the case here.

He then starts treating the machine as if it was a woman. He starts using phrases such as:
M: "you like that?"
M: "give it to me".

This sort of behaviour is disturbing other people surrounding him, such as the lady standing next to him thinking "what is he doing?". We laugh as the mid shot of the lady shows her loading her washing into the washing machine, but turning her shoulder to the noises of this man.

He then gets his change, after sexualising the machine, gets his change covered in white liquid. His facial expression is quite frustrated and confused. The shot types aren't very varied within this short, but I don't think it needed to be, as i said above, the camera is working as the machine.