Kanye West- Runaway short film

The structure of the movie is linear as the story does not go backwards after the titles are played. It also has a circular narrative, because the ending is the same as the first short scene before the opening titles. This short film has an objective narrative; it shows the story from a detached point of view, this allows us to have an omniscient view of the story, seeing everything the character experience. There are many time ellipses in this short film; these transitions are done through songs. Some parts of the movie are done in a very glamorous style with high key lighting, and some are made to look gritty with low key lighting, but the entire film uses clever colour contrasts which add an overall glossy feel, this is matched up with a ranging style of music which is played throughout, there’s gritty urban music to pop music. Each song helps to reflect the emotion of the characters or helped to depict their relationships, there is very little dialogue and the movie replaces the need for dialogue very well. The costume of the women showed that she was not something from this world as she had feathers and claws, she is a Phoenix. The man mostly wore a suite, and drove an expensive car, this shows that he is from earth and he is rich and professional. The theme of the film is about accepting people in society who are different, which is a big problem in modern day society where people feel they have to conform to the norm and don’t want to stand out; the Phoenix says "Do you know what I hate most about your world? Anything that is different you try to change." Another aspect that can be linked with this theme is the media, who control the concept of “normal” that we should all follow in the film Kanye West tells the Phoenix; “The first rule in this world baby, don’t pay attention to anything that you see on the news”.   The purpose of this short film was to promote Kanye West’s album which came out a few weeks later, the film included mostly exerts of songs from the album but a couple full songs the acted as scores. 

By Amilcar Johnson