Portal: No Escape (Dir. Dan Trachtenburg, 2011)

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Portal is an interesting film due to its music, lighting and pace throughout. Portal: No Escape is based off the highly successful video game collection Portal. Throughout the film we see a woman trapped in a prison away from the outside world. She spends most of the film within a room that is clearly a cell that we can see she has been in for some large amount of time. After being able to find a portal gun within the cell she is able to make an attempt at escaping. Toward the end of the film we expect a resolution, her to escape the prison and at the beginning of the ending shot we think she has. However with the clever use of animation projection and lighting, we see that this world she has escaped to does not exist.
The lighting within this film is interesting It is dark and gloomy throughout but at the same time is well lit to the colours of blue and red that repeat throughout the film. The bad guys are dressed head to toe in black whereas the woman is dressed in a vest and trousers almost like what a male would wear in this situation.
Music throughout the film is cleverly suited to exaggerate the tragic lonliness and the impossibility of escape. It is a tragic soundtrack that picks up only when she thinks she will escape and then falls back down as she realises there is no escape. The score is simplistic using simple piano chords throughout with a bit of synth and drums to create a futuristic atmosphere that helps the audience to recognise this future dystopia that has been represented in many books before.
Finally the pace of the editing throughout combines with the music to give a sense of entrapment. Shots are held and are cut to different activities that the woman is doing showing her isolation in this place. There is no dialogue within this film which suits the context directly as it only further exaggerates the amount of lonliness that this woman has when imprisoned in this cell.
I enjoyed this film and thought that it was cleverly created to give an impression of inevitable lonliness. Although this is not going to be possible to create for my drama assignment I will look at this and use some parts of it such as lighting and pace to fit my drama project.