The goal of this short is to portray the nature of idealistic hope and expectation contrasted against a more bleak and desolate reality.
Story
The short begins with a slow panshot right, away from a visibly distant city, and through seemingly empty space thousands of leagues down in the middle of the ocean. After about a second, the camera pans past an old, vertically aligned set of tracks occupying the space of the foreground. The cameras motions ceases once the tracks reaches the far left side of the screen, and after another half second, we see a dark blurry figure moving right, through the deep-space back ground. At this point the camera focus shifts, and we begin to recognize the figure as a young girl in a dive suit, swimming through the open water.
The camera cuts to a closer view of the girl and a highly kinetic sequence ensues as she gracefully flies through the water in a series of spins, loops, and barrel rolls. Slightly disoriented, she eventually comes to a stop and the camera (cut since the swimming sequence) begins to pan in on her helmet. we see her eyes inside the helmets casing dart right, and she rotates accordingly to face the object of her attention. As she begins to swim towards the shot and eventually off screen left, the camera rotates similarly and begins to follow behind her where we can now see the tracks located directly in front of her. She begins to inspect this obviously foreign contraption as she moves around it, staring in a sort of awe at its scale (it goes very high). While in a medium shot of her still staring up at the seemingly endless track, she suddenly becomes startled and jumps back, as a large canister rushes past her down the shoot. Naturally curious, she follows it down and eventually reaches a point where the track turns horizontally back towards her underwater city. Puzzled,she moves as if to return home, but suddenly stops as something again catches her eye. Turning and looking upward, she notices a small metal box (its a radio but hey she doesn't know that) slowly floating down towards her, independent of the track and seemingly lost within the enormity of the ocean. She reaches up and takes it in her hands, casting one last glance upwards toward the mysterious source of both the tracks and box, before turning and returning home.
The following scene depicts a high angle shot of the now considerably closer city, where we see the girl headed as she glides towards it from over the frame. The camera cuts to an interior shot of a door, which we see open as the girl steps through the entry way, helmet and radio in hand. She quickly rushes to find her parents in order to show off her new, mysterious treasure. As they turn to greet her she holds the radio high above her head and begins to retell her adventure through pantomime. She eventually points upwards with a look of wonder, contrasted sharply as the camera cuts to her parents faces which bare a look of concern. Cutting to a high angle shot of the girl, we see the parents swoop down and snatch the radio away from her, followed by another cut to a now low angle over the shoulder shot of the girl looking up towards her suddenly disgruntled parents as they pantomime their insistence on never investigating what lies above. As they turn to leave with the girls new radio, we cut to a close up of the girls face and see her contemplation about what has just been said. The camera cuts a POV shot focused entirely on the captive radio resting in her parents arms.
We next see an exterior shot of the front of house, where moments later the girl (again fully suited up) bursts out from with radio in hand. She swims towards and past the camera, which then cuts to the same city view from earlier as we see her now leaving the city. The next cut is to the canister arriving at its turning point, though now heading in the opposite direction, where we can clearly see it marked as "O2". The girl arrives not long after, and we see a moment of contemplation before she grabs hold of the canister on its track and prepares for its departure. As the camera slowly pans up, we see the canister begin to ascend with the girl attached, and it is not long before both are completely out of view. This is followed by a shot of the tracks as the camera quickly ascends with the tracks in frame, eventually catching up the child still holding on. The ambient light begins to grow brighter as both approach the surface. This escalation concludes with a complete breach, and we see the girl dazed and disoriented by this new setting. As her senses return, we see her ever present look of hope and joy turn to one of anguish, as her eyes dart back and forth taking in all that surrounds her. The frame slowly pulls away, revealing the destroyed world that lies above, as we understand her disappointment, just before the camera cuts to black.
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