The main character: Emily

Question 2 in your exam set asks you to analyse the short film “Up and Down” by Jason Karman focusing on the main character, Emily, and including the following terms: setting, atmosphere, relationship, and symbol.

Emily is the main character in the short film, whom the camera follows most of the plot. She is an insecure teenage girl who has fallen in love with a boy at school, Joel, and has decided to get closer to him by asking him to teach her how to yo-yo.

Emily's relationships

In the film, Emily’s character and attitude are shaped by the way her relationship with Joel evolves, but also by her relationship with her sister, mother and late father.

As the plot evolves, we discover that Emily and her sister Kristie are very different from each other. While Emily is boyish and assumes even the role of the cook in the house, Kristie is more girly and flirty, uninterested in domestic chores...

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The setting and atmosphere

Another aspect that you should pay attention to when analysing the short film is the way the setting helps build the conflict and even the main character’s changes. Setting refers both to physical places where the action takes place and to the social interactions depicted in the movie and the overall atmosphere.

Released in Vancouver, the short film seems to take place somewhere in a small town in Canada. The characters are filmed outside the school, on the road to school, in Emily’s house, or at the corner shop.

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Symbols

Lastly, you should also pay attention to certain symbolical elements in the short film which enhance Emily’s experience. The yo-yo is, of course, symbolic. Initially, it is a symbol of Emily’s desire to please and be liked by Joel because she takes up learning how to yo-yo only to get the boy’s attention. However, by the end of the short film, it becomes a symbol of self-discovery and of friendship driven by similar passions. Although Emily and Joel do not seem to have ended up together,...

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