Run Lola Run is a film set in Berlin, Germany, where in the opening sequence we are presented with a bird's-eye view of the entire setting; which is a view of the urban streets of the old city of Berlin. The film was originally an art festival, which allowed the writer/director, Tom Tykwer, to experiment with different camera angles and generally risky, non-commercial visual characteristics to create the film's distinctive emphasis on time, fate, and human urgency. In this way we are shown for the first time a bird's eye angle that merges into shots that quickly follow the extreme close-ups. Even in the first 5 minutes of the film we see the use of crosscutting when Lola is having a conversation on the phone with Manni. This is interspersed with black and white flashbacks that are gradually sped up. Later, Tykwer uses jump cuts as Lola chooses to embark on her 20-minute life-or-death odyssey. Changing Tykwer follows this scene with a Lola comic, then returns to live action. Tykwer's overall achievement, using many different visual techniques, was to once again create a sense of urgency, effectively placing the viewer alongside Lola in her frenetic twenty-minute race against time through the city streets of Berlin . There was a lot in this film, the use of flashbacks and flash forwards. This was supported effectively by the use of black and white, to show that it is in a different time period. While dealing with her situation, Lola literally finds herself bumping into other people, when this happens Tykwer chooses to use a flash forward into the future of those chosen few, showing the audience in the first sequence what the future holds for them, in an accelerated atmosphere . scenario, in......middle of paper......success of a commercial film but having only created an art festival film. This led to him having the advantage of putting every trick into the book and then into the book, in other words it allowed him to use a wide variety of visual techniques to portray the roller coaster ride that is "Run Lola Run". '. An example is shown in the opening credits. where we are thrown a digital surprise, as a shot of a crowd transforms into an aerial point of view which leads to the crowd saying the name of the film. Another example is when Lola runs through the streets of Berlin and every time she meets a passerby, her future is shown in an instant flash forward displayed in black and white. The message is that even the smallest events can have enormous consequences, as the saying goes: a butterfly flaps its wings in Malaysia and causes a hurricane in Trinidad..