Short Films Research

'About a girl' by Brian Percival
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dL2z8Qzn1dc&feature=related

The short film starts with the title of the film being written like a text message with the diegetic sounds of the keys being typed in, which straight away shows its going to be about young people and giving a target audience of 13-17.

The opening shot is a wide shot of a dark figure standing in a field singing a well known song, as we can't see the person very well it suggests that what we are about to see could be relevant to a lot of people - it's happening all the time.

A jump cut is then used to show the same girl now talking directly to the camera, it's a close up shot and as the camera is not smooth we can see that a hand-held camera was used, which suggests we are walking along beside her listening to her story making it personal. From this we can see that the genre is a documentary of her everyday life. We hear about all the violence and her dreams which highlights how young she is as she still believes she can be a famous singer, which makes the ending even more shocking.

The mise en scene of her outfit shows that she is from the lower class and poor by the dirty coat, jeans, plastic bag and the way that she talks, the mise en scene of her house also supports this. As she talks really fast and sue to her Manchester accent it can be quite difficult to understand her sometimes but the main issue comes at the end when she drops the plastic bag into the canal after carrying it around with her throughout the film. This arouses our curiosity as we wonder what is in this bag as no attention has been brought to it throughout the film.

We finally see what is in the bag by a mid low angle shot which reveals a baby, this shocked me as a viewer as the film shows how young and naive she is yet she has had a baby at the age of 13, this dramatic twist made me realise that this is happening all the time all over the world and has really affected me. Considering that the girl shows no emotion towards it as she just walks off as if it happens all the time.

This short film has really made me think about serious issues that are going on all the time all over the world and nobody is doing anything about them. Which makes me start to think about ideas for my short film and ways in which my short film will have the same affect on people the way that 'About a girl' had on me.