Comparitive Analysis of 5 Short Texts

Many short films by directors such as; Brian Percival, Alicia Duffy, Simon Ellis, Tom Harper and Jane Linfoot all have common traits between their shorts. These being the themes and issues that run throughout them.

Take for example; ‘The Most Beautiful Man in the World’. One of the main themes and issues that run through the whole of the short is the sexualisation of young children; this shows to us the viewer the representations involved are sexuality and age mainly.

Alicia Duffy shows this to us in the opening scene of her short through the use of a fade in which makes the audience feel in a sleepy relaxed state of mind, likewise with the child shown on screen, but in a few seconds this comfort is shattered and immediately dropped in to an awkward, morbid curiosity due to her choice to use a slow pan and tilt up a scantily clad, young girl, wearing skimpy shorts and an almost tube top like shirt revealing a bare midriff. This camera movement along with a canted angle makes the viewing extremely uncomfortable and almost voyeuristic in its style. This whole scene is yet again reinforced by the use of character codes due to the actress stretching with an arched back whilst yawning but because the movement has been slowed down, it makes the scene overly sexualized. Then Duffy had the idea of linking all of this with her make up design. Young girls with make up generally connotes a sexualized girl and the make up used on the young girl within this scene is subtle but really effective due to the use of a make up that makes her have a waxy skin tone, which also brings out her bright red lips, which is a connotation of sex.

This links to Brian Percival’s short, About a Girl, with its theme and issue of sexualisation of young children but in a different way. Due to the fact that in the short the main character, a young girl of 13 years of age, is represented as young girl with aspirations of growing up to be a popstar with her friends but this is juxtaposed with the final scene of her dropping a fully grown baby fetus in to a canal, being the so called ‘sting in the tail’ that many shorts finish upon. This shows us the viewer that the main themes and issues that run throughout the short are growing up and maturing, plus the sexualisation of young children. Furthermore this also shows us the representations in the film being sexuality and age, pretty much the same as ‘The Most Beautiful Man in the World’ but with subtle differences.

Brian Percival shows this to us in one of the final scenes of his short where the young girl is walking through a dilapidated housing estate, full of graffiti and forgotten about rubbish, making it seem like a war zone. This shows us her class and status of a poor background, while all the time spouting diegetic monosyllabic dialogue, which shows the simplicity of her education, whilst walking along side a long thin canal. Milgrom states that it is important for an emotional journey to be shown through a physical journey, which in this short, is the canal. Then there is the use of more diegetic sound of rushing water, which sets the tone of an uneasy calm, paired with the use of an upwards tilt which gives of a brooding feel to the audience at first but when it comes to rest at a high angle it shows the reality of the situation, where the young girl is a now represented as she is, a child. Then as she drops the prop of the bag in to the canal, we fully realize the extent to which she has been sexualized and how she has grown up. The white bag, which could possibly connote innocence is shown opening and out of as it continually sinks, is a fully grown baby fetus, covered in bright red blood. The use of the colour palette here shows how her innocence has been destroyed and how she has grown mentally but not physically and that she has been sexualized in the way that she has actually got an aborted child, but at the same time it also shows the lack of education because she has gotten pregnant and then decided to dispose of it within the local canal.

Moving on, this could link to Simon Ellis’s short, ‘Soft’, due to the fact that in ‘Soft’, its major themes and issues revolve around growing up along with nature and nurture. But the growing up theme is completely different in the way it’s shown when compared to ‘About a Girl’ due to the fact it is about how teenagers grow up and the problems they face when growing up, plus the nature/nurture side of its theme is about how he is being nurtured the wrong way by his father, where as his nature is telling him to defend himself. This links with representation because it shows to us the viewer the representations of age, gender and class and status.

Simon Ellis shows this to us the viewer in one of the final scenes in the short, where a group of stereotypical ‘yobs’ are being shown outside a middle class, English house showing us the class and status of the area, this is shown to us through the use of the mise en scene, with the group wearing the stereotypical outfit of antisocial youths, in baggy tracksuits or jogging wear, paired with baseball caps or bandanas, plus the house is shown to us as being in a pretty, clean, quiet neighbourhood. The group then progress to aggravate the father and son within the house, again with the mise en scene showing us with the use of props that are rather expensive dotted around the house. The tension is shown between the father and son when they begin arguing, constantly raising their respective voices, showing the scene as getting more tense, as if it’s building up to something. This links to Milgrom as she said each scene has to reveal something in the next to push the story forward, which it does effectively due to the fact it shows us that despite the father’s diegetic dialogue of constantly telling the son to; ‘sit back down’ he’s trying to nurture his son but not effectively because it’s a representation of ‘do as I say, not as I do’. But as the scene progresses the use of mid shots and close ups on the father and the group show the fathers fear and the groups confidence, which Goffman made a point about that we present ourselves differently for different people, so he is trying to act like the protective father figure in front of his son. Percival’s use of the quick cross cutting between the two situations of outside and indoors, shows the two worlds are completely different and this helps to build tension for the viewer until the father breaks the divide and goes outside to confront the group and proceeds to get beaten up shown in cuts of close ups, interchanged between the main antagonist and the father. Until the son comes out and proceeds to beat up the group with a cricket bat, the prop of the weapon plus the close up of the enraged facial expression character code, shows how the sons nature has taken over; which shows how he has let his nature, nurture his way of being.

Fourthly, this could link with Tom Harper’s short; ‘Cubs’. This is due to the themes and issues of nature and nurture along with growing up being present in this short, akin with ‘Soft’. But yet again Harper has chosen a different way of representing these themes and issues. He chose to show that for nature and nurture both his environment and his peers are pushing him in the wrong direction and that he growing up in the wrong way; due to the fact that they are pushing him to kill a fox.

Tom Harper shows this to us in one of the scenes near the end of his short, where the main protagonist is out in an old worn football pitch made from concrete, that has been well used and is in a poorer part of London, due to the surrounding mise en scene being dead trees, high rise flats and the different types of graffiti everywhere, but the colour palette is dark due to the night setting, but the scene is pierced with one bright light emitting from behind him, coming from a street lamp. Then it cuts to a low angle, worm’s eye view shot from the foxes point of view, where the rest of the group are revealed to us, egging him on to kill the fox with the gun handed to him by the ‘alpha male’ of the group. The diegetic chant of the whole group telling him to kill it shows the wrong type of nurturing for him to grow in to, but you can see the main character is conflicted because it keeps using cross cutting to show the group, the fox and the protagonists face, but it’s in the close up we can see the anguish in his eyes, but eventually he is pressured in to shooting the fox. As it zooms out to show him standing, in a group but the way he just stands shows to us the viewer through character codes that he feels solitary until, the ‘alpha male’ wipes blood on his face from the fox, and in diegetic dialogue says; ‘You’re one of us now’, almost as if it was like an admission test to grow through slightly like a Jewish barmitzah otherwise known as a rite of passage.

This could be then linked to Jane Linfoot’s short; ‘Youth’, due to the fact that the short is about young teens growing up and nature vs. nurture. The film itself is three different stories in one short, but I am focusing on one of these short stories, the last one focusing on the three school kids on the back of a public bus.

The scene opens with a blatently handheld camera movement as the three teens run up the stairs of an old style bus, shown by the mise en scene of a brown colour palette and plain metal railings. The handheld movement was selected by Linfoot because it allows us the viewer to see it from one of the character’s point of views and therefore relate to the story. Milgrom stated in one of her scriptwriting articles that you should set your short around a familiar event or ritual so considering a bus journey is a regular thing, this also allows the audience to relate to the situation.

Later on in the scene it cuts from a mid shot, to a close up of one of the teens playing with a flick knife. The slow close up used shows the teenage stereotype of knife crime, which shows that he isn’t being nurtured very well but his nature is conflicting with him just cause he is carving in to the back of a bus seat.

The constant use of mid-shots, for one character shows him as the alpha male, a common connotation of groups of teens to have a leader of sorts. This alpha male role is reinforced in the next scene when the diegetic raised dialogue of an argument between the alpha male and one of the group kicks off and then dies down. Furthermore the use of a focus pull shows that the third member of the group, doesn’t want to get involved.

Furthermore a scene later on has a long take of a group of girls getting on the bus and sitting down, which then cuts to a mid-shot of the alpha male using the character codes such as staring and having his mouth slightly open to show that he is interested in the girls. Moving on from this scene another argument breaks out between the alpha male and a member of the public, and the use of close ups, shows the aggravated situation, with a teen bothering a member of the public, which is another common social stereotype, which builds tension for the viewer. But the tension dies back down, when the alpha male throws an empty drinks can at the member of the public but then uses diegetic dialogue to blame it on one of the lesser ‘ranking’ teens. These are all common stereotypes of growing up but they relate back to nature vs nurture because none of the group are being nurtured properly they are being left to their own devices, like in other shorts such as; ‘The Most Beautiful Man in the World’, ‘About a Girl’ and ‘Cubs’.

In conclusion, i have found that shorts can share many of the same traits such as themes and issues, representations, but at the same time the way they represent these traits is perfectly individual to the short itself.