Evaluative analysis

The brief I chose was to develop a single character. I chose this as I knew that this left me open to a range of different story lines as long as it followed a single character. My film follows a young boy living in an abusive household. It begins with him playing with his toys and ends with him calling the police on his abusive father. I wanted to begin with a shot showing bruises on the boys face as this instantly creates an enigma and encourages active spectatorship. My aim was to make an emotional and thought provoking social realism film. I think I achieved this through my screenplay as it covered an emotional topic and I believe it worked out the way I wanted it to. I wanted to create empathy with the main character which I think I achieved by making him relatable and innocent.  I experimented with a cyclic narrative structure however found this to be too complicated and hard to follow in my screenplay so I chose to use a linear narrative structure as this seemed to work best as it fit well with the social realism genre of my film as it followed the action chronologically which is what most social realism films do. Aesthetically I wanted my film to be quite dull and dismal similar to the short film About a girl which was a social realism film which was filmed mostly outdoors when the weather was overcast and dreary. I liked the way this instantly had a negative impact on the mood of the viewer and that it made the film seem more realistic and less polished which I knew would help make my feel more clearly social realism as well as the other aspects I included. I decided to set my film mainly in one house to show the audience how trapped the main character feels and how they cannot escape what is happening to them. I chose to write a screenplay as I knew that my camera and editing skills were limited so the end product would come out better if I did a screenplay. I am glad I made this decision as I thing it gave me a lot more freedom to explore different techniques as well as being something that I had never done before so it was nice to try.

Before I began this project I watched several short films in order to get inspiration and ideas for my narrative such as The Grandmother and Meshes Of An Afternoon, both had very interesting narrative structures however I decided against using these as inspiration for my project as I knew I wanted the genre to be social realism so I took my main inspiration for my narrative and narrative structure from the social realism films that I watched. One of the films I took inspiration for my narrative from was Wasp by Andrea Arnold. The focus on social issues is similar to the idea of my film even though the actual issues are different. The use of mostly diegetic sound has also influenced my plan for my film however I may still add some music to creation emotional response in the viewer. In the pub scene diegetic music is used as it is playing in the pub. I took inspiration from this and used diegetic music playing from headphones as it fit in more with the social realism genre. I used music that juxtaposed what is happening in the scene as I saw this in films such as transporting when the song "Perfect day" by Lou Reed juxtaposes the overdose scene. I was also inspired by the way the narrative in the film About a girl is portrayed through a child so I decided to use this idea in my film and tell the narrative through my little brother who is the main protagonist. I like this idea as it makes the viewer feel connected to the protagonist which is exactly what I want. The innocence of the character juxtaposes the nature of the storyline which will give the uncomfortable affect that I wanted to create. There is a lot of dialogue in this film as the exposition comes from the monologue of the main protagonist and there is a lot of dialogue. In my film I used a limited amount of dialogue as I wanted to present the narrative through the visuals of the film. I particularly liked the ending scene in About a girl as the dialogue does not explain what is happening. As she throws the bag into the canal and the baby floats out there is dead silence which makes the scene unsettling and shocking to the viewer. This inspired me to tell my narrative purely through the visual elements of my film and keep my dialogue to a minimum. This contradicted my initial idea which was to take inspiration from the short film Stutterer and use an internal voice over from the main protagonist throughout the film however I later decided against this as when testing it out I did not like the way it worked with the film. It seemed out of place and took away from the social realism style of the film. I am glad I tried this out but did not use it for a film of this genre.

To create a sense of realism I decided to use handheld camera as this is typical of social realism films. This decision was inspired by the short film Wasp by Andrea Arnold which follows a lower class family going through normal life. The focus on social issues is similar to the idea of my film even though the actual issues are different. The use of mostly diegetic sound also influenced my plan for my film however I still added some diegetic music to create an emotional response in the viewer. In the pub scene diegetic music is used as it is playing in the pub. I took inspiration from this and used diegetic music playing from a TV or radio as it will fit in more with the social realism genre. I may use music that juxtaposed what is happening in the scene as I saw this in films such as transporting when the song "Perfect day" by Lou Reed juxtaposes the overdose scene. I though this was effective and created an interesting contrast between the visuals and the music. This was the only music I included in my screenplay and it fit with the social realism genre as I had the music playing through the boys headphones which meant that it was still diegetic.

The film elephant has little to no dialogue which I thought was powerful and worked well as the basis of the narrative was so violent. The director easily could've made the film a fast paced action film however he chose to use long shots using a steadicam and no exposition through dialogue. I liked this and chose to limit the amount of dialogue I used in my film in order to tell the story through the visuals. In my screenplay there are only 13 lines of dialogue and the majority of the narrative is portrayed through the actions which I think worked well in the end because I decided not to do a voice over. The use of long shots adds to the social realism theme as it feels as though you are just watching an event happen as if you were there. This is how I wanted my film to feel so I wrote long scenes and kept the setting consistent throughout the film. I think this made the film seem a lot more personal and really fit the social realism genre of the film.

La Jettee was by far my favorite of the short films I watched. I decided to take inspiration from this by including some still images within my short film. La Jettee uses still images throughout the entire film with a voice over to tell the narrative. I didn't use still images throughout the entirety of my film however I did use it in a few short clips as I liked the effect it gives and I think it fit in well with my film. When including still images within my film I decided to use photographs within the mise-en-scene as a more subtle way of including them rather than having still frames filling the screen. I also took inspiration from this film and decided to include a flashback in my film in order to make the narrative structure more interesting than the linear narrative I chose to use as the basis of my film. Having a flashback within my film meant that I could add a montage which made a change to the other long shots that I mostly used throughout my film. I don't think that this fit the social realism genre completely however I think it makes my films narrative structure more interesting and gave more exposition without it having to be explained through dialogue. This film also uses a voice over in order to tell the narrative which I thought about doing but decided against it as I didn't like how it turned out. Although La Jettee was my favorite short film out of the ones that I watched, it was not my biggest influence as I thought that a science fiction film would be difficult to create and make original and interesting with the limited amount of time and resources I had to work with.

The last thing I looked at before writing my screenplay was other professionally written screenplays. One of the main screenplays I took influence from was Winters Bone by Debra Granik as it is an american social realism film which uses a lot of description about the setting which I liked and decided to do in my screenplay as I feel that it makes the screenplay more interesting as you can visualize the scene in your head. I also looked at the screenplay for Pulp Fiction as I knew from watching the film that it was highly visual. This screenplay also included a detailed description of the setting and characters which I really liked and think I did well in my own screenplay.I didn't take as much inspiration from this screenplay as I did from the Winters Bone one however it did really help me to look at two screenplays for two very different styles of film.