LO1.1: Short Film Conventions and analysis of short films

Short films are social realist, they are kitchen sink dramas which means that narratives and representations focus on the working class and the under classes.

Echo (2011)- Directed by Lewis Arnold

Narrative:

• The narrative of this story is that a young girl gets a call about her dad getting in an accident and people give her money to get a taxi to the hospital but she gets out around the corner and we find out that she scammed the people. When she tries again her brother finds her and asks what she's doing. when this happens the guy she was trying to scam realises what she is doing and threatens to call the police if he sees he doing it again. As they are walking away her brother ask who the guy was and how he knew about their dad. At the end we see a clip of her receiving another call about her dad which I would assume to be the actual call she got when her dad got into the accident but I'm not 100% sure as she could just be pulling the scam again. 
• The film is shot in a third person view focusing on the girl. It follows the girl around as she scams people and spends time with her brother at her home and out in the town.

Narrative Arc:

• In Act 1- We see the girl on the phone seemingly receiving bad news. We can tell this because she is crying. A man sees her crying and goes to see if she is okay. When she tells him what happened he tries to help her get to the hospital by going to ask a woman about bus routes. they find a taxi driver and ask if her will take the girl to the hospital. When he agrees they ask her if she has any money, she says no. The man gives her many for the taxi and she gets in and they set off but when they get around the corner the girl asks the driver to stop and she gives him some money and gets out. She then proceeds to take the bus home.
• In Act 2- We see the girl sat outside lighting a cigarette and smoking. After this we cut to inside her house where we meet her brother and mum. She gets in trouble for being late but reminds her mum she had to walk home since she had no money for the bus. when her brother asks their mum for help with his homework she says to ask his sister but she says she is busy and leaves the room. The girl is in town trying to scam another man when her brother sees her. He walks up to her to ask what she is doing and she tries to get him to leave and the guy ends up realising that she was trying to scam him and threatens to call the police if he sees her doing it again. They end up getting the bus home and the boy asks how the man knew about their dad.
•  In Act 3- The girl receives a call just like the one in Act 1 but this time it appears to be the actual call  from when she lost her dad. This time a woman helps her. This is how it ends.

Film Form:

• Mise-en-scene
• Setting
• This Short film has a few different settings, these are outside in the town, a taxi, the girls house and the bus.
• Props
• The main props used are phones, cigarettes and money. The phone is especially important since the storyline revolves around a phone call she gets.
• Staging/blocking
• A lot of her gestures are similar to those of someone in distress but also, especially in the scene at her house, her gestures were that of an angry teen girl which reflects her character. 
• Performance
• Much like her gestures her facial expressions show similar expressions like sadness, fear and anger throughout this short film. Her expressions help to convey her emotion and make her performance believable.
• Proxemics
• The main character is typically rather centred in most scenes apart from sometimes when she is having interactions with other characters.
• Costume 
• the costume that she wears is a school uniform and a green hoodie. This is stereotypical for a teenage girl, especially of the lower class. They do this to aid the audiences understanding of the character and her background.
• cinematography
• The film begins with a wide shot of a street with people walking down it.
• There is a close up shot of the main character on the phone.
• There is an over the shoulder POV shot of the main character talking to a woman.
• There is a master shot of the mum and the brother of the main character at the kitchen table.
• There is an extreme long shot of the girl in the garden.
• This particular short film doesn't use camera movement or many angles. The camera is manly stationary and stays at a neutral angle 
• editing
• This short film uses a lot of jump cuts between shots and scenes. 
• They used ellipses to cut out unnecessary parts of the story. 
• They also used continuity editing since most of the events happened in order but the last scene in the film is unclear whether it is in the present day or if it is a flash back to when the character actually got the real call about her dad.
• sound
• The sound is mainly diegetic sounds made up of the characters speaking and background noses such as cars and other people, however there is an element of non diegetic sound through the use of atmospheric music to aid the storytelling of the film.

Social or Political commentary

• The girl is most likely a part of the working class. She fits the stereotype of the working class being bad people by going around scamming people. I believe that this short film supports Centrism which is a political outlook or position that involves acceptance and/or support of a balance of social equality and a degree of social hierarchy since there doesn't see to be too much of a strong stand point either way. 

Main ideological values

• This short film plays into negative stereotypes of the working class as the main character is scamming people for money by telling them that she needs money for a taxi to go to the hospital to see her dad. 

My point of view on the film

• personally I didn't really enjoy this film because I found it predictable and repetitive, however it was filmed and edited well and it fit into the genre and generic short film conventions such as a limited number of characters and produced for a more niche audience.