Soft (Dir. Simon Ellis) 2007

Sebastian Black                                 Film Studies A Level                Wednesday 23rd September 2015

Soft (Dir. Simon Ellis) 2007 – Micro Analysis

This film is a short drama & it covers the themes anti social behaviour & social status.

Mise-en-scene: The setting for this film is a small quiet area, by looking at the houses you could say that middle class people live there, however there are areas that we see that are lower class because of the group of teenagers & where they seem like they come from.

The use of the cricket bat symbolises to me that Scott did not want to inflict too much damage on the main Chav & the cricket bat is also a personal item for Scott because he plays cricket. 8.25 minutes into the film, Scott’s dad picks up his bag & you see the cricket bat handle sticking out of the bag. Scott could have easily brought a knife, or a baseball bat to cause more damage however, Scott still remembers that his dad told him to not get into fights.

During the beginning, you see a girl running, she’s wearing a white shirt & a skirt, & this indicates to us that she is in secondary school, there were also other teenagers in uniform, Scott was one of them & he was the victim of the attack.

For the group of teenagers, they are mainly wearing hoodies with baggy tracksuit bottoms; this gives us as the audience the impression that these groups of teenagers are chavs (British stereotype of anti social young people). Scott’s dad however is wearing work attire, a blue shirt with a black tie & formal trousers; this indicates to us the difference of class.  Scott is also wearing different attire compared to the other teenagers; Scott is wearing a blue t-shirt, blue jeans.

Cinematography: The use of the phone camera emphasises on the teenage lifestyle. Majority of teenagers record things on their phones, especially when there are fights so the use of the phone camera instead of using the main camcorder used for the films adds this effect. There was a long shot during the beginning after the fight, this establishes the location, what it also establishes is the equilibrium & during the end we see the same long shot at the end & this establishes the new equilibrium after Scott hit the leader of the group of Chavs. The use of the close up of on the feet during the beginning indicates to us that the face & body is hidden for a reason & this reason we find out later on.

Edit: The pace of this film is slow to show the reality of travelling to one place from another. When Scott attacked the antagonist, everything suddenly got faster & this draws the audience in very quickly, they want to know what’s happening, who hit who etc.

Performance: The performance was very accurate, especially for the group of Chavs, the accent, the slang used & their behaviour was played very well by the actors/actresses.

Sound: The diegetic sounds we have are the dialogue between characters, we also have the off screen diegetic which is the music being played from Scott’s room.