Thursday 15th March: Another Amazing Analysis

Creative Project Development and Realisation - Class Session

Once again, it's me! Back from another project successfully completed! Hope you enjoyed the Documentary. Up next we're starting work on a Drama film! How very dramatic! More on that later though. As, today, I will be analysing a short film I saw just a few days ago in a class session. As I found it rather interesting and I'm here to provide that good-blog-content(tm).

The film was called "About a Girl", by Brian Percival, created back in 2001. It starts out almost comedic, with a younger girl listening to music and talking about her dreams to become a singer, and her group she's put together, with herself as the lead of course, two other girls named Kelly, another called Stacey and one more called Mira. Notably, we never hear the name of the main character. Over the next 9 minutes we are told all about this girl's current life, talking about her wish to go and live with her father while he claims she'll be too much hassle.

Throughout the film, she tells us about her life while walking along with a plastic bag. It isn't revealed what she's carrying inside it until the very last few seconds of the film. She sets us up by telling us about a puppy she once helped hide in her house. It was discovered after two days by her mother and apparently the neighbors were asked to throw it into the Canal. Almost immediately, we're introduced to a parallel when she says "Gotten dead good at hiding things from her since then." and she tosses the plastic bag into the water. She almost brings the comedy back for a moment walking off-screen saying "I'm still gonna have a 99." Before the camera shows us a dead baby, drifting out of the bag and sinking out of sight.

The film for me, seems to focus on hope in the face of hopelessness. It wants to introduce us to this character and then have us as the audience feel absolutely terrible for her. The general view of kids we see like her are that they aren't very intelligent. At first glance we hear them and we hear naivety, skewed views of the world and a lack of respect for other people. This film aims to pull back the layers and show the character behind the child singing with her friends at the back of the bus. It humanizes her alongside others like her. The audience is supposed to find other parts of the film a little funny, the way she already feels like an adult is shown when she says "He always wants to know what I'm up to, like I'm 5 or something. It's like; hello, I'm 13." which usually gets a chuckle out of the audience. But it's the ending of the film that takes all her situations and puts them into perspective. Suddenly we as an audience realise, of course she feels like an adult at 13, she's been through circumstances most adults would struggle with.

An interesting method used by the directors was to frame the whole film like a documentary. There are no questions, it's not really an interview. It's almost like this girl is walking along talking to herself. But she tells a story, she fills us in on all the little details with shots of events happening as she does so. It's documentary style, as if an audience is learning about someone who's family hasn't quite got it together, and then at the end, it rebuilds itself as a drama. Showing shots no Documentary would ever be able to. We're supposed to analyse her situation, we're supposed to judge and feel sorry for her. But we're also supposed to take note of how she handles herself. It's not a film with an ambiguous ending to have us guessing what happens next, it's a film that gives us all the information we need to explore a situation that may seem quite alien to many people.

Obviously the situation is horrific enough, and it seems to me like the film aims to show us how broken this child is because of her upbringing. Terrible things have happened to her, evidently and despite this, she has big dreams to become a singer and make it big. She's holding on to a glimmer of hope in a life that's crumbling around her. Her Dad doesn't want her, her mother seems to have lost hope, smoking and barely sustaining her kids, and despite the horrific circumstances, the film ends with this 13 year old girl singing along to a song she enjoys. Singing in the face of hopelessness. Despite how desolate the situation may seem, this girl hopes and dreams, and I think that's pretty neat.

I enjoyed the film. It was effective, thought provoking and harrowing all at once. The link to watch it for yourself can be found below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JV1_TXm0XHs