Inspiration

Whilst in the siminar we were introduced to a number of drama short films. Each film was created by a different director. Out of all the short films three stood out for me.

Pudding Bowl - Vanessa Caswill

Pudding Bowl is a short comedy drama by Vanessa Caswill. I respected
what Vanessa had created and I thought pudding bowl was shot brilliantly. The
props and costumes (that were made to look like it was shot in the 1950/60s) looked
professional and really well done as I felt like I was in that era from an
audience prospective. However, as for the storyline I didn’t understand nor
like what was happening.

A young girl is sat in the living room cutting images out of
a magazine and using glue to stick them onto a paper collage. Her older brother
(looking bored) is sat not far from her when his friends bang on the window
asking him to come out. Sadistically he puts the glue onto his sister’s hair
and calls his mum as a distraction to go out and play. Their mother annoyed and
frantic blames the girl and chops off most of the poor girl’s long hair into an
ugly bowl cut.
The girl now upset finds her mothers tights and imagines
that she has her hair back (she puts the stocking on her head). She then proceeds
to go outside where she sees her brother and his friends playing. Discreetly
she steals one of the boy’s bikes and rides off while the boys chase her to get
it back. We are then sent into the future where the girl is grown up still
riding the bike. She now has long black hair that she gleefully swishes in the
breeze. Her brother and his friends (now older men) are chasing her to get the
bike back.

When I watched the film I didn’t
know the significance behind the story. Maybe Vanessa didn’t want us to exactly
know but rather make our own mind up on what is happening in the scenes. Visually
it was shot brilliantly and the sound was crisp and clear. I thought the girl
played her part really well and her expressions were portrayed brilliantly and I
felt sorry for her as she was wrongly accused. However, I did not like the
storyline or where it was going.

About a girl - Brian Percival

About a girl is a 9 minute short drama created by Brian Percival. This drama stood out to me as
I thought it was very ambiguous (the title didn’t give anything away).
I understood that obviously it was about a girl and from the beginning shot the
audience understands this. I also thought it was cleverly pieced together and
the camera angles, sound and colour were spot on and powerful.

The film follows a 13yr old girl as she narrates her life
explaining the struggles between her divorced parents, the feeling of being
rejected, her love of Brittany Spears and being able to form a band with her
friends. The girl talks non-stop about things any 13-year old girl might talk
about.
Her monologue is interrupted and intercut with
different scenes of her with her family and her dad; her in a perfume department,
sitting on a bench, singing and on the back of a bus.

I found this very
inspiring as the shots are quickly cut and we are placed in different parts of Manchester
with the girl’s dialogue still going along on top of the cutting. We don’t know
where the girl is going, being from or coming back from but I thought that
maybe the director did this as it isn’t significant to the film, we are only
focusing on the girl and what she is saying.
Near the end of the drama the cuts become even more quick,
the underside to her light hearted story telling begins to get negative (a
little too grown up for her age) as she speaks about poverty, the feelings of
being alone, ignored and domestic violence. We then see the girl walking next
to a canal and she explains to use that she has become “good at hiding things”, she then throws a bag into the river and
out of the bag a dead baby is seen covered in blood.

This drama didn’t necessarily inspire me for the drama we
are asked to produce. However, I thought that the use of quick cuts and the dialogue
running over the top made it very unique and watchable. I also like the use of ambiguity
from the beginning to the end; we don’t necessarily know where the story is
going or how it’s going end. I found the end scene very visually shocking as I
felt quite un-comfortable watching it, but looking back I realised where the
director was taking us with the girl talking about various interests but also
bringing back some of the negativity. He wanted to show us that this in some
cases is normal life, for example underage pregnancies, feeling of being alone
and living in deprived areas and the effects of this.