Soft & Telling Lies (Simon Ellis)

Soft is a short British drama film, which was made in 2007 written and directed by Simon Ellis. The film is about bullying and peer pressure. The first sequence shows flickering mobile phone video footage of a teenage boy getting brutally beaten up. An inspired opening. A later sequence, now on the same low pixilated mobile phone type footage, shows the same teenage gang with a showing off type leader, bullying and scaring adults outside a newsagent.




Cut to an overhead of a quiet road. A man, the boy’s father, is coming home from work. The man comes home and is shocked to see his teenage son is bruised and bloody  it is the same boy from the video. Then the gang turns up outside their house, sitting on the man's car, taunting them both, and the son is horrified to discover that his father who always told him to stand up for himself is scared.

Soft is relevant in a society when we hear about teenage violence and stabbings all the time. And it is brilliant because grownups sometimes forget how scared they often were as children of bullies or anything else. A child's second worst nightmare might be to be bullied but his or her greater nightmare would be for the parents to find out about it. A parent's greatest nightmare, greater than this, would be to be bullied and for his child to find out and to be scared in front of his child, because it’s embarassing.

The film was shot over 5 days for the sum of £50,000, the short film is the product of a sponsorship by the UK Film Council and Film4.

Based on the film reception and feedback, Simon Ellis short film was a great success. Soft won 38 festival prizes including the International Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, Best Short Film at the British Independent Film Awards, and both BAFTA and European Film Awards nominations. In 2012 he also won at the International Film Festival for Best Of British Awards.

Now ‘Telling Lies’ is about a man going through several phone calls the night after he has spilt up with his girlfriend and had a one night stand with someone.

This clip was about phone conversation between the character ‘Philip’ and his friends and family, we do not see any images but words. Each person was represented by a different colour and the words was shown at different pace to reveal the persons attitude and personality, the size of the words also helped show the tone of the characters speech. Apart from imitating the speech in words the director also included the thoughts of the character which was shown in white text. This Idea reveals the fact that people often say one thing and mean another. This idea is amusing because usually one ‘s thoughts are the opposite of what they are really saying.

Simon Ellis thought of this idea while sitting in a screening of a poorly subtitled Spanish film. He said that “ Simple spelling mistakes made serious scenes amusing.” he completed the whole idea of characters and colours just as the screening ended. He wrote the script the same evening he planned the idea. He used the Idea for 2 different commissions and was rejected by both followed by harsh comments but he made it anyways and it was one of the most successful short films he has made. He proudly says that the moral of this story is “if the funders say no, make it anyway.”

 

What I like about this work was that It was interested how just small details such as timing of the text and the colours can reflect a characters personality, I thought although this piece was a simple idea it is affective and it memorable, I was watching a few clips during the screening but I clearly remembered this one, because was unique.

The effect of just having words i think is in some cases just as effective as having images because its almost as if the artist who made this piece has someone to hide by using words and it keeps the audience watching and thinking something is going to happen.


There are many similar factors about both short films but the main is relationships. Along with that, they are both dramas, so both of the short films make you feel some kind of emotion throughout or after. Sympathy was caused by both film, you can’t help but feel sorry for father that couldn't handle the confrontation, so he couldn't help his son like every father would do if there was ever a problem and then there's the man who found out that his girlfriend and best friend had slept with each other.The main difference between the two films is that one of them only contains text throughout it all, which is different not just from 'soft' but from other typical films too.

Aswell as doing films Simon Ellis also does music videos and television and much more. Having just won the international competition at Toronto's Worldwide Film Festival with his Cinema Extreme short film Soft, Simon Ellis recently attended Hamburg Short Film Festival with the same film, and two others.

Black Hawk Down Review

Black Hawk Down is an American war movie, which was made in 2001 and directed by Ridley Scott, which then went to direct ‘American Gangster’, which made £44 million in its opening week. He's worth £60m, he's made four of the biggest box office hits of all time Alien, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator and Hannibal and a masterpiece of modern cinema. And to think it all his career started with an ad for Hovis. Black Hawk Down was originally a book that was written by Mark Bowden but was screenplay Ken Nolan. The movie was base to tell the story famine and civil war in Somalia in 1993 and found themselves in the longest land battle involving US troops since the Vietnam war. But the movie was focus on the events of the Battle of Mogadishu, a raid of the United States effort to capture Somali warhead Mohamed Farrad Aidid.

The mission went terribly wrong, and two helicopters the Black Hawks of the title were shot down behind enemy lines. The surviving soldiers found themselves embroiled in a terrifying firefight, facing hordes of angry, armed villagers with only limited ammunition at their disposal. Meanwhile, US high command launched a daring rescue operation to bring their soldiers home.

The film won two Oscars for Best Film Editing and Best Sound at the 74th Academy Awards. The film was received positively by American film critics, but was strongly criticized by Pakistan of not crediting the work done by the Pakistani soldiers. When U.S. troops were trapped in the thickly populated Madina Bazaar area of Mogadishu, it was the Seventh Frontier Force Regiment of the Pakistan Army that reached out and extricated them. The bravery of the U.S. troops notwithstanding, we deserved equal, if not more, credit but the filmmakers depicted the incident as involving only Americans. The problem is that its subject American soldiers fighting Somali Muslims is too close to the current world situation.

Black Hawk Down doesn't so much lose sight of the political factors behind the action, as never actually notice them until after the event  making it less a film about the American experience in Somalia than a patriotic airbrushing of what was actually America's worst day of combat since Vietnam.

 

Overall Black Hawk Down is an unforgettable movies about war and at its costs. It looks fantastic, not least because it boasts helicopter scenes to rival those other big blockbuster movies at the time. While films like Saving Private Ryan show  war at its worst, they do not portray war in the modern era . I cannot imagine a better representation of a war movie, than Black Hawk Down. The cast was really good, but most of the focus was on the action and very few lines included which allow the actors to individualise their characters, the soldiers tend to blur as much as the fighting.

Fish Tank Review. (Andrea Arnold)

Fish Tank is a British drama film, which was made in 2009 written and directed by Andrea Arnold, who directed the movie ‘Red Road’ previously, which The Observer said was one of the best British film in the last 25 years. ‘Red Road’ also won several awards including the jury prize at Cannes, and she made it two for two when Fish Tank walked away with the same award in 2009. The film also won a BAFTA for best British film in 2010 among others. The cast included Kierston Wareing, Harry Treadaway, Michael Fassbender who star in the movie ‘Shame’ in 2011 which gave him a nomination for a Golden Globe for best actor. The main character was Katie Jarvis who plays Mia, had no prior acting experience. She was cast for the film after one of Arnold's casting assistants saw her arguing with her boyfriend in Tilbury Town railway station, which is the station featured in the film.


Andrea Arnolds second feature is a social drama from one of Britain's less appealing suburbs that tells the story about 15 year old Mia, who live with her mother and little sister Tyler, which she argues more than talks to. Mia doesn’t have a father and only being raise by her equally lost and confusing mother.  Mia is a school dropout and very lonely with no job, no friends, no stability it is no wonder that Mia is seeking a way out. She thinks dancing might be it but without any encouragement she is left to her own to make that dream come true. But the day her mother introduces her daughters for her new boyfriend Connor life opens new doors for Mia. Things start to change between Mia and Connor when he moves into the flat.

 

Fish Tank is not the first film to depict the uneasy love triangle that can happen form when a parent bringing home a new partner. Yet Andrea Arnold does not go to a formula or stereotype of either a secret assault against someone’s will or duplicity committed on the part of a teenager or young adult. Rather Fish Tank remains an unspoken story about what happens when a girl doesn't have a father figure to point her in the right direction and changing into a young woman and seeking for love and a father figure. Mia is already dealing with an out of control neglectful parent so the instant Connor displays patience, encouragement, and most of all care. Mia’s so love starved that she would fall for anyone who would show her attention. There is both a mixture of impending danger and sweetness.

 

Andrea Arnold shows her talent for social realistic storytelling. For someone who started on a kid tv show in the 1980s as a roller skater has come a long way, winning an Oscar for her short film 'Wasp' in 2005. In Fish Tank she consistently use hand held camera movements and focus on the main character Arnold creates an accomplished character study that feels like it takes place in real time. The most obvious change from Arnold’s film style in "Red Road" is the use of colour. Otherwise the dialog, the long takes, the variations in pace, the frequent use of close ups, the authentic styles, the versatile perspectives and Andrea Arnolds love for state blocks are still present.

Katie Jarvis gives everything she's got in the role for her first movie as Mia and she goes the distance and creates a multifaceted character portrayal that's full of attitude. "Fish Tank" is a gritty depiction of society that explores strong topics, but in-between all this gravity Arnold turns the camera towards natures gracefulness and gives the viewer a little breathing space from the concentrated realism that makes the few rays of hope.