Soft - Analysis

Short Film Analysis – Soft

The Drama/Social Realistic short ‘Soft’ was written and director by Simon Ellis and produced by Jane hooks. The film was released in 2007. The film shows the story of a young teenager who gets into a fight with the local gang at school. The teenager’s father then gets into trouble with the gang on his way to local corner shop, meaning the gang follow him back to his home and begin to taunt him and vandalise his house. It portrays the fear of confrontation many people often in have modern day and everyday society and shows the extreme that school bullying can lead to.

Soft was commissioned by Film4 and also funded through the ‘Cinema Extreme’ scheme from the UK Film Council. Since 2007 the film won over thirty eight awards from festivals such as a BAFTA, Best Short Film at the British Independent Film awards and the internation Jury prize at Sundance Film Festival. Since 2007 Simon Ellis has gone on to direct a feature film which was nominated for Rotterdam International film festival’s Tiger award.

‘Soft ‘portrays a 21^st century story of social dilemma and the negative pitfalls of youth culture. The film explores the issues of a father/son relationship and the problems and decisions made when trying to be a correct role model.

The film starts with diagetic sound of shouting over simple black and white credits. This then quickly cuts to a medium/tracking shot in the style of a low quality camera phone, which straight away  sets a fast pace and mood for the film as well as indicating a younger/teenage audience. The handheld shot shows a group of teenagers in school uniform running down a long, scruffy looking alley way whilst shouting the words ‘Hurry up’, signalling some sort of commotion or action within the scene. As the group come to the end of alley, the shot zooms into a close up of two boys dressed in tracksuits, one dressed all in white and the other  in school trousers with his hood up. The two boys are aggressively holding a younger looking boy in a school uniform up against a wall whilst shoving and punching him. The says to the audience that the scene is depicting a ‘happy slap’, which represents a certain sort of teenage culture, foreshadowing the sort of themes and issues to come in the film. The closed in, squashed frame of the shot could represent the confined and vulnerable situation for the younger school boy, showing the fact he’s powerless in the fight. 

After this scene the camera then cuts to black, then a wider, bird’s eye view shot of a street, in a higher definition quality picture. This shot continues for about 20-30 seconds, showing a car pulling, with a man exiting and then entering in to a house. This then cuts to a medium shot inside of the house showing footsteps down a tight hallway then going back into a bedroom and the man entering the house. The shot contrasts in proxcemics, showing the thin, narrow staircase rather than spacious wide shot of the whole street. The shot also lasts for around 10 seconds, establishing quite a slow editorial pace.