Soft

The film soft is a short film directed by Simon Ellis and is about a father and son pushed to their limits when a gang of young thugs confront them at their doorstep. The genre of the short film social realism and drama. A drama relies heavily on real life situations, emotional and relation development of realistic characters. All of the characters are completely believable and very common. The dilemma within the disruption in the film is a very common and real subject which is seen on a day to day basis. This also makes it a social realism. By pointing a spot light at the middle class families and seeing what they have to deal with every day.  The films themes are violence and confrontation. There is violence within the first few minutes of the film when the boy is being beaten up by the young thugs and when the boy hits the main antagonist around the head with cricket bat. Confrontation is a theme throughout the film such as the dad not wanting to confront the thugs outside the corner shop and outside his house.

I believe that the cinematography was well used in the film. It starts off with a hand held dolly shot and is extremely low quality. This low quality and hand held movement shows and tells the audience that someone is running and filming their phone at the same time. This creates a sense of urgency and adds to realism. The director is trying to position the audience almost in one of the bystanders. There is also a very useful establishing shot at the beginning of the film. This shot allows the audience to know where they are. The film ends on that film. This suggests to the audience that these type of dilemmas happen every day. I find the switch between the phone camera and the normal camera very unique because it shows a contrast between the characters. The low quality camera shows how the thugs are lower class and not able to afford a good quality object but the camera quality for the father walking down to the corner shop is very high quality. This shows how the dad can afford a nice camera with good quality. 

The mes scene is used well to contrast characters and illustrate who’s in charge. There are six thugs in total. They are all wearing black except for one who wearing a full white tracksuit, golden chains around his neck, and a black flat cap. From this colour the audience can clearly see that he is in charge and in control of the group. It is ironic that the colour white is related to peace or equality and the boy wearing the white is doing the most violence.

The sound of the rock constantly hitting the window creates tension. Every time the rock hits the window the boy stands up and his dad pulls him down. The non-diegetic sound of the car alarm comes in after the fourth rock hits. I believe that the car alarm and the sound of the rocks hitting the window is almost like in a horror movie they use a crescendo to create maximum tension. This is what the car alarm and rocks are doing. This is a very particular way of creating tension and I really like it because it is very minimalist way. The sound of the car alarm creates a comic affect. The car alarm is still going on after the fight has happened when the dad turns it off it reminds the audience that fight is over yet the alarm is still going on. 

I believe that these three micro features create the film in a very different way. The mes en scene of the antagonist creates irony and shows the audience who the antagonist. The cinematography creates a contrast between the lives of the thugs and the dad. The sounds creates tension in a very minimalist way.