Both of these are short films made by Simon Ellis and though
they are both written and directed by him, they are fundamentally different in
visuals and the telling of narrative.
Soft is the story of a boy and his father being essential
bullied by juveniles and the story is told as it happens, as the characters
experience it. Telling lies on the other hand has the characters recount to us
the events of the previous night. Experiencing the story as it occurs is a good
way for the audience to get to know the characters, even empathise with them
because we get to see how react to the events that happens and understand their
thought process. It is however the way Telling Lies recites what has already
happened that I believe works more in getting us to empathise with the
characters. And that is quite simply
because we are in their heads especially Philip’s as he is the only constant
character and we see, well more hear everything happened from his end of the
line. The recounting works so well because it’s after a night out and as you
can imagine Phil’s memories must be quite blurry and he is most likely in no
hurry to recall them, now presentations plays a big part in this because right
after he reluctantly tells his mother what happened the calls start coming in
quick and each one tells more of what happened as is they were memory flashes
of the night prior.
Both films develop characters as much visually as
narratively. In Soft it shows how the father is not a strong or confident
person by simple visual clues like him nervously trying to avoid the eye
contact of the chavs outside the shop and then flinching when they pop the
balloon because he is already intimidated. The shop keeper also has no respect
for him because he purposely drops the change on the counter even though he
could have just put it in the other man’s already out stretched hand; we see a
similar thing happen between his son later on. Although the visuals in Telling
Lies are quite simplistic, they are also quite cleaver through the use of
colour to better describe the characters like Philip whose orange which can be
a calming colour but can also be alert kind of like Phil, he starts off trying
to be composed but quickly becomes frantic and panic; Sarah is red, the colour
of danger and anger and the mum is green, a neutral colour showing that she is
but a by stander with nothing to do with the previous nights events or the
fallout. But the one thing they all have in common is that when they lie the
text is always white, a simple white lie.
Even with the aid of the visuals Soft still relies on
dialogue as much as Telling Lies, especially right after the dad’s gotten in
after being beaten himself to find that his son has too now he tries to be
reassuring but his voice fails him making the words not only mean nothing but
also showing that he can’t protect himself or his son. Telling Lies only has
dialogue but it holds up just as well because we can clearly tell how the
characters are feeling like when Victoria calls and the calm and collected
voice cheers Phil up instantly but as she carriers on talking we see straight
through her façade because of the pauses and how carefully she puts her words
together. Philip recognizes this too before she even has to tell him this was
an easy let down as we hear him get audibly disappointed.
No comments:
Post a Comment