About a Girl is a nine minute short film and its budget has been estimated to be approximately £33,000. The film was written by Julie Rutterford and directed by Brian Percival and during 2001 it won five different awards:
- BAFTA award for the best short film
- TCM Classic Shorts award at the London Film Festival
- Jury Prize at the Raindance Film Festival
- Best British short film award at the Edinburgh International Film Festival
- Jury Award at the Manchester International Short Film Festival
The title of the film ‘About a Girl’ immediately suggests that the protagonist is a girl and this is enhanced by the diegetic sound of keys being typed along with the displayed text like title. This overall impact suggests to an audience that the girl is a young teenager and age is clearly being represented here, before any footage of the film is seen.
This film commences with the appearance of a young adolescent girl’s silhouette, happily singing and demonstrating a dance routine to a Britney Spears song ‘Stronger’. Unbeknown to the audience at this stage of the film, the lyrics of the song have a close connection to her inner thoughts and feelings. However, this shot is effectively and abruptly cut to depict a series of hand held close up shots of the young protagonist talking randomly in a strong Northern accent; which depicts her regional identity. She suggests if “Jesus was alive today, he would probably be a singer.” Her reference to Jesus can be translated to mean that her pop idol, is just as famous and he is.
As the protagonist walks along a viewing audience would be able to establish her background and her place of upbringing, as the mise en scene clearly shows a built up industrial estate. She furthers her random talking with references to past family issues relating to her younger sibling, her father and her mother. She emotionally describes her relationship and feelings with each of them. She goes on to describe a celebrity and the stardom she longs for, what she will have and act like when she is famous and about the band she has formed with her friends, basically her hopes, dreams and life experiences as she portrays them. The close up shots of the protagonist walking along here, create a closer interaction with the audience. She is talking to the camera, as if the audience are walking beside her, maybe as a close friend, which allows her to reveal her personal and secret feelings. Her low class status is reflected in her streetwise language, while her emotional economic state is revealed through the mise en scene and dull grey lighting.
Between each of her statements the monologue is intercut to show a flash back of the various scenes that Stacey is describing through her life experiences, inner thoughts and feelings. At this point a viewing audience would suspect or confirm that she is a neglected teenager, who is the product of a broken home and that she has seen and experienced domestic violence between both her mother and father. These elements combine key issues, such as unemployment and single parenthood. The girl strives to seek attention from her father, who is more concerned with his football and drinking companions than the welfare of his daughter. She is clearly frustrated with her mother’s neglect, as she can never afford any luxuries, like the piano Stacey longs for to play her written music on. The mother is described as having money for burgers, discount larger and cigarettes, which suggests Stacey has had and is currently experiencing a deprived childhood surrounded by poverty. The fast editing between the shots is highlighting and creating a jumpy messy feel which can be read that the teenager obviously, has a complicated young life with various ups and downs.
The relationship she shares with her mother could be read as a love hate relationship. I can establish this, because she continually talks about her mother, which from a psychological point of view, suggests that she longs for a mother’s love and support, but because of the negative issues surrounding her thoughts, she clearly shines a caution of hate and dislike towards her.
When the young protagonist is outside the pub, sitting on a bench, drinking cola and eating crisps, we are shown her listening to and singing the song ‘Stronger’ again. At this point an audience would now begin to make the connection with the lyrics alongside the viewed footage, so the initial opening shot becomes more knowledgeable to the content within this short film. The tracking shot here accompanied with the diegetic sound of her dad and his sports companions in the pub, is quite clearly depicting her loneliness and it is also highlighting where her father’s priority is.
The song ‘Oops, I did it Again’ also by Britney Spears is sung by the protagonist and a group of her girlfriends at the top far back of a bus and there is an emphasis on the word ‘innocent’, which the protagonist clearly is uncomfortable with, by asking her friend who starts to giggle, ‘What is she on? ‘This can be perceived that the friend might know something relevant to the story that an audience does not.
As Stacey strolls along by a canal, her stories form a more underlain content, describing how her mother asked neighbours to dispose of a puppy in the canal that she discovered hidden in the protagonist’s younger siblings bedroom.
The films central theme is the girls struggle through the situations of which she finds herself in. The problems she faces include: endemic poverty, neglect, lack of education and teenage pregnancy. The protagonist shares her thoughts with the audience in a direct form. The director has obviously chosen this technique to create a more linked relationship between the audience and the character, which in turn creates a more emotional overall storyline. The character could be seen as coping with her situations, but very few audiences would agree that she is resolving them in the correct way. The director may have been trying to achieve an ending that causes the audience to question, how they would respond to the same situation.
The editorial sequence that commences with a crane shot showing just the canal is particularly effective as this is indicating that the canal is playing an important role in the story. As the protagonist walks into the frame, she looks down into the canal. The camera then rises above her. These shots indicate an element of unknown suspense.
The films end is extremely punching, as audiences would never predict the extent of the girls’ situation. The girl treats the baby as rubbish or waste, as she just throws it into the river with no extreme emotion or concern. The technical codes here are particularly effective, especially when the camera is under the water. The image is combined with the diegetic sound of a dulled splash, which gives this shot an overall impact. This scene is completely eerie and transports an emotion of shock to the audience which should be (but isn’t) from within the teenager.
One thing that particularly struck me in this film was that the father of the unwanted baby is not being represented. I believe the Director choose this direction, to allow an audience to establish either an uncaring father or one that did not actually know about the pregnancy. The unrepresented male in question also raises the question that there may be more than one candidate.
Throughout this film, the mise-en-scene plays a huge role of representing the poverty and deprivation that the teenage protagonist has to endure thorough her life. The audience are aware of her aspirations to become a pop star and most audiences would clearly see that her backgrounds make it extremely hard for her to succeed in her dream. The dark grey, musty lighting in parts of the film emphasizes her emotions and brings out the depression that the girl seems to be covering up with her streetwise attitude.
The characters are displayed in amounts that reflect the importance to the protagonist. For example: The dad is screened the most, as the girl talks about him the most and he clearly has the most influence on her, even though he just rejects her attempt to know him more. The protagonists’ mother and siblings are displayed the least, because the teenager clearly does not care about them, to the same level as her father. The shots depicting this are seen with the mother and siblings in the background, rather than in the forefront of the shot. From the girls point of view she refers often to her mother’s gambling and evidence shows her mother twice, in the background gambling with a scratch card, once in dull day light and again in dull early evening light. This is representing the mothers list of priorities: a simple route to selfish needs being ranked higher than caring for her daughter. It could be said that the mother could possibly know about her daughter’s pregnancy, as she looks at her with a disapproving look on her face.
This film impressed me with its composition techniques of quick cut edits and handheld tracking shots along the urban background. The film seems to blur the boundary between reality and other forms of media. For example, this film has clearly been created to give the atmosphere of a documentary and many audiences would be very familiar with this design. It also creates a more direct approach to a window into the protagonist’s life. This film uses quick cuts between sections of her speech. This can be compared to the way in which we remember events and pick out the key points of our lives. Maybe this event of her life leads to future consequences.
Although this film was created before the revolution of Youtube, I have noticed a similarity between some, home created Youtube videos with their quick cuts, documentary style and dramatic ending which would suggest that the film has been widely viewed and has influenced other would-be-filmmakers.
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