Initial Ideas and "About A Girl"

Having never seen a short film before, it would never be fair for me to pass judgment on my understanding of them, but I had never understood how they can convey a message, or carry a storyline in under 10 minutes. However, after viewing some short films, I have come to realise that many of them are down to your own individual interpretation.

I have watched a short film called "About a Girl" (Brian Percival, 2001. It was my first experience of a short film, and I thoroughly enjoyed it due to the gritty, social realist side of it. It carried a message and tells a story. We can tell straight away the audience it is meant to appeal to by the very title being typed out by a phone, we can also tell what sort of era it is from by the way it is being typed and the sort of phone that types in that way. The cinematography of it is throughout made to look dull. The opening shot if the silhouette of the girl singing and dancing is very dark, yet very true to real life, as many times in Britain, that is exactly what the weather looks like and how it would be. It would appear that throughout much of the film they have used natural lighting to keep it as real to true life as possible. The character is not that of a big Hollywood actor, her singing voice is not perfect, she is a typical teenager from England. The background hum has been left in, this could be for two reasons, either due to the budget of the film they don't have the technology to remove it, or it has been left in deliberately to add to the real life element.


We see straight away the sort of character this 13 year old is, by her accent, that of a very common person from the bad end of Manchester. Other clues to this are her clothes, she is wearing a very cheaply made coat that looks worn, as though she has had it for a while, it suggests lack of income into her household. Her hair and make up also says a lot. Her long hair suggests a child-like innocence, which makes it more shocking at the end when we know what she has been up to. She has been deliberately made to look her age also by lack of make up. The overall lack of style lets the audience know straight way the sort of background she has come from. The camera remains very intrusive throughout as it is always very close to her face in a documentary style. The hand-held element keeps with this theme. It is appropriate as it is though she is narrating us through her week as she talks directly to the camera. The setting that she is walking through is a real place in Manchester which helps with using natural lighting and getting it to look very reality like. The background is that of a boarded up building with dirt all over it. Again, giving us an insight into her life. All of the short edits and jump cuts are subtly used to break up her speech, although it appears to flow into a sentence, there are subtle clues that could reference to the baby she has lost.

The shot of her and her mum also reflects a typical family life of the time.

Also the shot where she is asked to take bags off of her younger sister. It fulfills the typical non-serious family arguments. The shot is composed very cleverly as it shows them walking away from the nicer looking houses and heading towards the block of flats that are inn a grey tone, whereas the house have a warm orange glow to them. We can also reiterate the class status of her family by what her mother and younger sister are wearing.


She also swears when quoting her mother. The fact that she says it very openly and barely flinches shows that this is common language to be used in her household. The line she speaks when she is in the cafe with her dad "I'm not a kid" is a big reference to the end of the film where we see that she has in fact had a child. Her dad's mannerisms suggest a similar lifestyle to that of the girl and her mother, shown by what he is wearing, just a very basic jogging suit, a typical 'skinhead' hairstyle and the way he speaks to her, we then get our assurance of this background when she states that he is currently unemployed. It makes the audience wonder, what has he said to her to make her respond in that way?


The audience gets the impression that she thinks she is a lot older than she really is, for example when she says, "hello, I'm thirteen" although this type of language to anyone older comes across as immaturity. Her very lack of involvement with the camera other than that of speech suggests she has something to hide, she makes little eye contact with it and is constantly looking around avoiding it. Her loneliness and lack of being able to express what has happened to her is very clearly shown in the shot where she is watching her father playing football, not only that she is not getting involved but all of their costumes are very bright and stand out but she is still wearing the same dull coat, and she almost disappears into the background. When she talks about this the setting behind her reveals a lot about where she lives, there is a bridge covered in graffitti which suggests a poor area with a lot of vandals and therefore a high crime rate, not the sort of place you would want to bring up your family. Her being left out is then emphasised when she says that her dad takes her to the pub, we conjure up this image of her and her dad having a good time spending quality father daughter time together, when in actual fact he abandons her outside, in a rough area of Manchester while he has a good time inside with his friends. It feels like she defends her dad as she never says that he leaves her, and if it were not for the shot showing us this we would never know.


The lyrics from Britney Spears' famous songs are repeated through out, especially the lines, "I'm stronger" and "I'm not that innocent", these lines are very significant to the end story line as she obviously isn't very innocent to have had a child and she is convincing herself that she will be stronger for getting rid of all evidence of her ever having a child. A major giveaway to the end of the story is hen her and her friends are on the bus singing, "I'm not that innocent" and then the girl says, "well I'm not", however the quick cut away from it soon diverts the audience's attention, so if you aren't pay ing close attention, you could either not realise that it is her that has said it or miss it altogether. The bus scene makes us feel very sorry for her as this is her being a typical child, singing and dancing and very overly confident with her friends and yet she has this dark secret that is obviously eating away at her.




She makes an obvious contradiction when she says, "and I look after our image" when, as previously stated, her hair, clothes and make up do not reflect that of an image concious person. It then follows to a shot of her in the perfume shop turning her nose up at the smell, this again emphasises how child like she is as this is the sort of thing adults are into. Clue are also reavealed here about her upbringing as she makes up a believable story about her own mother being blind, this shows a lie that help her get away with things through life, it also suggests her to be very talented at making things up which we know from later on in the film. This scene between the shop assistant and the girl shows a vast juxtoposition in values, as here a have a materialistic lady who looks after her looks and is very well spoken and polite, contrasted with an outspoken, immature, scruffy teenager.

Straight after this there is a big hint about the ending, not that it would help the audience guess what is to happen but it makes you wonder whether that could be what she is talking about. She says, "it hasn't got a name yet but it doesn't matter", then it cuts and she talks about her and her friends starting a band, but the cut makes the audience wonder is she really talking about the band or was she talking about the baby? Teenage immaturity is also brought out in this part when she says that her mum "never lets her have anything", she obviously doesn't understand the financial situation in their household and doesn't quite grasp the value of money, which is how it should be for a girl her age. This highlights how shocking it is that she has had a baby.

This shot of her mother looking on at her daughter with a face full of anguish and worry shows that her mother really does care about her daughter and wants the best life for her. Could she know that she is pregnant? Is she pregnant in that shot? She is scratching on a scratch card. This to me shows desperation for her family, she has given up trying to be sucessful and is now pinning her hopes on a lucky break gambling.

This shot of teenagers messing about by the river and swearing explicitly cements our preconceptions about where she is from ,in a nicer area you wouldn't get these types of people. She casually walks past them and isn't scared to make a comment to them about fishing which suggests she is used to such an environment. It then goes again to a shot of her and her dad in the cafe and she is talking about running away, her dad never asks her what is making her so unhappy as to why she wants to run away, does he also know she is pregnant? Is this what they are talking about? It then follows to a shot of her looking into the river while sitting on the side of her, it looks as though she is deep in negative thoguht, I interpret this as her contemplating the decision she is making about throwing her dead baby into the river.

She then tells this explicit story of how her mum made her and her brother drown a puppy in the canal. This barbarity to flow so naturally out of a teenage girl's mouth holds a lot of questions as to how bad her upbrnging really is, this is not a normal act and so does she secretly think tnhat there is nothing wrong with throwing a baby in the river just the same? Another baby reference is made again when she is talking supposedly about the puppy saying it had brown eyes and what she wanted to call it, but due to the jump cuts, it doesn't actually follow on from the puppy conversation, so on second viewing we can question whether she is talking about the puppy at all. It then becomes very tense when she stands by the river and says that she's now good at hiding things from her mum and throws the bag in the river, the focus on the sinking bag really makes the audience think what on earth is she talking about? It can be interpretted as a littel insensitive as she walks off saying "I'm still going to have a 99" it's as though she has totally forgotton about it already as if it is no big deal. However when the bag gets trapped in the fence in the river I feel like this references to the fact that it will never leave her, it will always be trapped in her mind what she has done.

I think this final image says a lot about what has happened to her, yes she is walking away from what she has just done, but she is walking on the shaded side of the river, suggesting that she will always have a dark secret hanging over her, the words she sings, "I've had enough" hold a lot of meaning to what she has been through, mayebe now she feels like she can start to move on.

The ideological message of this short film can be looked at in two ways. It can either be interpretted as that of stereotypical 'poor' people's lives at that time, or about teenage pregnancy and how to recognise the signs. Ut sends a message to young epople to be more careful and also to adults to be more aware of goings on such as these. About A Girl is different from Hollywood films as it has not been glamourised at all which I believe it would have if it was a high budget, feature length film. It's differences are that it displays a serious case of soical realism, which Hollywood tends to rear off from in all te sensationalisation. The grittiness is rare to see in high budget movies as it is not a pleasing film to watch particularly.

This narrative structure I believe this film follows is that of the ideas of Robert McKee. He says that characters reveal themselves in the choices they make under pressure. I believe this to be true to this film as we guess nothing about this girl until the end when we find out the 'pressure' she has been under and then we see a big part of what she is really like.

Parts of this film I aim to use in my own will be the big twist at the end, all the way through the audience is lead to believe one thing and it turns out to be completely different.