TASK 3.1 : 'Telling Lies' vs 'Soft' Film Review

Telling Lies
By Simon Ellis
(2000)

‘Telling lies’ begins with an alarming phone call to Phil were he receives a disastrous spiral of a situation where he attempts to escape out of.  It was created in the UK in the year 2000 where Ellis thought an animated text can be the only visualization that the audience can see. it has been rated 6.4/10 with 5 casting characters, Phil, Sarah, Darren, Mum and Victoria. The clip has a mixture of animation/comedy and drama together to create a more interesting scenario of a real life situation. Simon Ellis allows us to enter a different world where we can see what other people are thinking while their speaking to us and with ‘’Telling Lies’’ Ellis precisely gives us that ability.

Cleverly and creatively, Simon Ellis decides to make this short video into an animation text video. He chooses a black background to explain that we’re in someone’s mind and thoughts and the color of text, font and size explains to the audience that each character has their own set of personality including their mood in which helps us to Identify who is who.  The audio that the audience can hear are the voices of characters, Ellis created this effect because he wanted the audience to hear the dialogue of the lie but visualize the truth on screen so, the viewer see’s two different things at the same time. The lie and the truth.

  

Straight away, we were in the middle of a situation where the audience didn’t know what the problem is until his girlfriend, Sarah called to hint the viewer that they were in a relationship and that he cheated on her ‘’not that old bitch you fucked last night then?’’, further on the film we slowly start to pick up the story and watch how the drama starts to escalate into a bigger problem making it seem realistic and true.

The accent of the characters are British - northern accents and seems like that these characters are average working class citizens representing all average working class northern people in the UK. Simon Ellis wanted to bring a real life event showing how much drama and chaos real life situations can be and managed to put it on screen, compared to his other films ‘Soft’ involved about real life events but not on animation but actual moving images. The age range for this clip would be 16 – 37 because it involves a lot of adult humor and explicit language. Simon Ellis successfully produced a clip that was unique and capturing to the audience once again.


Soft

By Simon Ellis
20^th April (2007)

A story of a father who has been verbally and physically abused by a group of youths dressed in hoods and tracksuit bottoms with a hat to the side. Not only the father was harassed and kicked and punched; his son, Scott was also physically and verbally bullied as well by the same youths. Later on, the gang appears to be outside their house challenging the dad to face his fears on the spot. The film was set in the UK released in 2007 with a budget of £50,000 (estimated). The 7.3/10 nominated BAFTA video has won many awards including the Sundance (international Jury prize).

‘Soft’ has a mixture of different themes under the genre of Drama. It contains a lot of bravery/fear and father and son relationship involved. At the opening scene, it started with the son being bullied by a gang of youths gets the audience hooked on what is happening already also the fact that it’s filmed on an average camera creates that realistic atmosphere to it. Ellis purposely chose a smaller character to play as the son so, he looks more vunerable and weaker than the gang members and wears a school uniform which tells us that he’s in education while the others aren’t, this divides the social class between them that the lower class (gang members) have tracksuits and a t-shirt with no job or money whilst the middle/working class wear suits, has a job, money, car and in education. These social divides allegorically show the relation of real life situation in the UK and the problem we face in this nation today.

A rocky relationship between the father and son seemed intense as the audience can sense the atmosphere of silence in the air between them like the son asked his dad questions and the dad refuses to answer tells the audience that there’s no close relationship between them and the gang incident was a challenge for them to test their father and son relationship.

‘Soft’ compared to Simon Ellis other short films ‘Telling Lies’ has the same genre and same age range 16 – 37 because it involves violence and explicit languages. Both films have different situations, for example, ‘Telling Lies’ has relationships/lies/betrayal whereas ‘Soft’ has violence/fear/father and son relationship. Simon Ellis has managed to create an emotional short film that sends a powerful message and something that anyone can relate to.