Short Film: About a Girl

About A Girl - Charlie Calvey

Representation: Section 1b  -  Discuss the representation of social class and age in the extract About A Girl. 



Fig. 1

The extract begins with the main character walking beside a canal presented through a MCU shot. She is walking alongside the canal and the camera is tracking in front of her keeping her in the frame as she narrates the film addressing the camera directly. In the background we can see dilapidated housing that appears to be social council housing (see fig. 1) by the fact that they are all semi-detached and not well kept (i.e. graffiti on the walls and poor aesthetic appearance). This suggest that she is living in an area with a low standard of living and that the under class is generally predominant in this area. The young girl, as she goes on to talk about her family and general life, has a thick Mancunian accent riddled with slang and poor dialect which suggests

she is from and lives in Manchester, this is further reinforced by the setting in which industrial buildings are present. Manchester is famous for its industrial heritage in cotton and coal and In the background shot in which the girl is seen walking beside the canal, we can see industrial factories and other industrial buildings. As the short film progresses the young girl goes on to explain through narration her family's situation and that her parents struggle with money as her single mother cannot support a dog financially and that she buys 'knockoff lager' and 'dodgy burgers'. In a short parallel scene, we can see the young girl sitting opposite to her father in a

Fig. 2

café booth presented via a LS side-on view (see fig. 2). The girl is asking her father if she can live with him and he explained that her living there would be 'to much hassle'. This shows that her parents are not dedicated to supporting their children and that her standard of living is not their primal concern, as well as this, she explains how her father is 'looking for work' which suggests that the area is of low income as there is little work or that her father has a poor work ethic. 

The fact her parents are separated suggests that the girls standard of living is poor and this is later reinforced by the young girl as she goes on to talk about her aspirations to be a pop singer and to be wealthy enough to be able to drink 'bacardi breezers', which are a relatively cheap alcohol drink. She is not aiming for a realistic career and aspires childishly to being a pop star, suggesting that she has no real hope for a realistic privileged life. During the short, there are many flashbacks all linked to the girls narrative and in one of them you can see, through a wide angle LS, the girl and her friends on the bus all singing and plotting their future singing careers. This scene shows the contrast between her dreams and aspirations and her current situation and lower class standard of living. In a later flashback the girl is shown again on the bus with a CU staring out of the window with a frustrated look on her face. Is she frustrated with how little she can do to better her life? The whole short film is structured around a continuous tracking shot of the young girl walking and several different flashbacks there to reinforce her narrative and present some back story. A sound bridge is used between the flashbacks throughout the entire film and it holds the structure of her narrative in place firmly. 

 Fig. 3                                                                                                                              Fig. 4 

There is a clever editing technique used during the entire film, which subtly drains the shots of colour and contrast towards the climax of the film, making it overall darker and giving it a more sinister feel. Then the colour comes back in at the end of the film, bringing it back to how it was at the start (see above). This technique is very subtly introduced and is very effective conveying a dark view on the girls progressing narrative. It also makes the final scene in which the baby is thrown into the canal even more visually striking (see fig.  )

Fig. 5

as the film has no colour up until the blood is seen in the worms eye view shot from underneath the baby in the water. This shot is very controversially shocking and as the girl in the film is meant to be only 13 years old, suggests that she has been impregnated and born this baby of her own accord without consulting her parents in any way (She explains how she has 'gotten dead good at hiding things from her' moments before she throws the baby into the canal). A girl this young being impregnated is extremely rare and is more likely in a society in which eduction (sexual and academic) is not present suggesting that she is from a uneducated and possibly poor background. The ECU shot of the baby seen underwater is followed up by a shot tracking the carrier bag the baby was in and then instantly by a crane swing arm ELS shot that swings up from a birds eye view to follow the girl as she walks away. The film end on this scene and it ends very quickly after the plot has climaxed, leaving the viewer to reflect on what has just happened.