Story-telling | Watching Short Films: 'Soft' by Simon Ellis (26th September 2016)

In order to get a grasp of the sort of thing we will be producing, we looked at Soft, a short film by Simon Ellis, which won a plethora of awards including the grand prize at the Sundance Film Festival.

Despite being only 14 minutes long, Ellis does a terrific job of exploring a number of themes and establishes a complex relationship between the central characters.

One of the aspects of this film that makes this film so powerful is how realistic it feels, the dialogue is not complex, and the action is not all dramatically choreographed: it feels as if this could have happened exactly how Ellis wrote it.  Therefore this fits into the social realism/drama genre.

The setting is important in any moving picture, and Soft is no different.  It is set in a seemingly calm urban neighbourhood which adds to the theme of social division in the film.

Whilst most of the film follows the perspective of the father, the son seems to fill the role of the protagonist, as he undergoes the most change and comes out of his shell to fight back against the gang, as the father remains emasculated by the gang attacking him, and then by his son taking control of the situation.  The 'Asbo' (in the white tracksuit) is clearly the central antagonist, as he seems to lead the rest of the gang and takes centre stage with his signature dance after each attack.

There are multiple conflicts within the film, as well as the prominent violent conflict between the gang, and the father and son:

• There is conflict between the father and son, which we can tell routes back to before the film takes place, as the father seems to ignore the son after the gang attacks him, his overall tone seems somewhat antagonistic when speaking to his son, and the son frequently asking when his mother will return home, hinting that he would prefer to confide in her than his father.  This develops later on, when the gang arrives and they argue about whether or not to defend their home or ignore the problem, and the son questions the father's contradiction made earlier on that a man should defend himself.  There are more subtle hints at this domestic conflict at the start of the film when the father returns home as the son is about to walk down the stairs into the hallway, but he runs back to his bedroom when he realises that it his father - this is the first instance we see of a tension between father and son in Soft.

• This also links in with the internal conflict of the father as he must choose between facing his fears and standing up to the gang, and hiding at his home, which he justifies by claiming that they only want to provoke a reaction.  This insecurity is brought into play before the gang arrives at their house, and the father argues with his son saying that he should stand up for himself as he is a grown man, but once they are faced with the threat of the gang, he goes against what he was trying to teach his son and allows the fear to take over.  This ultimately leads to the son losing respect for his father.

• A less prevalent conflict in Soft is another internal conflict within the gang, which is their boredom, possibly acting as the basis for their antisocial behaviour.  Ellis enforces this with the use of the cameraphone footage of their antics, suggesting that they have nothing better to do but to harass people and be nuisances in their community.

There is an abundance of themes present within Soft as well:

• Fatherhood, role-reversal and coming of age would seem to be the overarching themes of the film, as the role of the father is brought into question when his home and son are threatened, and when he is unable to step up, the roles of father and son are switched, as the son is able to take action and fight back against the gang.  We can see in the final scene that the father makes an attempt to take action, but the use of a wide angle lens distorts his attempt to appear powerful, and this ends quickly as the asbo easily puts an end to the father's attempt at courage.  This leads to the son taking control of the situation by coming out of the house and beating up the gang with a cricket bat, and despite the father trying to take back control of the situation by disabling the car alarm, we can see that the son is acting as the father conventionally should, by dropping the bat at the father's feet and closing the door behind him as he reenters the house, highlighting that he has changed, and come of age to compensate for his father's inability to do so.

The father tried to take control of the situation

• Fear and masculinity also play a large part in Soft, particularly in the character of the father.  His fear is brought to light as he is walking home from the cornershop and the camera tracks him on his way home, creating a sense of uneasiness about him, which is cemented as we see him shaking later on, and once the gang arrives at his house, we see him cower away and avoid any confrontation, despite his conversation with his son, claiming that his son is a grown man and should be able to defend himself.  This brings his masculinity into question when he does not defend himself, and the motif of the loose tie dangling after the gang has left embodies how he has lost what he claimed makes a man; the capacity to defend himself.

The motif of cricket is repeated throughout Soft

• There is also a running theme of social difference in the film, with the contrast between the gang, who we assume is from a lower class background due to the way they dress, their dialect and their antisocial behaviour, whilst the father and son seem to be more middle class, with an emphasis on the father's business attire, the change in location from the cornershop to a peaceful neighbourhood, and the recurring motif of cricket.  Throughout the film, Ellis gives us hints toward climax of the film - when the son uses the cricket bat to fight off the gang - at the beginning, when the father trips over the cricket bag, the cutbacks to the cricket bag, and a postcard on the fridge which highlights the significance of cricket in their lives.  This emphasises the importance of class in the story, as we see division between those of a lower social class, and those of a more middle class background, and in the end, the middle class takes control, perhaps commenting on class and suggesting that class is still an issue in today's Britain.

After discussing Soft at length, we then came up with a 25 word pitch for Soft, similar to the task last week, and as we must do for our own screenplays.  This is the pitch I came up with:

'A man must face his fears or risk losing the respect of his son as a gang attacks their home: will he make the right choice?'

I slipped above the word limit at 26 words, but my initial pitch included adjectives, such as 'violent gang', and I had included more detail , such as 'defending their home', but opted to remove them, so to leave more to the imagination of the potential audience and to avoid revealing too much of the plot.  Despite my belief that the son is the central protagonist, I chose to focus my pitch on the father, just as the film takes place from his perspective, and so I chose to make him the subject of the pitch, which also restricts how much of the plot I reveal, as the son changes the most in the film, as opposed to the father.

Watching Soft has given me a clearer picture of what I will be producing, and has also sparked some more potential ideas for my screenplay by reminding me of my own experiences with antisocial behaviour in the past.  I feel that Soft is a testament to the amount of depth and intrigue can be achieved through good writing and direction, despite being a fairly simple plot.