TASK 1: My Review On Short Films 'Soft & Telling Lies' By Simon Ellis

I watched two short films which were directed by Simon Ellis. The first film, I watched, is called 'Telling Lies'. This film is about relationships. The main character (Phil) and his girlfriend (Sarah), split up the night before, then he went off with a different woman the next day. His mum then called him then Sarah called. Even though they split up, Sarah was a bit jealous that he went with a different woman. However, she ended up telling Phil that she slept with his best friend called Darren.

In this film we didn't see the characters on the screen, instead there was a blank black screen and we saw animated captions of when the characters speak. The text had different colours for when each character speaks so that we could see who was talking. When a character was shouting, the text became bigger and when a character was telling a lie, the text was white.

Overall, I liked watching this short film as the storyline was interesting and I think it was different to have a film where you just see the text and you still understand what is going on. Looking at some reviews, some people said 'This film is fast' and 'Its a clever idea which got over a clear message of don't believe all you hear!'
I liked that the film was quite simple and I like the idea used to make this short film.

The second film, I watched, is called 'Soft'. This film is a social drama about a gang of young people who bully a father and son. The dad is then forced to stand up to them, however, he's not really able to deal with them, so in the end the son stands up to them.

Firstly, we see phone footage of a teenage boy getting beating up by a group of young people. After that, we see, what seems to be, a gang leader who scares people on the road and bullies a middle-aged man near the newsagent.
I liked the way the phone footage was used because it was like the person in the gang was recording it all as we were watching it. However, we never saw the camera.

Looking at some reviews, some people said 'Its an intense film', and 'It's a great film and inspiring'. I found this film interesting as I liked the use of the way it was filmed. I also liked that in the end, we didn't expect, the teenage boy, who got bullied by the gang, to end up beating them up with a bat. It was a good film and it was made well.

Comparing these two films, there were a lot more things happening in the 'Soft' film as we could see the characters and everything that was going on. It was more interesting than the film 'Telling Lies' because the film caught your attention and you wanted to see what was going to happen next.

You was able to relate to the film 'Soft' as it was showing us middle-class people and it involved young people who are either in school or on the streets doing nothing.