SHORT FILMS

Using the BFI resource Beginnings, we watched extracts from two early short films nade by some of Britain's most influential filmmakers:

• Boy and Bicycle (dir. Ridley Scott 1965 UK, 27 minutes)
• I'm British But... (dir. Gurinder Chadha 1989 UK, 29 minutes)

In order to improve our skills when writing about our own filmmaking for the summer examination G325 Section A, we practised deconstructing the texts orally. positioning ourselves as the filmmaker. Below are some of the comments offered:

Boy and Bicycle (dir. Ridley Scott).

• At AS, I made a 'rights of passage' film opening in which a teenage schoolboy wakes up to another dreary day and decides that he will play hooky from school, using his bicycle to seize his freedom.
• I took the creative decision to use black and white in order to lend my piece a period feel, as I set my film in the 1960s. Colour is an important visual code in establishing period as well as genre, in this case, a documentary feel.
• I made the creative choice to develop enigma at the start of the film by witholding sight of the boy himself for the first few minutes, until the audience has built a relationship with the protagonist through the interior monologue which takes us inside his head. Enigma is an important aspect of film convention in film openings. At A2, in my short film, I developed this by...
• Editing together the voice over and the arc pans which are all point of view shots is key to my technique. As my protagonist wakes up, the soundtrack combines his interior monologue and intrusive shouts from his annoyed parents. Combined with the visual images, the edit creates a claustrophobic sense sense of his entrapment.
• I used close ups of the boy staring into the mirror in order to share with my audience my protagonist's emotions. Privileging him in the frame and confining the visual focus was a creative way of engaging the audience's sympathy. This device is used throughout filmmaking. By contrast, at A2, I used other camera angles such as... in order to....
• Visual codes are significant in my film, so the boy's bicycle can be read on the denotative and connotative level. On the one hand, the bicycle allows the boy to cycle to his school then have the freedom of choice to cycle away to the seaside where he smokes an illicit cigarette. On a connotative level, the bike represents freedom, rebellion and adulthood. My understanding of visual codes and the research that I have done into Roland Barthes, signification and visual signs propelled my creative decisions.
• Sound codes are important in my film as the diegetic sound of 'All Things Bright and Beautiful' emerging from behind the Colditz-like walls of the school is both ironic (it is a grim, ugly mise-en-scene) and moving as the boy briefly sings along with the words ( a reminder of his youth and sense of identity as a part of the school community). 

Want to see what the BFI says about this film? What do you understand by the term 'stream of cosciousness'?

Opening in Scott's own teenage bedroom, Boy and Bicycle begins with the camera representing the point of view of the boy (played by Scott's younger brother Tony, who would also become a film-maker) as he wakes up and looks around his room, thinking about the day ahead. The film then follows the boy as he decides instead to play truant and visits various locations around the seaside town on his bicycle. All the while we listen to his thoughts in a stream of consciousness voice-over that Scott has said was partly inspired by reading James Joyce's Ulysses (1922).
The voice-over reveals the frustrations of a growing teenager and mocks the authority figures in his life such as his teachers and parents. Scott storyboarded in detail before shooting, and he includes many visual elements that add texture to the film: a dead dog, the sun darkened by ominous storm clouds, and the eerie barrenness of the beach, which Scott has said was an homage to Ingmar Bergman's The Seventh Seal (Sweden, 1956).
During post-production, Scott was lucky to acquire the services of the composer John Barry. Although Scott could not afford the rights to the recording he wanted, Barry generously agreed to record a new version of the piece, and his music adds a lyrical, life-affirming quality to the film.

David Morrison

I'm British But... (dir. Gurinder Chadha)

We approached this short film differently, treating it as material for Section B Collective Identity. A documentary, the film is an exploration of the complex issue of identity for second generation British Asians, I'm British But... (1989) was the first film by Gurinder Chadha, subsequently the most successful of the new wave of Asian-British filmmakers in the 1990s. 

Chadha's documentary uses the rise of Bhangra music - a vibrant fusion of traditional Punjabi dance music with contemporary Western dance styles from Hip Hop to House - to investigate the extent to which Asian forms have both absorbed and influenced Western culture and the way this reflects a more confident generation of Asian-British young people who reject stereotypes of passivity.

• The interviewees, a deliberately diverse group drawn from Glasgow, Belfast, London and South Wales, all but one of whom was born in the UK, are largely relaxed about their identities. They are clear that this is their home, but equally certain of their wish to retain a link to their Asian origins, even if their parents' homelands feel remote and unfamiliar. 
• In interviews about the film, Chadha stressed the importance of Bhangra in developing a proud and private culture for young Asians in Britain: "Bhangra music gave us back something for ourselves; it had nothing to do with English people or white society." 
• The Bhangra musicians she interviews appear more comfortable with the music attracting white audiences, but note that it contains references that would be missed by most white listeners. 
• This point is stressed by the recurring shots which recall The Beatles' celebrated rooftop performance at Abbey Road. Here, however, a Bhangra outfit performs on the roof of a Southall video shop for the benefit of bemused shoppers below. 
• The wit of this device is deliberately undermined by the lyrics of the band's song, an angry lament of the experiences of Punjabi immigrants to a hostile England: "How will you thrive in this strange and loveless land/Where hatred mocks you at every turn?"
• Elsewhere, the interviewees note the unpleasant connotations of Britishness - colonialism, the Raj, the massacre at Amritsar - and report with regret and anger the racism they continue to face; one relates with extraordinary calm the arson that destroyed his family's Rhondda valley farm. 
• For all that, the film's message is essentially a positive one, hailing the creative energy of a generation for which old certainties no longer apply, but which has the self-assurance to create new identities to suit new circumstances.
  Mark Duguid