He got game Analysis

He got game (1998) Dir. Spike Lee

He got game is an American Sports drama directed by Spike Lee. The production companies for the film are Spike's own company that he set up called 40 acres and a mule Filmworks, the other production company was Touchstone pictures. There are several themes that run throughout the film that include love, family, hatred, unrequited love and sports.

The film is based around Jake Shuttlesworth and his son Jesus Shuttlesworth. Jake is in prison for murdering his wife, and for that his son hates him and doesn't look at him as a father anymore. Spike uses Basketball in the film as a bonding tool as Jake used to help teach his son when he was younger. Jake uses this as a way to work himself back into his sons life and help make a decision about what college he wants to go to and to try and make up for the years they lost and for what happened between him and Jesus' mum Martha. We see that Basketball is going to be a key element of the film from the first few opening scenes, we see clips of people basketball on courts in neighbourhoods, we then see Jake in prison on a court with another inmate taking shots. Towards the end of the film, we see a flashback of Jake teaching Jesus and 'helping' him to get better at the game. In this scene we start to see another reason as to why Jesus doesn't particularly like him.

Miracle at St.Anna Analysis

Miracle at St. Anna Dir. Spike Lee (2008)

Miracle at St. Anna is an American-Italian war film, the genre of the film is historical fiction. Several themes ran throughout the film which include Religion, Family, Betrayal, Unrequited love, war and Friendship. The film was filmed and made in 2008 and was directed by Spike Lee and was written by James McBride. The films locations include America, Italy and Port Nassau in the Bahamas. The production companies for the film were Spike Lee's own production company 40 Acres and a Mule film works, Touchstone pictures and RAI Cinema, while Walt Disney Studios and Motion pictures distributed the film. The films budget was $45 million, at the box office the film only grossed $9.3 million and made $10.1 million from DVD sales, which totalled $19.4 million overall.

The film features a circular narrative that leads us to the end of the film and connects the story together. The use of the flashbacks in the movie helps us to understand how the characters got to the place they were, it is used as a backstory to each of the characters so we can get to know what they have been through and get an idea of who they are. The film starts with a black man working in a booth at a post office, we see him serve a customer then another customer approaches his booth and asks for a 20 cent stamp. Then after a staring at him a couple of times, the man shoots the customer and closes the booth. The next scene we see is of the gun resting on a hat with a pool of blood around them, this is the scene we see at the end of the film to show to the audience why it happened and the events leading up to it.

The use of a hand-held camera in the battle scenes helps makes the audience feel more involved in the film and makes them feel like they are there with the characters. The hand-held camera is used to emphasise the chaos within the scene, all the gunfire and explosions, the soldiers screaming and shouting in pain at being shot or having limbs blown off. The close-ups of the characters helps to show the pain and anguish they are enduring in the battle and shows their body language towards the events that are happening. We see the effect that the war can have on soldiers at 00:16:23, when one of the soldiers in the Army Platoon starts to become scared and nervous praying for his mum to come and help him. The close-ups and mid-shots of the soldier when he is going through this situation shows his body language and his emotions. Spike uses these shots to shows how scared and petrified soldiers could be when it came to war and when you were called upon to go out to find and fight the enemy army. Not only does it help show emotion and body language, it helps us to sympathise with the characters and almost feel what they are going through.

Racism was a key theme shown in the film by Spike. He showed how the whites used their colour as a position of power and use it to show their superiority above the blacks. A scene where this was indicated was when the soldiers wanted to eat in a café which was occupied by other white Americans and the owner treated the blacks in a patronising and derogatory way by telling them to sit out the back like dogs away from the whites. Close up shots of the all the soldiers face showed their emotions of how they was upset and violated at the fact four white German guys got to sit in a booth despite the fact they are the people they are at war with, and despite the fact they are serving in the Army helping the country, they still get no respect from anyone. However, they repeat their action a while; they went back to the café with an aggressive and violent approach towards the owner and the other white people in there, the owner was intimidated and scared because they were all brandishing weapons.

Film script and proposal

Film script link : Film trailer script


Film proposal : Film Proposal

The Selfish Giant Film Analysis

The Selfish Giant Dir. Clio Barnard (2013)

The Selfish Giant was directed by Clio Barnard, it was produced by the British Film Institute, Film 4 and Moonspun Films. It was filmed in Bradford, England.

Clio Barnard is a British director of documentary and feature films. She won widespread critical acclaim and multiple awards for her debut, The Arbor, an experimental documentary about Bradford playwright Andrea Dunbar. In 2013 she was hailed as a significant new voice in British cinema for her film The Selfish Giant, which premiered in the Director's Fortnight section of the Cannes film festival.

Her debut feature, The Arbor (2010) won several awards including Best New Documentary Filmmaker at Tribeca Film Festival New York, Best Newcomer and Sutherland Awards at The London Film Festival, Douglas Hickox Award at British Independent Film Awards, The Guardian First Film Award, Best Screenplay at the London Evening Standard Film Awards, the Sheffield Documentary Film Festival Innovation Award and the Jean Vigo Award for Best Direction at Punto de Vista International Documentary Film Festival. She was nominated for the BAFTA Outstanding Debut Award in February 2011.

The film has a cyclic narrative to it as it ends in a similar way to how it starts. The film starts with Arbor under a bed, shouting, screaming and hitting the underside of the bed, until Swifty gets down and give Arbor his hand and they grab hands and it calms Arbor down and almost reassures him leading him to come out from under the bed.. The film comes to an end with the audience seeing Arbor laying under the bed refusing to come out from under the bed,he then imagines seeing Swifty get off the bed and reach his hand out again to reassure him and let him know everything will be alright, then Swifty's mum comes into the room with Arbor's mum and Arbor jumps out from under the bed and gives her a long hug to share her grief and almost give her a hug as an apology for what happened. 
The cyclic structure of the film could also connote what its like to live in poverty, its a never ending cycle that you cannot break, once you having been taking in you cannot leave it.

The film shows poverty in the UK and especially what it is like from a child's perspective. There are many power stations, chimneys and pile-ons shown throughout the film which foreshadows what will happen at the end of the movie. The ‘selfish giants’are the pile-ons and power stations as they took away Arbour’s ticket out from poverty. Swifty had a trait, that allowed him to get on with horses so he could help train and race them. This could have provided Swifty and Arbour with lots of money had the horses of won and they could of eventually taken their families out of poverty ridden Bradford so they could start a new life somewhere else. The adults are also the selfish giants in the film, for example Kitten, the scrapyard owner was selfish because he was getting Arbor ans Swifty to go and steal and salvage scrap metal to make him money. The parents are selfish giants in a way because if we take Swifty's dad for example, he was verbally abusive and took away from the family even though he done it to try and provide for them.

Barnard places a metaphor in the film that runs throughout the film that becomes more noticeable throughout the film that emulates the world that the protagonists live in. The copper wiring is used to represent Arbor and Swifty while the casing around the wiring represents the world of poverty that they have been brought up in. The wiring being taken out of the casing represents Arbor and Swifty staking their claim in a world without poverty,but the casing representing the poverty of the world they live in soon becomes the catalyst that changes their lives forever and prevents them from making it out of poverty.

Jonah Film Analysis

Jonah Dir. Kibwe Tavares (2013)

Jonah is a social-realism film and was directed by Kibwe Tavares. Filmed in Zanzibar and Tanzania, and was funded by the BFI Film Fund and was produced by Film 4, Shine Pictures and Stray Bear Productions,  as well as special effects company Jellyfish Pictures.

Kibwe Tavares was a student at Bartlett School of Architecture, his graduation film, ‘Robots of Brixton’, won the Special Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival.  Other awards include a TED fellowship and recognition as one of Fast Company’s ‘100 Most Creative People in Business’. Kibwe combines his training as an architect with storytelling and animation to create futuristic 3D live action/animated films that are incredibly detailed and vivid. He was named one of the top twenty young global Directors at the Saatchi & Saatchi New Director’s showcase; won Best Short Film Award for ‘Jonah’ at the CFPE/Shots Young Director’s Award plus the Special Jury Prize and he also walked away with the Audience Award. 

Jonah is set in a built up village in Zanzibar. We see it is built up within the first few scenes as there are lots of people in alleys and side roads, even the main road has several little shops on the side for people to stop at and there are several pickup trucks that go past with people sitting in the back. From some of the opening scenes we see that there could be a lot of poverty in the area,

In this picture from the film, we can see tin roofs that are rusting and the pavement looks dirty, this connotes that the area in which the film is set are going through hard times.

We also see connotations of the village not being of a high class standard when the two protagonists Mbwana and Juma are on the beach talking, and Mbwana talks about building a Buckingham palace on the beach and an Eiffel tower to make it look better. However, despite this being said, the village that they are living is already a fairly idealistic place to live as it is by a beach which most people would like.

We see Mbwana's idealistic version of the village appear when he starts to gain fame after Juma takes a picture of him with a giant fish jumping out of the water behind him. Once Mbwana gains this fame, his life turns from him stealing from people to being the talk of the town, everybody in his town knows who he is and  he starts to get his idealistic life. The use of Tavares' animations of the billboards being erected around the town and being taken down at the end of the film has connotations of what fame can do to you. The billboards quick erection and fall shows that Mbwana's idealistic life wouldn't work and would ruin the village just like the added tourism from the fish done to the village.

The use of the camera shots in the film ranges from close ups and long shots with a plethora of other shots and angles in between. 

This mid shot of Juma and Mbwana shows both of their facial expressions and their body language when talking about building Buckingham Palace. We can see Juma (on the left), looks confused about the idea and looks like he wants to take a step away from Mbwana because he doesn't want to be apart of the plans because he knows what it will do to their home. Mbwana however, is relishing the idea and thinks it could turn their home into a better place and will turn everything around, making the village better. 

The use of close ups in this film gives us a little bit of an insight into what the characters could be thinking as well as their feeling and reactions to events that take place. For example in this picture, we see Mbwana with a big grin on his face after seeing the picture Juma took of him with the fish behind him. The look on Mbwana's face can suggest that he can finally follow through on the idea of making the village a tourist attraction and trying to turn around their way of life.

Ride Along analysis

Ride Along Dir. Tim Story (2014)

Timothy Kevin "Tim" Story (born March 13, 1970) is an American director, producer and writer. He is the founder of The Story Company, an entertainment production company that he started with his wife in 1996. Born in Los Angeles on March 13, 1970, Story attended Westchester High School in Los Angeles with jazz pianist Eric Reed and actresses Regina King and Nia Long. He was senior class president at Westchester High. He graduated from the USC School of Cinematic Arts in 1991. While in high school, Story briefly attempted a career in music. He was part of Ice-T's Rhyme Syndicate and even appeared as a member of the group T.D.F. on the song "T.D.F. Connection" from the 1988 compilation album Rhyme Syndicate Comin' Through. A group member was shot and killed prior to them being signed to Warner Bros. Records. Story later turned his attention to directing feature films.

Ride Along is a 2014 American action comedy film directed by Tim Story and starring Ice Cube, Kevin Hart, John Leguizamo, Bryan Callen, Tika Sumpter and Laurence Fishburne. Greg Coolidge, Jason Mantzoukas, Phil Hay, and Matt Manfredi wrote the screenplay based on a story originally from Coolidge.
The film follows Ben Barber, a high school security guard who must prove to his girlfriend's brother, James Payton, that he is worthy of marrying her. The film was produced by Relativity Media, Cube Vision Productions and Rainforest Films, and distributed by Universal Pictures.

In Ride Along, we see several types of camera shots used.The shots used range from close ups to long shots and bird's eye view shots and high angle shots. The use of a variety of camera shots and angles are we get to see shots that set the scene for what is happening and where it is happening, but we also get to see the facial expressions of the actors and actresses in the film. In Ride Along, there are several high angle shots that show us where the scene is being set. We mostly see close ups, mid shots and long shots in the movie that show us facial expressions, body language and give us a full view of what is going on. For example, in the clip below, within the first 10 seconds, we see close ups and a long shot that shows us several people in the shot and the props that they are using.

Mise-en-scene is an important factor in this movie too. The use of props and the setting of some scenes helps to make the film funny and more interesting. For example, the supermarket scene with 'Crazy Cody' throwing groceries around at people, then he gets undressed and pours syrup over himself and starts wrestling and fighting with one of the policeman trying to arrest him. All the props used in the scenes have some sort of significance or are used to make the film funnier to the audience and progress the film.

The films lighting is very important too. The film has very few scenes that are set in a dark setting or partially light setting. Most of the scenes are bright because the film is a comedy which is stereotypically associated with brightness because its good. There are very few dark scenes in the film and the scenes that are dark are dark because there are shootouts between the police officers and bad guys. The use of the dark lighting in some scenes foreshadows bad events about to happen in this movie. For example when they go to the nightclub, it is dark throughout the entire scenes with only strobe lights providing any light.

Snatch Analysis

Snatch Dir. Guy Ritchie (2000)

Guy Ritchie was born in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, UK on September 10, 1968. After watching Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) as a child, Guy realized that what he wanted to do was make films. He never attended film school, saying that the work of film school graduates was boring and unwatchable. At 15 years old, he dropped out of school and in 1995, got a job as a runner, ultimately starting his film career. He quickly progressed and was directing music promos for bands and commercials by 1995. The profits that he made from directing these promos was invested into writing and making the film The Hard Case (1995), a twenty minute short film that is also the prequel to his debut feature Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998). Once completed, ten British distributors turned the film down before the film eventually was released in the UK in 1998 and the US in 1999; the film put Ritchie on the map as one of the hottest rising filmmakers of the time, and launched the careers of actors Jason Statham, Jason Flemyng, and Vinnie Jones, among others. Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998) was followed up by Snatch (2000), this time with a bigger budget and a few more familiar faces such as Brad Pitt, Dennis Farina, Benicio Del Toro alongside returning actors Jason Statham, Vinnie Jones and Jason Flemyng.

Snatch is a 2000 British crime comedy film written and directed by Guy Ritchie. Set in the London criminal underworld, the film contains two intertwined plots: one dealing with the search for a stolen diamond, the other with a small-time boxing promoter (Jason Statham) who finds himself under the thumb of a ruthless gangster (Alan Ford) who is ready and willing to have his subordinates carry out severe and sadistic acts of violence. 

Performance is critical is this film and all the actors and actresses involved played their parts and got into character extremely well, this made the film even more enjoyable and interesting to watch. For example, Brad Pitt playing the Gypsy Bare Knuckle fighting champion Mickey O'Neil. Brad Pitt perfectly voices his character and plays him sensationally well. Brad Pitt convincingly plays a Gypsy throughout the entire movie, he stays in character and makes the film highly enjoyable to watch. The clip below is of a scene from the movie, it is the scene where he is asking for a caravan in exchange for him fighting.
Mise-en-scene is also important in this movie.The use of guns in Snatch is a conventional prop to have in a dark, gangster like film. This is because conflict is a stereotypical narrative theme to have and the popular choice of weapon to have in these types of films are guns. Diamonds seem to be the cause of the conflict in Snatch as the group of men shoot at the men in the office in order to steal the diamonds. 

Lighting: Lighting is such an important aspect of Snatch. Low lighting adds to the dark and intimidating atmosphere that a action film or gangster film aims to create. We see the use of low lighting in Snatch several times,it is done to create and to enhance the audiences experience when watching the film.

The narrative structure of the film is cyclic, but also linear. This is because the films ends where it started, with two of the protagonists, sitting in chairs in a dark room waiting for someone. The structure is also linear because all the events that happen are in order and it is easy to understand what is happening in the movie.

In Snatch there is a lot of use of close-ups and mid-shots. This is to give the audience a sort of boxed in and trapped sense as in reality we are not used to seeing things like what happens in the movie so close up creating an uncomfortable atmosphere. High angles and low angles are used also, again this creates an uncomfortable atmosphere as an audience because we are not used to viewing things at eye level. As well as unusual camera shots and angles being used, unusual but effective use of editing is also used in Snatch. In the opening sequence we frequently saw editing taking the form of rotating into the next scene, again allowing the audience to feel uncomfortable as we are not used to viewing things upside down, but at the same time allowing smooth transitions into different camera shots and scenes.

The Angels' Share

The Angels' Share Dir. Ken Loach (2012)

The Angels Share is a British Comedy Drama set in and around Scotland. The production Companies that worked on the movie are Entertainment One Sixteen Films, Why Not Productions, Wild Bunch, British Film Institute (BFI), Les Films du Fleuve and Urania Pictures S.r.l. 

Kenneth Charles "Ken" Loach (born 17 June 1936) is an English film and television director. He is known for his socially critical directing style and for his socialist ideas. Loach's film Kes (1969) was voted the seventh greatest British film of the 20th century in a poll by the British Film Institute. Two of his films, The Wind That Shakes the Barley (2006) and I, Daniel Blake (2016) received the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival, making him the ninth filmmaker to win the prestigious award twice. Loach was born in Nuneaton, Warwickshire, the son of Vivien and John Loach. He attended King Edward VI Grammar School and went on to study law at St Peter's College, Oxford. Loach's 2013 film The Angels' Share is centred on a young Scottish troublemaker who is given one final opportunity to stay out of jail. Newcomer Paul Brannigan, 24, from Glasgow, played the lead role.The film competed for the Palme d'Or at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival where Loach won the Jury Prize. Loach's 2014 film Jimmy's Hall was selected to compete for the Palme d'Or in the main competition section at the 2014 Cannes Film Festival. In 2016, Loach won his second Palme d'Or for I, Daniel Blake.

The title is from "the angels' share", a term for the portion (share) of a whisky's volume that is lost to evaporation during aging in oak barrels. This movie follows protagonist Robbie as he seeks to turn his life around after narrowly avoiding prison. He is sentenced to community service instead of jail time and while on his community service makes friends with unlikely people, he meets Rhino, Albert and Mo who, like him, find it impossible to find work because of their criminal records. However their luck soon starts to change when they go to a distillery and find out about an extremely rare whiskey which they soon learn could change their lives.

The use of camera shots and sizes in this movie, provides the audience with different feelings. For example, they camera is not on a rail following every movement made by the characters and it not cleanly shot, it follows the characters everywhere and gives the audience the sense that they are with the characters and are experiencing everything that happens in the movie. We also see loads of close up shots, especially at the beginning of the film which shows he audience the facial expressions and body language of the protagonists. The use of this type of filming shows us that it is more of a smaller produced film but it is still an effect filming method.

The use of Mise-en-scene also helps the movie. The use of the whiskey in the film is key to the entire storyline. The use of whiskey at the beginning of the film, when Robbie goes back to Harry's house after being beaten up in the hospital, they drink a bit of whiskey, then end up going on a tour of a distillery which makes Robbie realise he wants to explore his interest of it. We then end the film seeing Harry get back into his house and finding a bottle of an extremely rare whiskey that is worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, from Robbie as a 'Thank You'present.

My Brother the Devil

My Brother the Devil is a 2012 British crime drama film, written and directed by Sally El Hosaini. It has won several awards, which include the 2012 Sundance Film Festival and at the 2012 Berlin International Film Festival. It features James Floyd as Rashid, Fady Elsayed as Mo and Saïd Taghmaoui as Sayyid. The film is about two brothers of Egyptian background living in east London. It was released in the UK on 9 November 2012 and was in US cinemas from 22 March 2013. The companies that produced the film are Rooks Nest Entertainment, Wild Horses Film Company, Film-Clinic and Blood Brothers Films.

The genres that My Brother the Devil conforms with are romance, crime and Drama. This is because of the drug dealing, killing and mugging throughout the film, drama with gangs and romance between the characters. There are many themes in the film which are family, religion, love, conflict, relationships, prejudice and identity.

Mise-En-Scene was used in order to create an environment which is seen as fairly rough. The characters live on an estate and this was shown by the establishing shots of towering, crowded flats throughout the film. The graffiti on the walls enhanced the idea that the characters lived in a rough, depleted area and the characters could be seen wearing clothes such as hoodies in order to blend in and stay out of the way, keeping a low profile at times when they did not want to be easily noticed. Another thing that was effective throughout the movie was Mo’s clothing. At the beginning of the film Mo is seen wearing bright colours but as the film progresses, he goes from being a school boy to being a drug dealer which meant that his choice of clothes changed as well. During his time with the dealers Mo started to wear dull colours like grey and black or navy blue. This represents how his innocence of being a young school boy has changed and he is now trapped in the life which his brother wanted him to avoid.

Camera angles and shots were extremely important in making this movie realistic and effective. Simple things such as the camera following the movement of someone taking a drink makes the movie more realistic and the audience feel like they are there with the characters. The cinematography in this movie was absolutely amazing. The shots of the estate and the surroundings made where they live look like a better place than what it actually was, this could represent how Rashid (the older brother) wanted a better life for him and Mo. Another effective technique was how the camera angle started off looking down on Mo, and throughout the movie the camera angle started to look up at him. This represents how Mo made his way to the top (making money from dealing drugs), whereas before he was a little boy being protected by his older brother.

Shooter Analysis

Shooter Dir. Antoine Fuqua (2007)

Antoine Fuqua (born January 19, 1966) is an American film director, known for his work in the film Training Day as well as The Replacement Killers, Tears of the Sun, King Arthur, Shooter, Brooklyn's Finest, Olympus Has Fallen and The Equalizer. He has directed music videos for such artists as Arrested Development, Prince, Stevie Wonder, Toni Braxton, Pras Michel and Usher Raymond. He was nominated for MTV's Best Rap Video for Heavy D & the Boyz. He also won two Music Video Production Awards: The Young Generators Award, for his work on Coolio's rap video "Gansta Paradise" and the Sinclair Tenebaum Olesiuk and Emanual Award for the trailer to the hit feature filmDangerous Minds (1995). 

Shooter is a 2007 American film directed by Antoine Fuqua based on the novel Point of Impact by Stephen Hunter. The film follows Force Recon veteran Bob Lee Swagger (Mark Wahlberg), who is framed for murder by a rogue secret private military company unit. The film also stars Michael Peña, Danny Glover, Kate Mara, Levon Helm, and Ned Beatty and was released in the United States on March 23, 2007. The films genre is Action Thriller and its the themes for the film are; Loyalty, Vengeance, Death, Conflict and War. The companies that produced the film are Paramount Pictures, Di Bonaventura Pictures and Grosvenor Park Impact Productions. 

In the opening scene of Shooter, we see the end of a gun poking out from under grass. In this first picture alone we can see that the film is going to include violence in some way. We then see a medium shot of two men hidden under camouflage, grass and twigs. The next thing we see is one of the guys looking through the scope of a gun and we see what he see's through the scope. It then switches back to the two men and we get to see their face. We see that they have face paint which connotes that they are in the army or military. 

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Fish Tank Analysis

Fish Tank Dir. Andrea Arnold (2008)

Andrea Arnold, OBE (born 5 April 1961) is an English filmmaker and former actress. She won an Academy Award for her short film Wasp in 2005 and has since made the leap to feature films and television, including Red Road, Fish Tank and American Honey, all of which have won the Jury Prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Most recently, she directed three episodes of the Emmy-winning series Transparent.

Arnold was born in Erith Kent, the eldest of four children. She was born when her mother was only 16 years old and her father was 17, and they separated when she was very young. Her mother had to bring up all four children alone, which is reminiscent of Arnold's own directorial debuted short, Wasp. When people are asked if the story is in any way biographical, Arnold replies "I grew up in a working class family, so I guess you could say I write from what I know. 

As a young girl, she was writing dark stories about human experience. In an interview, Arnold speaks about how when she was a mere 10 years old, she wrote her first play that expressed her "horror" of the slave trade, and a few years later while studying for a dance GCSE, she made a performance piece; "I took quotes from the Diary of Anne Frank and read them aloud as I moved around the room. All the other kids would just bung on some pop music and dance. I remember the examiners sitting there looking at me, perplexed.Arnold left high school when she was 16, when she was drawn to becoming an actress. When Arnold was 18 years old she began working as a host and actress for a children's TV show called No. 73. She worked in TV for the next 10 years, while continually writing on the side. Arnold realised she could turn her stories into films, so she studied at the American Film Institute of Los Angeles where she gained experience in the film industry. After finishing school and returning to Britain she had her daughter, Coral and began making short films for TV.

Fish Tank is a British film set in Essex on a council estate. The films genre is Drama and Social-realism, it also has several themes including Conflict, friendship, love, violence and relationships. The budget for the film was £3 million and in the box office it almost doubled grossing £5.9 million. The companies who produced the film are BBC Films, UK Film Council and Limelight Communication. The film is about Mia Williams, a socially isolated 15-year-old who lives with her single mother, Joanne. The mother's new boyfriend, Conor, becomes attracted to Mia and has sex with her. Fish Tank was well-received and won the Jury Prize at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival. It also won the 2010 BAFTA for Best British Film. 

Katie Jarvis, who plays Mia, had no prior acting experience. She was cast for the film after one of Arnold's casting assistants saw her arguing with her boyfriend in Tilbury Town,which is the railway station featured in the film.

Shooting began 28 July 2008 over the course of six weeks,and was filmed in chronological order. At the end of each week the actors were given the scripts for the scenes that they would perform the following week, so that when they performed each scene they were largely unaware of what would happen to their characters later in the film.

The opening scene of the movie is packed full of micro-features that can be deeply analysed. From the opening scene we can establish where the film is set, what the area is like and what Mia's character is like. In the opening scene, we see Mia catching her breath and then she goes over to her phone and calls her friend. From the conversation we see that Mia is more of a less educated person.  

Ralph Analysis

Ralph Dir. Alex Winckler (2008)

Alex Winckler was born in Washington D.C. but was raised in London. He was granted a Fulbright Scholarship to study film at Columbia University's Graduate School of the Arts in New York. His graduation film, RALPH, was nominated for a BAFTA in 2009. Nominated as a Screen Star of Tomorrow in the same year, he went on to direct Richard Bean's HARVEST for Channel 4. After making another short, TITS, for the BFI/Lighthouse, which played in competition at the Berlin and Encounters film festivals, he went on to close the second series of Channel 4's BAFTA nominated drama series MY MAD FAT DIARY. The show was nominated for an international Emmy for Best Drama series 2015. He went on to open CRIMS, a BBC3 sitcom set in a young offenders institute and has recently directed the third and final series of MAD FAT. He is currently developing a feature with Creative England, written by Nick Payne. He is represented for commercials by Archersmark and has directed work for clients including Nike, Barclays and Microsoft.

Ralph is a British short film produced by Parkville Pictures and the UK Film Council. It is set in and around Marseille train station in France. The genre of the film is romance and there are many themes involved in it such as unrequited love, friendships, relationships and conflict. The opening shot is an extreme long shot where we see Ralph getting off of the train. The fact that when we see him in the train station he is very small compared to the other objects, suggests that he is out of his element and is essentially a little fish in a big pond. Alex Winckler uses lots of close up camera shots so we can see Ralph's facial expressions and reactions to events that occur. Winckler also uses a handheld camera when shooting the film. We know this because whenever Ralph moves, the camera isn't steady and firm, it is shaky and looks unprofessional. This is because he wants the audience to feel like they are with Ralph throughout the short film and to feel like we are experiencing everything he is going through.

In the movie, we hear and see people speaking french, but, Winckler doesn't use subtitles because he wants us to feel like we are in France with Ralph so we too can't fully understand what they are saying. This is also used for a dramatic effect, when we see Julie (who works in the Cafe), and her dad (who runs and also works in the Cafe), start arguing and we cannot understand what they are saying. When Ralph sees and hears them arguing, he is confused as he does not know what they are saying, this is how the audience is meant to feel when they hear it too.

Seven FIlm Plots

Overcoming the Monster – Man VS Monster - The hero must defeat real or imagined 'monsters' to re-establish the status quo - often by absorbing the 'evil' into his or her own worldview. Examples of this are Harry Potter, Star Wars and Lord of the Rings.

Rags to Riches - Often the hero is plucked from seeming obscurity and given great wealth and power only to have it taken away. The story revolves around the protagonist's struggle to re-acquire his or her new status, through the defeat of a newfound set of obstacles.

The Quest  - The hero must overcome obstacles, recruit the help of friends, defeat enemies and save the world, possibly using a magical or symbolic artefact.

Voyage and Return - The defeat of a monster (often a metaphor for the hero's failings) is a mainstay of this plot. Back to the Future is an example of this.

Comedy - Comedy is often about using the absurd to make observations about people at their worst. The best comedy uses its own internal logic to highlight inappropriate behaviour that can lead to the same kind of resolution as the Rebirth plot. 

Tragedy - Usually centres around a high status character who is forced into a situation where he or she is downtrodden and the important things in life are taken. Often this is used as a starting point for a story, leading to revenge, justice, enlightenment, liberation etc. The Godfather series is an example of this.

Rebirth – Man VS Himself - where a protagonist must learn that adherence to his or her past life and values will not help growth or change. The largely symbolic 'death' of the hero usually occurs at around the mid to three-quarter point in the story, from which he/she rises again, stronger, wiser, and in control, usually with a mind-set that enhances the world around him or her. A Christmas Carol is a prime example of this as Scrooge gets visited by 3 ghosts of Christmas and starts to change his ways.