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.