Short Film Analysis- Bitch

 

Film: Bitch

Written and Directed by: Dom Bridges

Bitch is a short film approximately 4 minutes long. It is produced the banner of Future Shorts (and was distributed by them) and was made in 2009. It has a linear narrative structure and it is subjective and restricted to the main character (who is a man) because we find out about events along with him. There is an element of surprise because at the beginning we see a vulnerable lady whom we think mistakes someone for her child but in the end we see that she is the one who manipulates the bond between a mother and child to get her expensive shopping for free. The idea of a surprise element would be good to use in our film because it makes the audience remember the film.  

The score comes in at the beginning of the film during the titles and at the end credits. During the film there are only ambient sounds of people shopping and the dialogue on screen. This makes the audience focus on what is being said. The editing has mainly cross cutting between the old lady and the man. However the editing with the titles is quite effective.  Our film is also most likely to have simple editing because of the practical reasons such as the software we will be using.

The location is the supermarket where is shot throughout the film which again is mostly in short films because of the time constraints they cannot show characters moving around a lot.

The titles are effective and makes the film better in general in this film because they are created using products in a supermarket which goes with the theme of shopping as the main plot of the film is a man buying a tin of tuna. An example of this is, the title ‘Bitch’ is written on the washing powder and the director name ‘Dom Bridges’ is written on a box of dog food. The end credits are also effective because they are presented like a receipt as it says “Thank you for shopping with us” which could be interpreted with the meaning thank you for watching.

The theme of the film is deceit and the roles of normal characters have been challenged because normally it would be the man who would something like that (deceiving) and the old woman would be the victim however in this film the roles have been swapped- also known as role reversal.

There is a significance with the actors who play the roles of the character because it is obvious that the male cannot be the woman son and the photo does not match (as the man in the photo is Chinese). Therefore this is important in all films whether they are short or feature lengths that characters must be played with around the correct age. Such as in this film a young girl playing the role of the old lady would not work.

The good point about this film is it is quite experimental in terms of the plot because a feature length film about buying a tin of tuna would almost definitely not be a success with the audience because there wouldn’t be much of a story whereas in a short film it has worked with a very simple idea which has some humour and good techniques.