Leonie: Analysis of a Short Film - Please!
The film I chose to look at was the one that stood out for me the most. Please! is a short film drama lasting just over 15 minutes and available on numerous websites, but I found it on YouTube. The Director and Writer is Paul Black, who self taught himself the ropes of Directing and Screenwriting to produce this video as well as America Brown, and has also gone on to produce more short films.
He directed the film Please! in five days with a budget of £10,000 to make it, not even having to pay the already growing in popularity actors. The lead actor is the famous Gerard Butler, who went under the name “Gerry Butler”. He was not as popular back then but from then on has gone to stardom with Phantom of the Opera, 300 and P.S I love you.
It is an independent film that is not available on DVD, only broadcasted on the Internet. Please! won two awards at film festivals one being the Palm Springs International ShortFest as the best Live Action under 15 minutes and the Williamsburg Brooklyn Festival for the best Short Film. It was also shortlisted for a BAFTA.
This short film is about a failed novelist called Peter who has lost his family as his dreams crumbled around him. He is now faced with the prospect of living without his daughter and wife and his sanity disappears as he goes round his daily activities wielding a gun. However, his life suddenly turns around when his manuscript is accepted and whilst he is spreading his happiness, his daughter find his gun in the car. As she mistakes it for a toy, she shoots herself but the barrel only has one bullet and as luck would have it, she does not get hurt. The next shot shoots her father with the bullet and it ends him dying on the ground. The form of the film I feel is a chronological drama, showing his slow downward spiral, to go back up again before plummeting to an all time low. It was exciting to watch and always kept me waiting to see what would happen next, with his life and the gun.
The ‘failed writer’ scheme is quite a popular one in the fictional world so it can be seen as an intertexual entity, ideas borrowed off clichés. Please! is very quick to the point and if made into a feature length movie it would not have the same effect. The most pleasing aspect of this short film is that it is short enough to leave you on the edge of your seat to see when he will pull the trigger. All the relevant information is put in the short clip, so it would not be mistaken as a clip from a feature length, mainstream movie.
The target audience is possibly adults and females. It has a complex storyline, with a hint of violence but I say females because it in the end revolves around the love of his family. It could however relate to men but the audience I feel is either female or writers. Writers could be a possible target as it almost seems to be written for writers, showing the obsession and the dedication put into the process of publishing. So, this video could have been directly linked to writers before even put onto screens.
