About A Girl - Caroline

• A short film about a young girl's troubled life in Manchester in the 1990s. She does not get along well with her parents, and they have very little money. This is clear through her mother's use of scratch cards, the mise en scene (the locations, costume, and accents), and her references to her mother asking if she looks like "a fucking bank?" and saying she drinks "cheap lager". The locations enforce this through the use of graffiti and falling down vuildings, suggesting a very unkept community.

• It is shot in a parallel format, between the girl walking down a canal bank talking to the camera in an informal, chatty, colloquial way and different events in her life - presumably in the last few years. These set her up as a typical young girl through her obbession with being a popstar, and also this shows her naivety, as in reality that is very far from her life.

• In the shots of the girl talking to the camera walking down the canal back all the shots are medium close up of her face and at eye level. This creates the sense that we are at her level and prompts us to sympathise with her and what she is saying. The only shot which breaks this is just before she throws the baby into the water and we view her from a bird's eye view which gives sense of judging of not just the girl but the whole situation as the mise en scene of the location of visable also. I feel this is less a comment on the girl, but a comment on her life, and the way that many girl's must be brought up.

• There are also many more cuts during the flashback sequences, creating a sense of pace to the film. The shots in which she  is with her Dad at the Café and at the football all cut to and from each other quickly, in contrast to the shots by the canal in which there are few cuts. Also during the canal scenes there is a handheld style to the camerawork, and it tracks her walking. This again draws the audience into feeling sympathy for the girl as it feels like you are there with her, and that she talking directly to you.
• Whenever the girl shows emotion about her Dad the scene cuts to show how she cannot deal with her emotions due to the suggested fact that her Dad isn't really bothered about her and thinks that she is "hassle", and he Mum is too worried about money to worry about her.