"Simon Ellis is a British film director and winner of the international Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, the BIFA, and nominations for the BAFTA and European Film Awards for short film. Ellis shot and processed his first black and white photographs aged sixteen, drifting away from charcoal and painbrushes to the camera as his format of choice. Throughout his subsequent art studies in Coventry, Birmingham and eventually Nottingham, he focused on still photography". (Quoted from a Wikipedia search)
Simon Ellis’ ‘Soft’ takes an indicative form of a wake-up call to society and helps to bring relative attention to a highly common issue; this is just few of the main reasons it’s such a
creditable and enjoyed film.
It takes place in what appears to be the
average neighborhood, this immediately give the audience a calm approach to the film as it has the look and feel of an everyday life to a middle to lower class individual. However, in comparison to 'Telling Lies', Ellis' approach is stereotypical in some aspects. What differs this film from Soft firstly is the fact it uses only typography and audio as oppose to video or film. Ellis' uses a consistent variation of text sizes, colors and sound to pull this off as through the subtle signs and indications in the content and form, gives the audience enough information to gather the context the characters are speaking in, which helps broaden the understanding of the key elements within the structure of the film (The use of "lies") which is also used within the build-up toward the raw outcome of Soft. It is used for example, when the son confronts his father and asks him if he is afraid after his very edgy, nervous and fearful response to how the neighborhood bullies were treating him, his family and his property. Ellis doesn't only build suspense and tension to the film's story in including these specified attributes but also gives the two character (The son and father) some-what of a role reversal in the sense that the son has just questioned his father in a way that takes away that sense of masculinity found in fathers figures. It also puts the son in a more powerful position, this happens because the son is almost putting his father into an ashamed state of mind which is then complimented by his outburst after father tells him to remain seated.
When the father then steps out after deep contemplation of what's taking place and what he'll do (Evidenced by the reoccurring flash-backs), the son takes hold of what should have been a 'father's defensive approach' after watching his father being treated as a 'child' to the bully. This gives the film high progression and comes across to the audience as a very ironic ending. Upon ending, we then see the neighborhood obtain a restoration of it's equilibrium.
Which brings us back to Telling lies, in which the main character appears to go through constant disruption of his equilibrium. This is conveyed to the audience in many ways for example: the way his phone keeps on ringing, the tone of voice he answers his phone with, the mental effort made to keep up with a lie and by the type of things people are saying to him; mainly his mother's attitude toward their conversations alongside her obvious attempts to gaining the last words.
In my opinion I feel as though the short film 'Telling Lies' was very pleasant to watch, however, I think due to it's up pace movement throughout the film, not everybody may be able to notice or keep up with the little hints and indications he leaves the audience.
With an at time sexual context, it doesn't really match context with Soft. The closest to a matching content is the use of the parents being verbally loud and displaying angry during/after their son has gone/going through a bad time. In comparison to Soft, I think soft has a much more in depth and relevant reoccurring theme to the normal everyday lives of the common middle class. This personally made me feel more open to how the film communicated with me as a member of the audience and even at a point made me feel different emotions, think different thoughts and have already imagined and considered how I wanted the film to end by the time it had gotten to the middle of it's time span.
To conclude, Soft and Telling Lies are both highly ranked in Simon Ellis' wide range of film. Both films are very well constructed, take important and relative form to how people work in today's world, have good use in their context and have different but some-what rarely similar content. They're opinion encouraging and have the potential to leave majority of it's audience feeling as though they have watched something epic. Overall they are both great films.
