'Tight Jeans' analysis

'Tight Jeans' analysis


'Tight Jeans' is a short film written and directed by Destiny Ekaragha and released in 2008.

Destiny Ekaragha said in an interview with the National Film and Television School that with 'Tight Jeans' she wanted to represent black youth from her own experience as she said that young black people are often 'misrepresented' by the media.

Although 'Tight Jeans' does have a typical inciting incident in the man wearing the tight jeans walking past, the short film decides to forgo a conventional three act structure. Without a three act structure to follow along with the film instead focuses on a comedic conversation between a trio of young men that takes place entirely within a single location. Although the conversation is one written to make the viewer laugh, the points of conversation touch on some deeper and more complex themes such as history, race and sex. The short film also employs some dramatic irony for humour through the narrative which follows a circular path as the short film ends with a scene similiar to that at the beginning with a man in a tight shirt walking past.

'Tight Jeans' opens with an intro featuring a variety of different shots with non diegetic-music playing over them, the music sets an upbeat and humourous tone for the short film. The music and font in the intro is reminiscent of other films that deal with topics of race such as 'Do the Right Thing'. The intro also feautures a series of establishing shots that set up the setting of the short film as a slightly impoverished urban area that transition into the main narrative. After the intro ends there is no more non-diegetic sound throughout the rest of 'Tight Jeans' until the end credits as the audience is supposed to focus on the dialogue between the main trio of characters. The initial quick cuts between close up shots of the hands and feet of Theo, Marcus and Joseph convey their bored mood through the fiddling, then the long shot zoom in of the three main characters introduces the viewer to them properly. The performance of the actors playing Theo, Marcus and Joseph effectively convey the banality and humour of their predicament with the medium close up shots of their characters allowing the camera to capture their reactions. Point of view shots are also used to align the viewer with the trio of characters such as the close up shots of the jeans from their perspective. The only other named character in 'Tight Jeans', Tyrone, is shown through a low angle shot which emphasises his authority over Theo, Marcus and Joseph.

'Tight Jeans' is a fun, enjoyable short film that effectively uses narrative techniques and micro elements for the purpose of conveying comedy.



Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

'The Arrival' analysis

'The Arrival' analysis 'The Arrival' is a 2016 short film directed by Daniel Montarini. The short film is a drama and is about four minutes long. 'The Arrival' follows a pretty traditional narrative on a more limited scale. The short film all takes place within the same location and follows an unbroken internal monologue from Anna, the main character, the monologue chronicles her train of thought and change of mind showing character development which is usually more common in feature length films. A three act structure can be assigned to 'The Arrival' as the inciting incident of the film is when Anna arrives at the cafe and starts thinking about what to say, the rising action is the rethinking of her decision and the climax would be the father of her child arriving to the cafe. Like some of the other set short films we have looked at in class, the film ends with a sense of ambiguity as it is unclear wether Anna has changed her mind or not and wh...
Read more

'The Ellington Kid' analysis

'The Ellington Kid' analysis 'The Ellington Kid' is a short film released in 2012, directed by Dan Sully and is about five minutes long. The genre of the film is comedy/drama. Unlike traditional films, 'The Ellington Kid' feautures a narrative embedded within the plot of the film and as such it is possible to identify two three-act structure stories within the film. The inciting incident for the first story is Nathan telling Beefy the story of the Ellington kid, the rising action and subsequent twist which would usually occur in the second act is Nathan inferring that the burgers are made out of the gang members and the climax is when the camera pans to the kebab shop worker listening to them and scraping the knives against each other. For the story within the story the inciting incident is the Ellington kid getting stabbed, the rising action is the Ellington kid taking refuge in the kebab shop where the gang members follow him and it seems like there w...
Read more

Creative Ideas

Creative Ideas   One of the possible ways of coming up with an idea for my screenplay and digital storyboard include basing it on a novel or short story. This would require adapting older novels and short stories which have come into the public domain. The issue with these older stories is that they would be harder to adapt as they are products of their time and although it would be possible to put a modern spin on these stories and make for an interesting adaption it still seems more restrictive and less practical than coming up with a new idea and story. If I was to pursue this approach to creating my screenplay then I think I would of possibly adapted some older sci-fi stories that have been very influential to the genre such as the works of H.P. Lovecraft or H.G. Wells and attempted to update them and combine them with themes that are important in the 21st century. Another possibility would be to adapt a news story such as Jorn Threlfall did with 'Over', one of the...
Read more