Cubs- Alex Lloyd

'Cubs' is a 9 minute short film showing the violence of 'Urban Fox Hunting', this is a short social realism drama directed by Tom Harper and released in 2006.

1. Tom Harper uses many close ups within his film to show facial expressions of our characters within this dramatic piece, for something so vicious and cruel we need to be able to see how the characters are feeling and whether they actually enjoy what their doing. The close ups allow us to analyse a lot about the characters due to costume, make up, facial expressions and body language.
- It is about a boy who tries to join a gang of inner city kids, but learns that the initiation comes at a price. It contains a lot about the youth violence of today that we may see on the news but never really think about deeply. In this film Tom Harper has used many styles in camera work to show how vicious and cruel today's youth can become, again he has used a lot of close ups for many reasons, most of all in order to gain empathy from the audience but also to represent our characters showing who is good and who is bad.

- The beginning scene is set in a football court with a group of youngsters playing footie.

2. - Throughout this film there is a lot of fast pace movement from the camera, there is a lot of hand held camera work, fast pans and dolly work too. This is used to show how much action is happening in the story and to show how rough it is in their lives. It also puts us there with the characters making us feel like we're moving with them, there is never a static shot.

- There is barely any lighting used, most of it seems to be natural in order to make it seem more realistic for the audience. Due to most of taking place at night, it becomes low key which helps build suspense.

- One of the unique things about this film is its animal training, one of the characters in this film is a fox cub, its place in the film is to be brutally beaten up and shot to death. They have obviously trained this cub but whilst your watching the film, you feel it is real due to the tension being created from our characters. Seeing the fox in this position can really make such an impact and become very powerful in people's eyes, finding it very difficult to believe that this can happen in some of today's rough neighbourhood's.

3. - At the beginning you are introduced to two characters, one male and one female who are amongst a group of youngsters playing football. Shortly after you are introduced to an inner city gang, of which one male character seems to be in charge of. This character is portrayed as the antaganist of the film who later on pressures our male protagansit in doing something he doesn't really want to do.
- The confrontation part of the film is where our male protaganist finds himself with a choice of whether to kill this innocent fox cub or not, he knows that if he doesn't he will be alone and looked at as inferior from who he sees as respectable adolescents. This part of the film is the most tense with many close ups showing facial expressions of both the cub and our characters. You can see all along how he doesn't want to shoot the fox but is pressured and conformist.

4. - Urban music is used in the scenes with most action, this non diegetic music is heard in the hunting scene and for the intro and outro/credits of the film. For anyone who hasn't heard of the film before this music will connote it being a film on urban gangs and violence. A film that has also used this style is Adulthood for example. This urban music compliments the fast paced camera work and editing making it all parallel together building suspense and tension.
- In the scenes with less action such as the court seen and confrontation scene, no non diegetic music is used, this is to make it seem more realistic allowing us to believe we are there with them. Due to a lot of close ups on our main protaganist at the stage of having to shoot the fox, we sympathis with him, if the urban music had been used during this moment, we would become distracted and would not be focused on the powerful acting and on screen action.
- There is a lot of diegetic music such as shouting, dogs barking and foxes crying, this is to help us sympathise for the foxes making them seem so innocent. The dogs barking portrays them as dangerous and vicious.
- We learn a lot from the dialect of our characters within this film, our main antaganist uses a lot of slang and what may be heard of more in rough, urban areas.

5. - I believe the characters are represented very well in this film using stereotypes to portray them in ways we can understand. Our young, male protaganist is portrayed as urban due to his clothing but yet looks innocent due to his hair, make up and facial expressions. We can tell once our inner city gang members are introduced the differences between them clearly. Our male antaganist approaches wearing a red hoodie and a dark hat, most of the clothing that our gang members wear are 'chav' like and rough looking. With other features such as shaved heads and hoodies we can tell they maybe quite anti social and dangerous.
- Our characters are represented in ways that we can either sympathise for or dislike. One big character not seen much is the fox, Tom Harper does very well to make it seem so cute and innocent using many close ups and effects. I believe a lot of people will be quite shocked to see what occurs and become upset over such an innocent creature becoming brutally murdered.

- Close Ups are key in this film, one in particular is the shot where our character spots a fox, we can tell by facial expressions that he is finding it difficult in deciding whether to tell the others which would lead to its death, or to let it escape which would lead to him being banished from the group.


- Themes and issues that this film includes are violence, adolescence, gang violence and animal cruelty.
- This would attract a social realism film fan and I am sure wouldn't just upset those who are all for animal rights protection.

This is a very dramatic film and very effective in the way that it uses fast paced camera work and many close ups so that we can analyse a lot from our characters.