Short Term 12 - Analyse

Short Term 12 – Analyse

The American film `short term 12´ was produced in year 2013 and is written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. The genre of this film is drama with the subgenre social realism. The main topics of the film are family dramas, depressions, self-doubt’s, insecure, relationships, love and childhoods. You can see typical representation of social classes with the example of unprivileged kids. The narrative of the film is linear and I think it was made for the teenager and adult audience grope. The story starts with the introduction of Nate a new staff and ends with a conversation of all the staff but Nate is now a part of the team. So you have a kind of a revision. That completes the circle and you can see a good compare to the beginning.

All the actors and settings that you can see are looking natural and real because they aren’t Hollywood perfect. The rooms aren’t perfect arranged and also all the actors are looking natural. They aren’t perfect rouged or perfect dressed, that make them seem more real and the audience can identify himself better. Another used technical code is the over the shoulder shot (OS) which helps the audience place the characters in their setting and it also integrate the audience into the story. The most time the colours are light in the film, I think they should be like an opposed of the feelings from the kids. The colours are light and bride and you can see sunlight and other natural light colours. But when they are in the sun they are just in the shadow and you can see the sun in the background. Or you can see the bright sunlight fall into a dismal room. For me this visual code should show you how the feel and the depressive mood.

The background music is mostly plain calm instrumental but the bigger part of the movie is without background music. But for example the music at the Spanish party is very happy and also what happened during this party is positive. So you can see that the music and the content is connected and matching very well. But they are also scenes without any music just the voices of the people. That’s a good tool to visualize how unpleasing some situations are.

The development of the relationship between Grace and Jayden is good made. At the begin Grace is a persons of authority and she seems good organized but after and after you get more information about her and her passed. Also you understand why she wants to help this kids. In the scene where she show Jayden her self-denials they start to get closer and the audience start to understand the equalities of they life. The house of Jayden is very dark because that visualize that it’s a dangerous place and that she is afraid of her own home. For me Jayden looks also like a stereotype depresses emo girl. Her skin is very light, her hair very dark and she use strong eyeliner.

The message of the film is you are not alone. Every problem that you have to solve someone else also had to sole before. And also if you think you are in the worsts part of your life there will be someone that have a worsted life than yours. Grace helps the kids because she know how it feels to have an exhausting childhood. And also Mason has a problematic passed. When he had no one else his adopting parents went there for him and showed him what is like to be loved. So the bough help those kids. It’s about hope and I really liked the movie. It’s not that kind of movies that I used to watch but I liked it because it was different.