Research Tasks - "Eight" - Hannah Sell

Eight (Daldry 1998)
1. Social Realism/ Documentary genre- This film is like a documentary like film following the life of an eight year old boy who really likes football we see how he follows England and his reactions to what he sees also how he still supports Liverpool even though he does not live there anymore . He also trying to cope living in a new place moving from Liverpool to the south coast and also trying to cope with the loss of his father.

2. Genre and style conventions have been used uniquily through this film both therough the social realism and documentry genres. Jonathon talks about himself and what he likes and how he would like things to be. He talks about his best friend and how they want things to be and what they like to do together. He talks about his mother and she doesn't like football in the house and how she doesn't like to talk about his father and he also talks about his father and how he remembers his dad and what he likes to do like he is still around.

3. The film uses the short film format to depict the life of an eight year old child in ten minutes. if this film had been a full length film and like this all the way through the audience would have started to get bored and it would be less interesting.

4. The sound of this short film is very interesting using mainly narration from Jonathon. Lots of non diagetic sound is used to help set the scene and surroundings as we follow Jonathon through this film. Music is used to draw the audience in at the start of the film making them feel unaware as to what this film is going to be about.

5. Lots of themes and issues are addressed in this film. one of the main ones is Jonathons love of football and how that is all he wants to do. Another issue that links in with this is his mother not wanting him to have anything to do with football this could be because his father died at a football match and it reminds her too much of him and brings back painful memories. Jonathons love of football is depicted to that audience all the way through the film from the very beginning whaen he has the football on the beach all he wants to d ois play football. We see him watching football with his friend and then reanacting Michael Owen's famous goal this shows the audience how devoted he is. Also with the colouring in of his own tee-shirts that again show the devotion of this child to his home town and the football team there. Another big issue is family the loss of his father has impacted both him and his mothers lives greatly and we see this as he talks about him and how he wants to be like his father was.

Hannah Sell