Arnold's "Wasp" follows the story of a British single-mom who has not sorted out her life. Beginning and ending with very provocative narrative action, Arnold uses shallow depth of field and crude camera angles to contend with this "realistic" drama and the motif of food.
Shallow depth of field is prevalent throughout the entire short film. Beginning with the fight, Zoe (our "heroin") and the other mother are separated from others by this field, but as soon as they part from one another, Zoe is immediately distinct and apart from everyone else. The children playing throughout the film comes in and out of focus, and anything to deal with food is focused on at first then very quickly becomes background to the characters. The final scene in the car is mostly in focus but as soon as the car starts moving (characters progress), it quickly goes out of focus, distant from the viewer.
Crude camera angles match the vulgar language and questionable content. Certain scenes are filmed so shaky it almost appears that a child held the camera; coincidentally, these scenes tend to focus on the children (playing, running down stairs...). The camera never stays focused on food too long, and occasionally jerks away from it in some aspects.
Food in this short film plays a major role, mainly serving to symbolize survival. Arnold uses depth of field and camera angles (or lack thereof) to show the "real" struggle of the character Zoe and her children.
Just after the golden age of shaky cam and handheld techniques ushered in by the Coen Brothers and then used extensively in horror films of the 90s, Andrea Arnold plops the 2003 "Wasp" in the world's lap. Using handheld camera techniques to convey a certain rawness and uneasiness was no new concept, but to use this tool to tell the plight of the single mother in the UK was enticing and new.
Arnold captures viewers with pathos generated outside of the gripping script itself with this handheld technique. This conveys her message effectively to audiences that may not have otherwise considered or cared about single mothers' struggles in the UK.
If this were any other setting besides the lower-class area of the UK, using the handheld camera technique for the entirety of the short may have been overdone. However, the raw nature of the setting and subject matter allowed this technique to be effective for the whole film.
"Wasp" took a creative twist on many film concepts to portray the mood of struggling to survive. The shaky camera made it feel more real and raw, but the quality of the image keeps it from looking unprofessional and maintains its artistic merit. The camera angles in the kitchen of looking up at the mother and being eye level with the children give the viewer the perception of identifying more the children. Both of these give a new meaning to the script and intensify the struggle that the mother and kids are going through. This creative take on classic filming helps move the story along.
“Wasp”, by Andrea Arnold, is a blunt yet compelling film about the struggles of a single mom who is trying to live a normal life in the midst of her crushing difficulties. In that opening scene, we really get a sense of our main character and who she is. We see that raw, angry emotion that bubbles down below, ready to lash out to protect her children. And it’s clear that the children have been stripped of their innocence. The most shocking image for me was her walking down the street, carrying a half naked baby in her arms as she angrily confronted another mother. As we see the mom back home, we get a better sense of the direness of her situation. She really is trying to do her best, but with mere cents in her purse and only pure sugar to feed her kids her efforts fall flat. And yet, this is a character without shame, without doubt. She is stubborn and driven no matter the obstacles. So when a man enters her life again, she doesn’t let anything stop her.
There were many things I really enjoyed on a technical level. As many of my classmates have commented, that hyper handheld opening was powerful and impactful. It rocked back and forth with the characters and it really felt it like it embodied the tension that was building. I liked how the shakiness calmed down as things got back to normal. The shaky-cam in this film was used to great effect. There is something about it that just makes the entire thing just feel more believable. Maybe it’s way that it shunts traditional filmmaking techniques, stripping away that polish that separates the camera from the subject. I also really love the editing of this film. The editor includes a few inserts, like the shots of her bare toes, the moldy bread, and the dirty pacifier, that really flesh out the world of the story. During the romance in the bar, Arnold cuts away from the romance to remind the audience that the children are still outside. This jarring transition reminds us how fragile the character’s world really is. I also like how Arnold harnesses the natural chaos that a baby’s cry adds to a scene. The acting in the film was also extremely impressive. Both the leads did a phenomenal job, but it was the kids that really stood out to me. They really captured that playful and silly side of childhood so well.
A few minutes from the end of the film, I wondered why the film was called ‘wasp’. Was it because her children were like flies who buzzed loudly around, always getting in your hair? Was it because the sting of losing her children seemed inevitable? Luckily, the film answered my question and I could stop my filmmaking BS generator. However, the wasp looked incredibly fake. While I understand that CGI was much more limited back then, I still question the choice to even include that scene in the film with such a gap in quality between elements. It really seemed like an odd stylistic choice. I think there could have been another way to bring that narrative tension Arnold have been building to a head without having a fake wasp crawl into a baby’s mouth. It was terrifying though!
“Wasp” is a gritty film about a single mom with many kids. I found it difficult to watch because of the way they shot it and the plot they portrayed. Furthermore, taking everything into account, I thought this piece was extremely over the top. I did not like it very much. It was doing way too much to further the plot and come off edgy. Elements the filmmaker used to make it gritty were the handheld feel throughout the whole movie, increasingly shaky at different points in the story. I had no sympathy for the mother throughout this piece, and almost rooted for the wasp at the end so she would get sent to prison and the rest of the kids would be put in foster care—probably better than where they were before. The plot was weakened by the way the filmmaker went out of their way to make it edgy. It just was not that great in my opinion.
The entire time I was watching "Wasp" by Andrea Arnold, I was trying to figure out what was happening, and I was waiting for something big to happen. But by the time I reached the end of it, I realized that the movie was trying to represent something much bigger than just a simple conflict of some sort. In the end, the film was simply a film that portrayed a day in the life of a mother who is trying to survive with not that much money to her name and four children. Through the film, that reveals itself simply because of the sadness of what is happening, like the mother having to juggle a date with feeding and taking care of her kids.
More so than just the plot, I think the camera-work reflected the situation of the film perfectly. This was clearly not some studio film about some fantastical subject, but a real life scenario that genuinely happens every single day somewhere in the world. The camera-work was somewhat shaky (noticeably) and there were many extreme closeups. The final shots of the children eating in the car and the mother talking with her date was intimate because of its tight camera-work in addition to the significance of what was happening.
In the end, I enjoyed watching this film and I was surprised how into the story I actually became. I somewhat expected something terrible to happen because I felt like tension was building up to some sort of huge release, but it never really hit that point.
"Wasp" is a film about a single mother with for kids who hasn't exactly gotten her life on the straight and narrow. She is trying to just get by and I think the film hit that point pretty clearly. From the fight at the start to thew scene in her house giving her kids the food first and telling them to share it to the date at the bar. The tension is something I liked, it pulls you in from the start and you feel for her and the girls. Although my on compliant is the tension is build for big release but the film never hit that point. Overall it was a good movie.
Stephanie-"Wasp" is a short drama with few comedic moments. It was interesting and a relief to see how this whole story turns. In the beginning you see this mother protecting her daughter by confronting the other mother. At first it gives me the impression that this mother is being over protective by fighting the other parent, but in reality she can barely take care of her four kids. The narrative was well written, it shows two opposing sides of the mother. One side of her being caring towards her children by standing up for them and taking them everywhere she goes. On the other hand it angers me to see how careless she is about her children leaving them outside, while she's drinking and trying to hook up with Dave. I believe she doesn't have bad intentions, she's just trying to find ways to feed her children. It's good see towards the end that she stops and becomes apologetic to her children and realizes that she hasn't been the best mother. I like the cinematography used through out the film it has a great variety of composition shots. I like how they used extreme close up shots to transition to a different location or different scene. I also enjoyed how they used shots of the literal inspect "wasp" to bring the story together. It was quite interesting. I really thought the story was going to be different. I even tried to find other ways the word "wasp" can be symbolized by looking it up in Wikipedia.
The film "Wasp" by Andrea Arnold is a very visually intriguing short film. The film had the look of a homemade movie and/or documentary. But, it was scripted out and made for entertainment purposes. The color scheme of the film had always a specific tint of yellow or green tint to it. The tint added to the look of making the film feel really realistic , like these events actually occurred in real life. The film was edited very well together because without having to give any background information about the main character, the mother, or anything else, you knew everything that was key to know. From showing the mother without shoes and in a nightgown outside, showing how old the neighborhood is, the mother scratching up money, and many more signals that she is not in the best place in her life right now. Along with that, you can tell she has changed a lot from when she was younger because the guy that she went on a date with did not expect any of that from her at all. The audio components of the film were interesting, but nothing out of the ordinary. What struck me were the visual aspects of the film that made it feel so realistic and the story so detailed and thought out well.
The film "Waso" by Andrea Arnold is a very touching film. This film finished with a well conclusion. The camera operator track the mom through the whole film. For some important scene, camera gives some close-up shots. When the mom fight with another lady, camera tracks the fight and the camera movement makes us feel more real. Some shots between children and mom's conversation shows a sense of hopeless. The Mom tried so hard to feed her four children , we can see some of the scenes from the movie. The mom was searching food and distribute the food carefully.The most interesting shots in the film is the wasp came out from the baby's mouth and it seems that everyone were worried about the baby. At end of the film, four children were eating food in the car, and it seems that the family will go to a right way. Overall, the film is great and I really like this
Arnold's "Wasp" follows the story of a British single-mom who has not sorted out her life. Beginning and ending with very provocative narrative action, Arnold uses shallow depth of field and crude camera angles to contend with this "realistic" drama and the motif of food.
ReplyDeleteShallow depth of field is prevalent throughout the entire short film. Beginning with the fight, Zoe (our "heroin") and the other mother are separated from others by this field, but as soon as they part from one another, Zoe is immediately distinct and apart from everyone else. The children playing throughout the film comes in and out of focus, and anything to deal with food is focused on at first then very quickly becomes background to the characters. The final scene in the car is mostly in focus but as soon as the car starts moving (characters progress), it quickly goes out of focus, distant from the viewer.
Crude camera angles match the vulgar language and questionable content. Certain scenes are filmed so shaky it almost appears that a child held the camera; coincidentally, these scenes tend to focus on the children (playing, running down stairs...). The camera never stays focused on food too long, and occasionally jerks away from it in some aspects.
Food in this short film plays a major role, mainly serving to symbolize survival. Arnold uses depth of field and camera angles (or lack thereof) to show the "real" struggle of the character Zoe and her children.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteJust after the golden age of shaky cam and handheld techniques ushered in by the Coen Brothers and then used extensively in horror films of the 90s, Andrea Arnold plops the 2003 "Wasp" in the world's lap. Using handheld camera techniques to convey a certain rawness and uneasiness was no new concept, but to use this tool to tell the plight of the single mother in the UK was enticing and new.
ReplyDeleteArnold captures viewers with pathos generated outside of the gripping script itself with this handheld technique. This conveys her message effectively to audiences that may not have otherwise considered or cared about single mothers' struggles in the UK.
If this were any other setting besides the lower-class area of the UK, using the handheld camera technique for the entirety of the short may have been overdone. However, the raw nature of the setting and subject matter allowed this technique to be effective for the whole film.
"Wasp" took a creative twist on many film concepts to portray the mood of struggling to survive. The shaky camera made it feel more real and raw, but the quality of the image keeps it from looking unprofessional and maintains its artistic merit. The camera angles in the kitchen of looking up at the mother and being eye level with the children give the viewer the perception of identifying more the children. Both of these give a new meaning to the script and intensify the struggle that the mother and kids are going through. This creative take on classic filming helps move the story along.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete“Wasp”, by Andrea Arnold, is a blunt yet compelling film about the struggles of a single mom who is trying to live a normal life in the midst of her crushing difficulties. In that opening scene, we really get a sense of our main character and who she is. We see that raw, angry emotion that bubbles down below, ready to lash out to protect her children. And it’s clear that the children have been stripped of their innocence. The most shocking image for me was her walking down the street, carrying a half naked baby in her arms as she angrily confronted another mother. As we see the mom back home, we get a better sense of the direness of her situation. She really is trying to do her best, but with mere cents in her purse and only pure sugar to feed her kids her efforts fall flat. And yet, this is a character without shame, without doubt. She is stubborn and driven no matter the obstacles. So when a man enters her life again, she doesn’t let anything stop her.
ReplyDeleteThere were many things I really enjoyed on a technical level. As many of my classmates have commented, that hyper handheld opening was powerful and impactful. It rocked back and forth with the characters and it really felt it like it embodied the tension that was building. I liked how the shakiness calmed down as things got back to normal. The shaky-cam in this film was used to great effect. There is something about it that just makes the entire thing just feel more believable. Maybe it’s way that it shunts traditional filmmaking techniques, stripping away that polish that separates the camera from the subject. I also really love the editing of this film. The editor includes a few inserts, like the shots of her bare toes, the moldy bread, and the dirty pacifier, that really flesh out the world of the story. During the romance in the bar, Arnold cuts away from the romance to remind the audience that the children are still outside. This jarring transition reminds us how fragile the character’s world really is. I also like how Arnold harnesses the natural chaos that a baby’s cry adds to a scene. The acting in the film was also extremely impressive. Both the leads did a phenomenal job, but it was the kids that really stood out to me. They really captured that playful and silly side of childhood so well.
A few minutes from the end of the film, I wondered why the film was called ‘wasp’. Was it because her children were like flies who buzzed loudly around, always getting in your hair? Was it because the sting of losing her children seemed inevitable? Luckily, the film answered my question and I could stop my filmmaking BS generator. However, the wasp looked incredibly fake. While I understand that CGI was much more limited back then, I still question the choice to even include that scene in the film with such a gap in quality between elements. It really seemed like an odd stylistic choice. I think there could have been another way to bring that narrative tension Arnold have been building to a head without having a fake wasp crawl into a baby’s mouth. It was terrifying though!
“Wasp” is a gritty film about a single mom with many kids. I found it difficult to watch because of the way they shot it and the plot they portrayed. Furthermore, taking everything into account, I thought this piece was extremely over the top. I did not like it very much. It was doing way too much to further the plot and come off edgy. Elements the filmmaker used to make it gritty were the handheld feel throughout the whole movie, increasingly shaky at different points in the story. I had no sympathy for the mother throughout this piece, and almost rooted for the wasp at the end so she would get sent to prison and the rest of the kids would be put in foster care—probably better than where they were before. The plot was weakened by the way the filmmaker went out of their way to make it edgy. It just was not that great in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteThe entire time I was watching "Wasp" by Andrea Arnold, I was trying to figure out what was happening, and I was waiting for something big to happen. But by the time I reached the end of it, I realized that the movie was trying to represent something much bigger than just a simple conflict of some sort. In the end, the film was simply a film that portrayed a day in the life of a mother who is trying to survive with not that much money to her name and four children. Through the film, that reveals itself simply because of the sadness of what is happening, like the mother having to juggle a date with feeding and taking care of her kids.
ReplyDeleteMore so than just the plot, I think the camera-work reflected the situation of the film perfectly. This was clearly not some studio film about some fantastical subject, but a real life scenario that genuinely happens every single day somewhere in the world. The camera-work was somewhat shaky (noticeably) and there were many extreme closeups. The final shots of the children eating in the car and the mother talking with her date was intimate because of its tight camera-work in addition to the significance of what was happening.
In the end, I enjoyed watching this film and I was surprised how into the story I actually became. I somewhat expected something terrible to happen because I felt like tension was building up to some sort of huge release, but it never really hit that point.
"Wasp" is a film about a single mother with for kids who hasn't exactly gotten her life on the straight and narrow. She is trying to just get by and I think the film hit that point pretty clearly. From the fight at the start to thew scene in her house giving her kids the food first and telling them to share it to the date at the bar. The tension is something I liked, it pulls you in from the start and you feel for her and the girls. Although my on compliant is the tension is build for big release but the film never hit that point. Overall it was a good movie.
ReplyDeleteI tried to open the video in may laptop but it wont work. The video just don't play . It still wont play after I switch to school's computer,,,,,,,,,
ReplyDeleteStephanie-"Wasp" is a short drama with few comedic moments. It was interesting and a relief to see how this whole story turns. In the beginning you see this mother protecting her daughter by confronting the other mother. At first it gives me the impression that this mother is being over protective by fighting the other parent, but in reality she can barely take care of her four kids. The narrative was well written, it shows two opposing sides of the mother. One side of her being caring towards her children by standing up for them and taking them everywhere she goes. On the other hand it angers me to see how careless she is about her children leaving them outside, while she's drinking and trying to hook up with Dave. I believe she doesn't have bad intentions, she's just trying to find ways to feed her children. It's good see towards the end that she stops and becomes apologetic to her children and realizes that she hasn't been the best mother. I like the cinematography used through out the film it has a great variety of composition shots. I like how they used extreme close up shots to transition to a different location or different scene. I also enjoyed how they used shots of the literal inspect "wasp" to bring the story together. It was quite interesting. I really thought the story was going to be different. I even tried to find other ways the word "wasp" can be symbolized by looking it up in Wikipedia.
ReplyDeleteThe film "Wasp" by Andrea Arnold is a very visually intriguing short film. The film had the look of a homemade movie and/or documentary. But, it was scripted out and made for entertainment purposes. The color scheme of the film had always a specific tint of yellow or green tint to it. The tint added to the look of making the film feel really realistic , like these events actually occurred in real life. The film was edited very well together because without having to give any background information about the main character, the mother, or anything else, you knew everything that was key to know. From showing the mother without shoes and in a nightgown outside, showing how old the neighborhood is, the mother scratching up money, and many more signals that she is not in the best place in her life right now. Along with that, you can tell she has changed a lot from when she was younger because the guy that she went on a date with did not expect any of that from her at all. The audio components of the film were interesting, but nothing out of the ordinary. What struck me were the visual aspects of the film that made it feel so realistic and the story so detailed and thought out well.
ReplyDeleteThe film "Waso" by Andrea Arnold is a very touching film. This film finished with a well conclusion. The camera operator track the mom through the whole film. For some important scene, camera gives some close-up shots. When the mom fight with another lady, camera tracks the fight and the camera movement makes us feel more real. Some shots between children and mom's conversation shows a sense of hopeless. The Mom tried so hard to feed her four children , we can see some of the scenes from the movie. The mom was searching food and distribute the food carefully.The most interesting shots in the film is the wasp came out from the baby's mouth and it seems that everyone were worried about the baby. At end of the film, four children were eating food in the car, and it seems that the family will go to a right way. Overall, the film is great and I really like this
ReplyDelete