'Pudding Bowl' Review

Title: 'Pudding Bowl'

Directed By: Vanessa Caswill (2009)

Length: 7:57

This film follow's the life of Ivy, a nine-year-old girl who loves the glamour of Hollywood girls in magazines. But when her brother causes her mother to give her a traumatic hair cut (the Pudding Bowl Cut), she goes into her imagination and refuses to be cut down by her brother's actions.

The film only has two locations, internal - the house and external - the street, which is similar to our brief, so was good to see how a film could be produced in minimal locations with still a big impact. 

Where introduced to Ivy at the very beginning, by panning through her magazines and then getting close up shots of her face as she cuts them out and sticks them in her scrapbook. The close ups work very well for this section of the film because it shows how careful she is being, and how much depth this idea of Hollywood glamour is inspiring to her. 

The lighting throughout is very soft and natural. To create Realism within the piece. This shot shows the only light is coming through the patterned curtains, giving uneven light within the house. It sets the scene straight away, as a 50's Urban style house, which the table and radio(?) on the desk next to him. Also the way he is dressed, suggests the particular time period also.

I really like this shot (above). It appears just has the mother has cut Ivy's hair. She's sat on the chair with her hair circling her, almost signifying that her hair made her whole, or her hair was her world to her. The high angle shot suggests 'looking down on her', as if she's the weak party, however this perspective changes when she stands up and we're shown a close up of her face, full of anger and wanting revenge.

When she leaves the room where her hair was cut, she rushes to the mirror. And this is where the music kicks in. Music within this piece is mainly used to add emotion to particular scenes, for example in this scene, the music is slow and sad, playing with the audience's emotions and matching those of the character as we see her expression in the mirror. At the beginning of the piece, there was an ambience of the house, with the radio playing, however it slowly died out near the beginning of the piece. It set the scene well and wasn't overused, or wasn't overly-obvious that this was what she wanted to do.

We're then taken to the next location - the street. Ivy isn't going to let her hair get her down. So she runs out and spots her brother and his friends playing by the side of the road, leaving their bike abandoned near by - and she seeks an opportunity.

I really like the shot used above. Because it's a very clever point of view, making the boys the main focus within the glasses frames and the rest blurry, as it would be to the character as she needs the glasses for her sight. I think it's clever in bringing focus to the characters, showing her point of view, and therefore making it more personal for the audience as well as Ivy.

Another shot I enjoyed was this one (above). As you can see, the angle as changed, and so, it seems as though the power has changed into Ivy's hands. It's a low angle shot as Ivy stands over them, while they play on the ground, and we're also shown the bike in shot, so we can presume something might happen with this object. The shot creates a great mise-en-scene as what is about to happen - Ivy takes the bike and rides off into her imagination.

The bike itself acts as a device through time or through worlds of real life and imagination. We;re shown her moving on from the incident, from being a child in a red dress with pantyhose on her head to the women she's dreamt of being through her Hollywood magazines. The lighting is more colourful and soft than the rest of the film to distinguish the change from reality to fantasy.

The fact you see her dream, as a member of the audience, makes you happy for her, because she hasn't let what happened get in her way of her dreams, she hasn't given up, and nothing else matters.

I feel it's a really strong piece, the sound design was simple and not over the top. The dialogue was minimal as I feel the narrative was told mostly by the visual elements - which is strong because it means they didn't have to rely on dialogue. The lighting works great to establish each place as well a realism within the real world of Ivy.