Research: Case Study - About a Girl

About a Girl is a BAFTA award winning short film directed by Brian Percival which was released in 2001 on a £33,000 budget. Brian Percival wanted a change from directing glossy commercials and wanted to chose a gritty script for his first short film, Julie Rutterford's script was the perfect match. The film is still regarded as highly successful, winning a TCM Classic Shorts Award Prize at the London Film Festival, the Jury Prize at the Raindance Film Festival and 5 other awards.


When I watched this film, at first I was a bit unsure, I was certain that I would find the whole film quite boring. For a couple of minutes it felt as if it was dragging on but then I started to notice that her quick changes to her hobbies and like where used as a way of escaping the reality of her violent and troublesome life. The use of various isolated camera shots give her an image of loneliness and depression, the finale of the whole story came to me as a complete shock and it was a very disturbing and controversial conclusion which I thought was a very powerful piece of imagery.