Wasp: The Best Thing You’ll Ever See Danny Dyer In

Before reading any further I highly recommend watching the short film I’m going to be talking about: Wasp (2003). It’s only 26 minutes long and acts as a good introduction to British social realism, and the craft of short film making as a whole. It's linked below through Vimeo but if you don't have time for that, the article won't be giving away anything too important regardless.

https://vimeo.com/622764590

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At the 2005 Academy Awards, Jamie Foxx took home Best Actor for his performance in Ray, The Aviator and Million Dollar Baby swept up award after award in every category they were nominated in, and an under the radar project called Wasp took home the award for Live Action Short Film. The film follows Zoe, a single mother who lives with her four young children in Dartford. Poor, unable to afford to buy food, the family seem trapped in the limbo of the council housing estate of working class Britain. One day her ex-boyfriend, from long ago, drives by and asks her to go on a date with him. Scared that he wouldn’t want to go out with her if he realised she had four children, she lies and tells him that she is just babysitting the kids. This will be her first date in years. That ex-boyfriend is played by none other than Mr. Danny Dyer. His character isn’t given a lot to do, the focus being on Natalie Press’ character Zoe, and yet he is so well suited to the role. Andrea Arnold’s revitalising employment of all the staid elements of social realism can perhaps best be summed up by her casting of Danny Dyer as the local tradie, down the pub, that any viewer who has spent time in a small town pub will instantly recognise.

It is these key elements of the social realism that makes this 26 minute short film so great, Andrea Arnold does not glamorise anything about the life of the characters we follow . Yet more importantly, she never demeans or judges her characters. Never makes them feel evil, or morally reprehensible due to their circumstances. She simply allows us to observe the different emotions and intentions of everybody within this society. Do the characters make mistakes? Of course, but that helps in the humanisation of the subjects. The entire venture is concerned with the lengths at which people will go to retain dignity, the balances of their wants, their needs, their dreams, and what they know to be true.

It is said that cinematography sets and supports the overall look and mood of a film's visual narrative. A primary use of Robbie Ryan’s cinematography within Wasp is to completely immerse the viewer within the atmosphere of the film. The handheld camera that follows the characters around presents the film through the lens of an almost uncontrolled, documentary-like reality. The struggles that Zoe is going through, to raise her children on a council housing estate, are further emphasised by this unstable, handheld cinematography. Close shots and unsteady camerawork broadcasts how frantic our main characters' lives are. The fact the camera never stops still in place is reflective of this, that Zoe always has a responsibility or an issue to solve, never able to fully take a moment to relax. At times the camera follows behind the girls, trailing as if to impart to the audience the impression that these events are completely non-fictional, a real person is tracing their every step, unsure of where they will go next. In one scene we see Zoe and Dave (Danny Dyer) sitting at the bar in a long shot, the camera placed on the other side of the room; we see extras walking across the frame blocking our view of the characters. This dismisses the ideas of clean, perfectly framed shots and places the viewer at a realistic position as we are watching the events of the film unfold from across the room. Long shots are used at other times, a high angle sequence shows the girls playing unsupervised on the street perhaps highlighting their abandonment as well as the unsuitability of the environment that they’ve been left in. Extreme close ups are used multiple times in the film to highlight an event that has extreme significance to the characters. A close up on Dave’s mouth and his eyes demonstrate the connection and infatuation Zoe has for him, while a close up of a wasp near a child’s mouth represents danger and fear present in the lives of the children. A vast array of contrasting emotions in daily life, all captured so intimately. These close ups are used by Andrea Arnold to direct focus onto key aspects of a scene and conversations, or used to demonstrate the emotion a chosen character is experiencing, we are given lots of very tight close ups on the children’s faces when they’re at an extreme emotional point; be it sadness, anger, or that same fear. The depth of character found in these 26 minutes is possible only due to Arnold’s fantastic direction, forcing us to confront the social realism genre in such an intense light, lifting it from it’s influences and roots in other British social films from history such as Kes.