Pockets - Short film analysis

‘Pockets’ is a short film produced by Dazed Digital, Prettybird US and Jonathan Wang and is a surrealist/black comedy drama piece about a character named Tommy and his girlfriend Tammy. They are living in a car and have no money and Tommy holds someone at knife point to get his wallet for some food. It turns out the man's coat pockets are portals into anyone else’s and the man starts fighting Tommy by punching him through his own pockets. The fight continues and takes numerous turns and the man with the coat ends up having Tammy at knife point. He then eats a ‘hot pocket’ and then Tommy punches him from the other half of the hot pocket and burns him alive (a little hard to tell the narrative is short but if you watch it you’ll understand).

The film also works very well in terms of originality, professionalism and execution due to the variety of shots used, the special effects, the acting and the use of props. The idea is very abstract and has never been done before so it leaves a massive window open in terms of interpretations and new conventions. The narrative itself is semi-believable as well, which makes the audience feel empathy for the characters, however, with its mix of surreal content and black humour, it creates a brilliant combination to keep the audience entertained and interested.

The reason I am analysing this short film is because it has very good sound design in it and as the sound designer in our drama project, I have to look out for things like this and apply them within our film. There is a heavy use of foley sounds in the film mainly involving the punches and other physical actions (knife being drawn, gun being cocked). This is done because the sound will be very muffled and have a lot of feedback of the atmos sounds when recorded on set and the director wants to emphasise these violent actions to add edge to the film. The sound also uses a soundtrack recorded made by The Abassi Brothers and it is used very effectively in the film because it connotes violence and anger through the blasts of bass and also mixed with the high repeated frequency synth sounds builds up tension and suspense. Also the selected use at the start and end of the film and when the main fight breaks out builds upon it as well as the atmospheric sounds, and they are very effectively used to build suspense due to them being a low frequency bass sound that sort of throbs throughout the fight scenes. This connotes pain and adrenaline which also links heavily with the themes of the film.

I will adapt and take on board the sound design used in this film to our own drama piece, mainly focusing on the importance of foley sounds, re-recordings and atmos tracks.