Bouncer

A short film made by Geoff Thompson, released in 2002.  It details a day in the life of a bouncer (Ray Winstone) who we think trains in the gym as part of his job.  The film begins with intense music, the screen is black and we hear the first line of the film in the title sequence.  As Ray Winstone's name comes up, the voiceover asks us "what do you see when you look in to the face of a night-club doorman? The bouncer", the title of the film comes up as he says that.  Each graphic fades to black in to the next one.  The text is written in a simple font and the colour is white.  It's meant to make the film look professional and hard-hitting.  The Bouncer attributes himself as "a fighter, a bully, a hard man to repute" and we see a close-up of the stubborn, hardened look on his face to back this up.

It cuts to a shot of him lifting weights in the gym.  As we see a close-up of the strenuous look on his face, the voice-over says "People think that working on the door is easy.  They sit there with plank in their eye, looking at you like you're a piece of shit, a baby or a fucking serial killer", it then cuts to a shot of the Bouncer restraining two people and headbutting one of them "They don't think that when you're pulling some fucking lump off them, some cunt who's gonna end 'em".  This challenges the stereotype of bouncers, who are known to be tough, strong and big but ineffective.

The Bouncer challenges our belief about his job as a bouncer, because everyone believes bouncers to be dim, of low intelligence and lazy.  He states "the ones that like you the least - normally the ones with a university philosophy under their passifist belts have absoloutley no fucking idea about the reality of life outside of college campus", this is contrary to what we all know: that people who come from university are ingenious, however, the voiceover makes us question if the lessons that you learn at school and qualifications are really enough to get you through life.  It cuts back to the Bouncer in the gym, conversing with an instructor.  He imitates fighting someone, whilst talking about knocking someone out, he quotes the person "beware whilst you're fighting the dragon, beware you're becoming that dragon" - this is ironic because whilst he gets what the phrase means, he doesn't get it in the context of his own situation.  The camera is handheld for this so that we follow the motion of his hands and feel the active energy he has.

It then cuts back to him chucking someone out of a nightclub.  The antagonist of the film is an average looking guy (in feature length films the antagonist would be over-exaggeratedly dressed and more pompous and in a higher state of power) but even so, when he sticks his knife out (close-up of the knife to emphasise danger and intent to harm)  and says "this is personal man, it's me and you!" we realise the tone of sincerity in the antagonists voice and the harmful intentions he has - just over one comment that one of the bouncers made "get yourself a new suite".  The film pauses on some rather funny shots, to make it look over-exaggerated and bring black comedy in to what would otherwise be a depressing film.  Pauses such as the one of the antagonist pointing the knife with his comical wide eyes make us step back from the situation and see the humour in it, in addition it brings home the realisation of what has actually happened.  The pauses are particularly effective because they're used for the most shocking bits so we can actually take a breather and take in what's happened.

Close-ups are the main shot used in the film to bring detail to attention that the audience wouldn't otherwise pick up on.  As Ray Winstone's character says, "Sound brave? Take a closer look" as we see he's very cleverly disguised the fact that he's trembling by tapping his foot up and down and the camera slowly pans up as he tells us his technique from the feet upwards of hiding his tremble.  The close-ups of his feet show us that he's humane and even though his job requires him to be resilient, he still feels the same as us in the face of danger.

During the scene when his colleague John gets stabbed, the lighting is red.  This emphasises the rage that people see when they go angry and 'start seeing red'.  This tells us that some people only see things in one light when they feel strongly about something, which is true for most people.

It is only at the sequence in the gym at the end when the Police Officer steps in that we realise that this is a prison.  Although it's a three-shot, so we don't feel as scared of the officer because other people that we already know from earlier are in shot, it's a low-angle shot of a figure of authority.  The feeling that we're caged in comes to us at this point when The Bouncer's cell-mate says "we have to put up with this cunt for the next 8 years!".

Issues like how amplified situations get over minuscule comments would not be suitable for a feature length film.  The day in the life of a bouncer doesn't need to be long in duration in order to get its point across and there needn't be any major plot developments or twists.

The last 4 minutes show that being a bouncer isn't what people stereotype the job as and that it's a great deal wearing than people may think it is.  In the end - we learn more from a 9 minute hard-hitting grittily realistic film than we do from feature length films.  'The Bouncer' gets straight to the point and confronts our look and know attitude.  It teaches us to look deeper in to things and to not always allow ourselves to be fomented with anger from the tiniest things said or done: there are always consequences to our actions.  The moral of the story is, like the Bouncer said "beware whilst hunting the dragon, beware that you're becoming the dragon" - it's not always about what comes around goes around.