'Substance' is a 2013 drama short film directed by Ben Green. The film revolves around a concerned friend regarding his drunk, alcoholic female friend. This problem is extremely upsetting for the sober friend and the short film represents her struggle towards this. The film is also fairly engaging as it is tackling a widespread, worldwide problem of alcoholism within young people and young adults.
The film opens with a series of ambient, establishing shots of scenery, and furniture inside the house to try and establish a mood and a sense of setting. I think this has been done particularly well because of the additional non-diegetic piano score playing over it. It makes for a soft, peaceful tone that makes for contradiction when the drunk girl comes falling through the front door, because it happens very suddenly and dramatically and it contradicts to a considerable extent the soft, ambient shots that played before.
The film incorporates many close up shots of the sober friend carrying and helping the struggling drunk friend. This has been done in order to emphasise on the relationship between the two, and also to show the pain caused to the sober friend because of the drunk girl's sheer drinking problem. The non-diegetic piano score also escalates at this point to try and create an emotionally charged tone as much as possible. This makes for a more explicit connection between the two. This can be expressed the most at 4:01, the sober friend is looking extremely upset whilst the drunk friend is in her current state.
The lighting for the short film is also on the whole natural lighting. This results in the cinematography for the short film look sharp and realistic. I believe this was done to make the film look as natural as possible, linking back to its main theme of alcoholism within young people. This also can be supported by a lot of diegetic sound being used in the short film, to try and create tension between the characters by focusing on the diegetic sound that they're saying together, not focusing on much else.
It's also worthy to note how the sober female friend is being portrayed by a male actor, who is also the director. However I think that this choice of casting turned out really well. The makeup work and costume is good, making his character look genuine and feminine. I also think that this choice of casting could have been done to challenge conventions and rules regarding genders in films. They didn't want to be confined by only having two girls play the female characters in the short film, so they branched out and chose to use a male actor to play one of the female friends, which is good and it works well.
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