Synopsis of Own Film

The film is entitled 'Raze'; meaning to destroy, flatten and wipe out and depicts the everyday struggles faced by Erin, a young timid teenage girl who is out casted by her peers at school in a crowded inner city area of London and who faces a change of character and self within the course of the film as the frustration gets a hold on her. As loneliness and silence becomes too much for her to bare, with her mothers alcoholism on a steep incline along with the physical abuse as a result of this and the constant taunting at school due to Erins inability to communicate with those around her, Erin goes about her day with a sense of emptiness and its clear her lust for life is diminished, much like it is also non existent in the bleak grey of the inner city council estate that she calls home, or is some what trapped in. When Erin witnesses some boys from her school beat up a boy from her class due to sheer boredom, Erin sits by watching and does nothing to help, envious of the power and fear that the young boys exert onto others. She lurches over the bruised boy, simply staring as if to show she has had enough of life in this area and had enough of being on the weak side.

We then see Erins character spiral out of control, into a girl who makes people see her and uses violence and aggression as a way of communicating and gaining what she wants. This creates a vast opposite to the Erin that we see as an audience a the beginning of the story. She goes home and confronts her mother, smashing her alcohol bottles and finally having a voice, sending her mother into shock and realisation about her behaviour. She then cuts off all of her hair, indicating both an emotional and physical change in her character as she takes control of her life, through turning to violence and crime as a way of gaining power, security and control within the estate, going into school and making herself heard with the use of violence to other school kids. After holding a knife to her own teacher who had previously offered support and guidance to her, Erin sees the fear in the womans eyes which only pushes her to seek more power. She flees the premise and is forced to sleep on the streets with no way of returning to her home, due to fear of arrest. As Erin spends each night alone on the streets in the darkness she begins to realise that she is once again alone and empty and as a viewer we see the realisation of what she has done on her face as she tries to come to terms with the changes she made to herself as well as returning to a stable way of thinking.

This film shows how a young girl is forced into a life of violence, crime and abuse as a way of surviving the harsh realities of inner city gang culture and the poverty ridden life of those with nothing but the clothes they have on their back. This social realist film hopes to give explanation, not reason, as to why these youths may become the way that they are, and hopes to show in many cases that it is not through choice.