Textual analysis

Offside is a short film that uses a football commentary as a metaphor for the Middle East conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. 

The film carries a serious statement about the futility of the conflict, and hence is a serious drama piece. Two pairs of soldiers stumble across each other whilst one is listening to a football match on the radio. As the stalemate unfolds, the situation in the football match mirrors the real life events, especially after their deaths, where the ‘goal’ is declared ‘offside’. The ‘look’, or mise-en-scene, of this film helps to communicate this statement, by using the common iconography of the conflict (i.e: the border fences, the armed guards, the hot, isolated landscape).

The camera work throughout is quite straightforward. Beyond the establishing shot of the Border, much of the film is shot in MCU or CU on the two pairs of guards or the radio. Once both sides have killed each other, the wide shot returns, showing how the violence has done nothing to alter the situation. The shots are edited together to reflect the football commentary. For example, as the commentator says the names of players passing to each other, the shot cuts to another of the soldiers, as if each pass is a chance for each man to ‘score a goal’. There is also the use of ‘slow mo’ as one of the soldiers fires.

The captions used at the start and close of the films are generally straightforward, but the title of the film is shown in an animated ‘flickering’ font, to mirror the radio tuning into the game. A tuning sound effect is used in conjunction with this.

The production has clearly been blessed with the chance to film in the only location that could do this story justice, i.e: the actual place. They also have a small effects budget, as blood squibs are used to mimic gunshot wounds. These are shown in CU, to emphasise each strike, as well as making the budget clearly visable on screen.

In conclusion, Offside is a very well made short film that manages to successfully communicate a very valuable message about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and war in general, despite it’s limited cast and content. It is very valuable to the thinking process for our film, as it shows how five minutes is ample time to be able to communicate a serious message if desired.