This essay discusses the Irish short film New Boy directed by Steph Green. The film
shows a young African boy, Joseph, adapting to his new school in Ireland. The director
uses different techniques to portray how Joseph moves from being lonely, sad and
isolated to fitting in and finding some new friends and happiness.
In the opening scene Joseph is introduced to the class. The director uses camera
angles and dialogue to demonstrate Joseph's isolation and being an outsider. The over
the shoulder shot showing the back of Joseph’s head highlights the tone, colour and the
texture of his skin and hair in contrast against twenty unfocused white faces in front of
him. There is also a close up of the white hand of the teacher on his shoulder showing
more contrast between Joseph and the teacher.
There is also dialogue.In this opening scene Joseph has no dialogue at all, the students
and teacher do all of the talking. His lack of dialogue shows how excluded and out of
place he feels when he firsts arrives. By not speaking it portrays how Joseph feels as if
he's not allowed to speak. One of his classmates, Christian Kelly, constantly digs in to
Joseph about the colour of his skin or where he was from, making jokes about Live Aid
and ‘Do you know it’s Christmas’, which is a charity music concert that raised money for
starving countries in Africa. The dialogue emphasises the prejudice in Joseph’s class
mates against him and his loneliness and troubles to fit in.
Later on in this scene, when the teacher is teaching the class maths, Sounds,music and
lighting to show the difference between his classroom in Africa where Joseph was
happy to ...
