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Locker Room Analysis

Locker Room, a short film directed in 2008 by Greta Nash, highlights sexual harassment

and the tough decision between friends and doing what is right. Carla, a teenage girl, is caught up

in this dilemma and finally decides to tell on her friends and stick up for the girls when she

realizes that her male friends have a secret chat group. The film's target audience is teenagers. It

draws attention to the social responsibility of bystanders of wrong behavior and the pressure that

can make them turn a blind eye through the lens of the survivor or the perpetrator of sexual

harassment. It presents a social and moral dilemma during a confusing and delicate stage of life

through Carla and her group of friends. This film was nominated for Best Short Film and won

the REBEL8 award for Outstanding Emerging Female Director at Flickerfest 2018, the Mayoral

Prize for Best Film at the Short Cuts Film Festival in 2018, and Bridie Noonan won Best Actress

at the Canberra Short Film Festival in 2018. The film utilizes various formal elements, including

close-up and long shots, low-key lighting, deep focus and rack focus, and straight cuts transition.

This paper will summarize Locker Room by Greta, a critical analysis of the formal elements, and

its evaluation.

Plot Summary

The film begins at a high school basketball pitch with Carla playing defense. After the

practice, she goes to the football field to wait on her three friends; Finn, Mack, and Connor.
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Carla's friends finished practicing, and she waited for them to freshen up in the locker room.

They then leave for Finn's house to grab a bite. After sitting in Finn's room and laughing for a

while Carla goes to get freshen up because she is self-conscious about how she smells. She

comes back to the bedroom and walks in on the guys looking at the laptop and laughing before

quickly and suspiciously shutting it right as she walks in. Carla played it off as if she didn't see,

and they all left the room to eat. She then goes back to the room alone and opens the laptop, and

sees what her friends were looking at when she left the room. It was a group chat that her guy

friend and the rest of the football team were a part of. In this group chat, they would send

unpleasant and disturbing things about girls, whether it was just comments and insults or videos

of them assaulting young girls. Then, Finn walks in and catches Carla; she then panics and says

she didn't mean to pry. Finn seemed very guilty and told her not to tell anyone about what she

had seen. She agrees and tells him she won't tell anyone.

Carla became very conflicted after that day and was in a dilemma. She didn't know what

to do. First, she didn't want to lose her friends and make them angry. At the same time, she didn't

want this to keep going on and for girls to fall victim to sexual harassment in the future. The next

day at school, she tells the counselors everything she had seen in the guys' chat. The counselor

approached the football coach on the matter, and they were punished. As the film ends, she is

confronted by her guy friends, yelling and blaming her for what will happen to them. Then she

begins to cry.

Critical Analysis

The locker room has utilized several formal elements, including close-up shots and long

shots, low-key lighting, deep focus and rack focus, and straight cuts transition. Close-up shots

force the viewer to see what the director intends them to see, and it is seen when Carla is going
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through the chats in the secret group that her friends are in (Locker Room, 5:19). Her face is

shown in a close-up shot to reveal her feelings through her facial expression. Long shots are seen

when Carla walks out of the building to head to the football field. There is a much visible screen

with the background of trees, the football players, and the fence. This allows the viewer to decide

where to look (Intro to Film Technique and Terminology, 0:26). Additionally, low-key lighting is

seen after Finn finds Carla in his bedroom going through the chats. The dark lighting and the

silence reveal the tension in the scene.

Deep focus, where the background and the foreground are in focus, is portrayed in the

film when four friends walk into the compound of Finn's home. The viewers can see the house

and the basketball pitch in clear focus. This also gives the viewers the freedom to choose which

objects to view as opposed to rack focus that the director of the film forces the viewer to focus

on only one thing while the background is a blur. This is seen in the locker room when Carla and

the other girls are changing after practice. The focus is on her, and the girls' image in the

background is a blur (Locker Room, 0:35). This enables the viewers to focus on their actions of

Carla. Straight cuts have also been used to transition from one scene to another throughout the

film.

Evaluation

The film depicts a lack of moral values in a group of male teenagers who sexually harass

young girls and portrays social responsibility taken by bystanders of these actions as an act of

doing the right thing. The moral message gained is that harmful behavior must be reported

regardless of who the perpetrator is to better a larger group and choose between doing the right

thing and keeping harmful friends, as Carla did by reporting her friends (Locker Room, 10:04).

The film is also relatable to teenagers of both genders because the theme presented involves
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happenings in society. The audiences are challenged to follow in Carla's footsteps, reflecting on

what they have done if they have been bystanders to sexual harassment or any discrimination in

the past. They are also enriched with the confidence to stand up for the victims of harassment

and do the right thing. The film will stand the test of time because its themes are actions that

existed in society and continue to exist. Therefore, it will help the future generation to cope with

bad friends and sexual harassment in future

In conclusion, the film utilizes various formal elements, including close-up shots and

long shots, low-key lighting, deep focus and rack focus, and straight cuts transition. These

elements reveal the emotion and tension and guide the viewers on important focus areas

throughout the film. The film also portrays moral values that should be upheld by the young

generation and the responses that bystanders of any type of harassment should take. It is

relatable because it reflects on what is happening in society today.

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Works Cited

Intro to Film Technique and Terminology. You Tube, uploaded by Amber Maloney, 8 June

2017, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qI5Mlgk_VgE

Locker Room. Award-Winning Short Film Drama by Greta Nash You Tube, uploaded by Short

of the Week, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1PjJ9_Yd2c