Echo, 2011, Lewis Arnold

Echo is a personal interest/true story short film, with elements of drama and social realism. The narrative of echo can be broken into two. The phone call itself is a self-contained narrative, with the inciting action being the beginning of the phone call, the rising action being the rising panic the protagonist portrays, and the climax being the taxi journey.
The narrative of Echo as a whole starts off the same as the phone call- with the phone call. The rising action is perhaps when the audience realise the story is all an act, but the climax hits even harder than this, as the audience come to realise that this phone call once wasn't a lie, and once was a real and tragic incident. This 'double whammy' of 'reveals' to the audience also greatly changes our perspective of the girl. We go from empathy, to anger and disappointment, and almost loop back round to worry and concern. This makes the character an interesting one, and a deep, complex one- a character with layers, that works particularly effectively as we, the audience, are positioned with her throughout the short film, along with the close ups and over the shoulder shots of the girl.
There are repeated motifs within Echo, such as the taxi- both physically, and also mentioned by characters. Cigarettes and the girl's lighter also feature multiple times within the short. These motifs perhaps 'echo' the repeating of what the girl does, the phone call, again and again.
On the surface of Echo, the representation is perhaps of the working class, the need for money and the lengths one will go to for it. But the main representation is of mental health. Perhaps stemming from a working class mentality of rejecting and suppressing emotion, poor mental health and actions that could arise and escalate from not looking after one's mental health are depicted in Echo.
The natural, diegetic, ambient sound adds to the oppressive tone of Echo- in particular the lonesome toll of a clock in the background of the opening scene.