conventions of social realism

Credit to Amy Crouch

Production Company research

BBFC Ratings

The BBFC or British board of Film Classification sets ratings for all films produced in the UK. By researching into the ratings we can decide on which is most appropriate for our film and the opening we are developing for it. We plan for our opening to include scenes of smoking and drinking or suggested smoking a drinking, both of which will need to be considered when deciding on the rating.

Can include:

• Strong violence
• Frequent strong language
• Sexual activity
• Strong verbal references to sex
• Sexual nudity
• Brief scenes of sexxual violence
• Discriminatory language or behaviour
• Drug taking

Can include:

• Moderate language
• Sex briefly and discreetly portrayed
• Moderate violence - no detail
• No anti-social behaviour endorsed
• No glamorisation of drugs 
• Infrequent sight of drugs

Overall it is evident that our opening will have to rated 15 as it will glamorise the use of  cigarettes and alcohol and endorse the anti-social behaviour that comes from it. Also if we made the whole film strong language would be a frequent occurrence to highlight the strong feelings of the main protagonists especially when they argue.

Audience

Gender:

-Primary female

-Secondary male

Age:

-16-25

Audience characteristics:

-Creative

-Ambiguous character (fairly alternative style)

-Neutral characteristics (Do not limit themselves to liking gender stereotypical things)

-Ambiguous sexuality (Spoken about in youth culture)

-Similar age to the characters (Able to relate)

Similar films that they may enjoy:

                                                                  

The above films may be interpreted as relatively controversial films in terms of their themes and content. Fish Tank for example revolves around a relationship between a fifteen year old girl and her mother's boyfriend, whereby they have a sexual relationship. This style of film is for acquired tastes only as not all audiences are comfortable with such taboo themes. 

-In regards to our film, it is most likely suited to an audience that is open-minded to similar themes such as those listed above, as our film is suggestive of a lesbian relationship, drug and alcohol use and mild criminal activity.

-As the predominant focus of our film is the protagonist's disease, other types of audience may be enticed to watch it, despite the additional content.

Similar Film Openings

Quadrophenia (1979)

The use of this establishing beach shot is relevant to the theme of reflection and solitude that we aim to incorporate in one scene of our film opening. It is a highly effective shot for the reason that the character is surrounded by vast space, emphasizing the focus on this protagonist whilst contributing to the ambient of this particular film. In contrast to this opening's colour scheme, we aim to make use of a bleaker colour pallet to set the emotional tone effectively.

This tracking shot of the protagonist represents a youthful, adventurous scene, as the teenage boy is exploring back streets, despite their potential danger. In regard to our opening scene, it relates to how we would like to use street lamps and tracking shots of our main character to summarize her daring and enigmatic persona. 









Submarine (2010)

This opening scene also incorporates a beach shot, of which displays more landscape than Quadrophenia; discarding character presence. The purpose of this scene is most likely to set the physical landscape of the film as opposed to introducing the character's persona. When filming our opening, we would like to incorporate the beach setting with our protagonist in view, and use the beach setting as an accessory to highlight her emotions.

Here, a simple bedroom panning shot is used to display the typical bedroom of a teenage boy from a working/middle class family. Similarly, we plan to take quick shots of our protagonist's home to identify her as a fairly normal teenager in terms of her family life, thus highlighting the predominant root of her misfortune as being her illness. 

The Evolution of Social Realism

Initial ideas

Here are some of our initial ideas for the opening for our film including shot and narrative ideas. From our initial ideas we concluded that we wanted a female protagonist and for her to be distanced from either her family or society. We also decided we wanted there to be an aspect of rebellion in our film however we have not yet chosen how this will be conveyed. 

Textual analysis of the '(500) days of summer' opening

The opening title sequence for the romantic comedy '(500) days of summer' is made up of a series of split screens. The film either side of the screen shows the growing up of the two main characters Tom and Summer. The colour pallet and rough borders on the film clips portray a nostalgic feel as they look like home videos created by those with them as they grew up. The facial expressions of the children as they grow up suggest a content childhood, as well as setting the film as a warm and happy one.By seeing the characters from such a young age the audience can establish a strong relationship with them meaning they will sympathises with their feelings later on in the film.

As the 'home videos' are in colour we can assume that the main protagonists are reasonably young.Meaning the demographic will be of an age that can relate to a similar 'coloured' childhood. Similarly we can tell the characters are of a similar age to each other, the split screen creates a important comparison between the characters highlighting their differences. Which may eventually become relevant or critical later in the film.

The slow paced editing consists of simple cuts to achieve continuity editing with in the separate clips as well as a series of fade to black edits to introduce text.The use of the fade to black creates an almost sleepy effect as if we are growing up with the characters in a happy haze. In

contrast the non-diagetic music starts by the fast repetition of piano notes, constructing a quick paced opening. Adding to the excitement of growing up.

Codes and Conventions in opening sequences

From looking at a number of opening sequences, from different genres, I've been able to gather what is expected in a conventional opening sequence. All of the openings have prominent sounds throughout. Most establish a main character or setting which tends to become more obvious as the opening progresses. Narration or a voice over is common in the openings as it establishes the story, setting and character.

Here is a collection film opening analysis which helped to work out the codes and conventions of a typical opening sequence:

The love actually sequence includes a voice over which establishes the character in question. However there isn't much action which I think is due to the films genre as 
Trainspotting (comedy drama) and Halloween (horror) include a lot more action and tension.

The opening sequence to the first Twilight film establishes it's genre well by the use of colour, characters, music and font. From the sequence we can tell the film is going to be a fantasy drama, the dark colours pointing toward a more gothic narrative.

The Hot Fuzz opening sequence ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RAkY4R691E ) is also a very good example of genre establishment as it is obvious from the music that the film is going to be a comedy when paired with the action.