Evaluation 1: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

More niche and independent films rely on reviews and other’s opinions from reliable sources, which will gain greater audiences.  The independent social realist film on the left has a quote made by a respectable source in the middle of the trailer. As there will only be a small audience for this film, a positive quote such as this would have boosted sales. We have used this idea and replicated in our work. Total Film magazine is definitely a reputable source and should help draw in a larger audience.

Social realist films use a lot of more artistic techniques to portray the narrative. Here we are looking specifically at lighting. Lighting the subject from behind is not a ‘normal’ method as it is less obvious to recognize the character. However film of this genre revolve around one or a small group of characters. Therefore artistic shots like silhouettes are much more plausible to use such techniques with effective outcomes. 

As I mentioned before social realist films tend to revolve around the lives of a small group of characters, or possibly even just one, such as our film. Therefore a typical trailer of this genre will have many close up shots of the main character(s) to help convey the emotions of these characters at different stages of the film. Another approach to communicate with the audience their feeling is ‘to-camera’ shots, where the character addresses the camera directly. Eyes are a great indicator of people’s emotions, so looking directly into them includes the audience to have a better relationship with the character. Both approaches me have used throughout.

CCTV-like shots, such as these high and wide angle shots, help to produce a realistic themes that are needed to improve the nature of our genre.  We have also chosen very realistic lighting in this shot, which would be characteristic of a social realistic film, as we can see on the left.

For the shot of our character ‘Cally’ with her friends, we chose a long shot and this generally shows the image as approximately "life" size. To create verisimilitude, which is a key convention in a Social Realism film, we have focused on the characters, but still allowed plenty of background detail to set the scene.

This mirror shot shows our character close up and is used to establish an emotional moment within the film, enabling the viewer to sympathise, gain greater understanding of the character or relate to them. By concentrating on her face, or a specific detail of mise-en-scene it creates an intimate atmosphere, meaning the close-up takes us into the mind of our character.

This extreme close up again also exaggerates facial expression which helps convey realistic emotion. The viewer is drawn into the subject's personal space and shares their feelings. This is done within the genre of Social Realism in a confined space to take the viewer out of the cinema experience and place them into actual life.

This shot is to exemplify the location used; here we have used a typically British small town which conforms to Social Realism conventions as you need a convincing setting.  An important theme within our trailer was the contrast between rural and town life as well as the difference between the working and upper classes.

This establishing shot shows the spatial relations among characters and the space they inhabit clear, but here we have used it to establish our characters change in mood and it becomes symbolic of her moving from one life into a new brighter one.  In the comparison shot from ‘TopBoy’ the camera moves toward the character, forming a state of realisation for both characters.