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Social Realism. Created by Jacob Reeves. What is Social Realism?.
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Social Realism Created by Jacob Reeves
What is Social Realism? • Social Realism is a genre of film that focuses mainly on the realist situations of life. It will usually try and tell the story of normal people. It is rarely about someone just having a standard life, as that wouldn't be that interesting. Instead it is usually about someone who is going through a massive ordeal. Some great examples of this are Bullet Boy and Fish Tank. They both follow the life of a character that isn't in the best of situations and are both lower class. Social Realism rarely ends in the “Happily Ever After” film that you usually see in most feel good films. Bullet Boy started with him leaving jail, but ended in him and his mate being dead and his younger brother almost killing hisbest friend. Social Realism is typical an urban drama, that focuses on the grime of someone's life made into a film.
TimeLine 1961 A Taste of Honey Tony Richardson 1970 KES Kenith Loach 1982 Made In Britain Alan Clark 1994 Corrina, Corrina Jessie Nelson 2000 Requiem for a Dream Darren Aronofsky 2004 Bullet Boy Saul Dibb 2006 London to Brighton Paul Andrew Williams 2007 Boy A John Crowly 2009 Fish Tank Andrea Arnold
Film Research • Bullet boy is a really well filmed in the way that they use steady cam shots and handheld shots at the righttimes throughout the film. They had some great establishing shots of the field outside the flats. Especially when they have one of the cloud drifting across it. I felt that this shot set the mood really well. The background of a lot the shots hasn't been wasted and as you can see in the shot from the film on the left they has included a estate looking building in the background Trailer
Film Research • Fish Tank is a great example of a film with the genre of Social Realism. It has the urban theme, the trouble life of someone, and some big problems that they face in their life. Fish Tank won the Jury Prize at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. It also won a BAFTA for Best British Film in 2010. Fish Tank has some very powerful scene that make you connect with thecharacter even if you have never been in any situation like what she is in. The scene where she is in the abandoned flat later on in the film is the main one that made you feel for her. This was helped by the way the camera gentle flowed around the room and looked like it had a slow shutter on it. Trailer
Cross genres In movies film producers have taken the Social Realism genre and have mixed it with another genre to broaden the audience available which will increase the amount of people that will attend and thus increasing their profits. Films like Adulthood are not primarily a Social Realism film and is actually labelled as a drama but shows how real crime is in the real world. A lot of films will use social realism as one of their genres to make a hybrid genre film.
This is England London to Brighton Trailers They all show something dramatic like someone running or being punched. Most of them have a slow chilled out scene within the trailer too. These are the main aspects of a trailer for a social realism film trailer. All these social realism trailers have a large amount of close up shots showing dramatic expressions from the main characters they also use a lot of handheld camera shots. Bullet Boy Fish Tank
Key conventions • Main charactersThe main characters of a Social Realism film is usually about a person that has some serious problems in life and is generally not someone who has a normal life. The character is usually running in with the law and doing extremely dangerous things. The life they live is extremely dramatic, full of big situations that the characters tackle head on. • SettingsThe location for Social Realism films is usually an estate in a grimy dangerous area of some big city like London. They are generally still living at home in a small flat on a big estate this is definitely the case for “Fish Tank” and “Bullet Boy”. The film will start with a establishing shot of their residence giving the viewer an idea of the area where they live. • NarrativeThe narrative of a social realism film is usually shown through the eyes of the main character. You will follow that character completely, you see her life through her eyes. The issues the character will usually be involved in are something like, racism • EndingThe ending of Social Realism films is rarely a good one from my experience of them they always end with the person in a worse place than they started out in. For an example “Bullet Boy” ended up with his best mate and him dead, while Fish Tank ended with her mums relationship over, and her getting punched in the face. • Camera workThe camera work doesn't vary to much from a normal film, there might be a few more handheld shots and will pretty much always start with an establishing shot of the location. There is rarely any special effects used in the filming, it is usually just standard filming.