The Advanced Portfolio Evaluation Question 1, Part 1-Amie Nelms

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

'All My Love' is our short film in the style of Social Realism with a combination of the romance and fantasy genre.

Here's some background information on what the style Social Realism is all about...

Social Realism

http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/1037898/
http://filmstudies.suite101.com/article.cfm/social_realism_in_british_film

Definition: Social Realism is an artistic movement, expressed in the visual and other realist arts, which depicts social and racial injustice, economic hardship, through unvarnished pictures of life's struggles; often depicting working class activities as heroic. (wikipedia.org)

Here's a documentary I found which shows the history of Social Realism and how it all started.


Watch The Story Of Social Realism [Part 1] in Educational View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


Watch The Story Of Social Realism [Part 2] in Educational View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com


Watch The Story Of Social Realism [Part 3] in Educational View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Still not clear on what Social Realism is all about? Here's the basics...

Style Conventions of Social Realism

Mise en scene

• Naturalistic lighting (may also not use any lighting to create the natural light and shade within the frame)
• Exterior settings-sometimes recognisable and mostly real buildings/monuments
• Costume and make up convincing for period
• Characters seen in context-eg. social or environmental context
• Unknown Actors-as if they are one of us, more personal, more believable
• Attention to details in props-eg. to signify class, working class for example
• Desaturated colour palette/muted colours-eg. blues, greys, browns
• Sometimes director doesn't use script, actor improvises in character to make it more 'real'

Sound

• Environmental/diegetic/ambient (synchronous)
• Non diegetic soundtrack-can sometimes be integrated with diegetic music
• Use of sound motifs (repeated patterns)-which can reflect emotional connections to a character
• Accents-relevant to place
• Background sound can sometimes be used to drown out the main dialogue

Camerawork and Editing

• Eye level shots-as if we (the audience) are observing, connect with character, evoke empathy
• Close up detail of character-to show understanding of character and situation
• Off centre framing-less manufactured result
• Group shots
• Handheld camerawork-as if audience is incorporated, observing
• Establishing shots-indicate real locations
• Static shots-suggest observation
• Continuity editing
• Long duration shots/long takes-to suggest real time, as cuts take away reality

Themes and Issues

• Everyday challenges eg. money, relationships, family, political, stereotyping etc.
• Challenging or conforming ideologies on a particular social group
• Stereotypical representations of a social group-eg. male and females
• Issues relevant to time period, social, environmental and economical (eg. wars, politics)
• Less publicised, gritty issues not found in mainstream films

Directors of Social Realism

Some key directors who frequently use this style...

• Ken Loach
• Mike Leigh
• Andrea Arnold

The director's main aim is to "represent the lives of ordinary people in ways that appear very 'true to life'". This is mainly achieved through the representation of certain social groups.

Examples of Representations

Looking For Eric, Ken Loach (2009)

http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1242545/




This film mainly looks at the British and perhaps male representation of the main character Eric Bishop, with Eric Cantona as himself appearing as a 'ghostly' life coach who is in fact just part of Eric Bishop's imagination. Loach uses the style of social realism through...

• The job of Eric Bishop-he's a postman (male job), ordinary job, could be anyone, iconic British industry; uniform, crest, trolley, postboxes themselves.
• Uses the theme of football-popular sport in Britain, male interest (stereotypical) uses an ex-football as it's star, recognisable to fans (previous knowledge required)
• Uses everyday problems/worries through Eric Bishop (postman)-money problems, relationship-wants to get back with his first wife.

This representation of a male from a males perspective (Eric, main character, seeing his life), gave us some inspiration into looking at a male lead character, Rich. The 'ghost' quality of Eric Cantona also intrigued us and so we experimented in ways which could incorporate this into our own film.

Similarly, Mike Leigh uses British representations in the film 'Happy-Go-Lucky', as well as looking at the representation of the female lead character Poppy.

Happy-Go-Lucky, Mike Leigh (2008)

http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt1045670/



British iconography

• London monuments
• Gig-Brit Pop genre, uses song 'Common People' by Pulp, British band
• Underground signs
• Red buses
• Black cabs

As Leigh describes, his aim was to make a "positive" Social Realism film. He did this through the lead role of Poppy and her female representation.

• Modern female
• Go with flow, no worries
• Spontaneous
• Happy
• Positive/optimistic
• 'Happy-go-lucky'

Indications through the film that it's a Social Realism films...

• Naturalistic lighting as well as natural lighting
• Characters representing different issues-Scott (driving instructor) and racism
• Improvises dialogue
• Casual, natural hair, costume and make up-although Poppy's clothes are used to portray her bubbly personality through colours, prints and jewellery etc.
• Real setting-London, urban

We also decided that having a modern female charcter might be interesting to incorporate into our short film, and again drafted some ideas in which we could do this. Amie is a strong, independent character in our film which we feel we have represented successfully.

Research

After our own independent research, we brain stormed our ideas and took inspiration from different short films we had viewed. Emma and I had seen a particular short film which interested us called 'The Transaction'.

Inspiration we pulled from this short film...

• Black and white colour scheme to set the atmosphere-which we used to create emotional connection to the characters, and enabled us to play with colour at the end
• Non diegetic narration by poem-which we initially attempted to do, but instead created a letter
• Outside 'park' setting

This and many other short films as well as mainstream films helped come along with the fantasy and Social Realism combination such as: Twilight, Time Travellers Wife, (short films) Lou-Lou Lives Here, The Calling (see previous research blogs on comments).

Amie Nelms