In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions

of real media products?

As a group we looked at similar media products to ours for example we looked at the

film London to Brighton, Bullet Boy, Shank and Goodbye Charlie Bright. These films all

gave us inspiration and gave us the idea of what conventions we needed to include to

create the British Social Realism film we wanted.

The music we used when the film first opens is non-diegetic and carries through until

the narrative, we decided on this type of music because we thought it was grimy and

urban which is what we was trying to portray throughout the film opening. It also links

with the fast pace of the main characters criminal lifestyle as we see his journey. We

used both diegetic sound with the sound of the police cars and the children playing in

some of the clips to create the communal atmosphere of the environment.

We used Film 4 for our institutional logo because Film Four is a channel, which we know,

would show a Social Realism film and also from my research film four are known to back

and finance a lot of British independent films.

The settings/locations played a big role in creating the Social Realism film because they

are a key convention. From our research we found that the locations used are places like

council estates, blocks, streets, and parks because it makes the film seem more real for

the audience so they can relate a lot more.

Another convention of British Social Realism is their range of shot types which helps the

audience establish the location, for example after the ‘Road Runner’ title we show a

panning establishing shot showing the audience the area which gives them an idea of

where the film is set.

From my research I learnt that Social Realism Films tend to deal with modern day issues

such as money, drugs, crime, sex, prostitution, alcoholism, class and religion. The

storyline that we chose is about a young drug dealer who gets himself into trouble when

the money he made for his boss gets stolen. This reflects social issues that affect many

people so it helps the audience relate to it as its something that goes on a lot in modern

day society.

Another convention is the naturalistic lighting that was used in every social realism film

my group and I looked at. It again helps force that realistic reality feel that the films

convey. We used natural lighting through out our film except the scene where our

character is in the bin shed room as there is an automatic light in there.

We made a montage of shots for the opening to show the audience our main characters

lifestyle, the shots show him riding his bike as his bike is his transport for getting him

around to do his job, we showed various shots of him going to do drug deals and going

into blocks.