Evaluation Part 1 - Summary of brief

The actual brief given:  

"You have been approached by Film 4 to make a new British Social Realist film aimed at British 16-24 year olds. To give Film 4 and idea of how your film will develop they have asked you to produce the first two minutes of the film, providing a clear sense of the graphical, editing and music style your film will use. To protect Film 4's reputation as a leader in British cinema the film must conform to the conventions of Social Realist genre, and meet all audience expectations for this type of film.  Finally, to keep costs low, all visual and audio material used in the film must be entirely original, with the exception of stock sound effects." 

Actors who had little experience

My film is aimed at a 16-24 year old British audience, as I have used actors who fit the age group the opening sequence is aimed at, which creates a more real view of the storyline we have created. If the actors we used were of a younger age we may have lost the realism that we created in the racially motivated fight scene (1:05 - end). The actors had minimal professional acting experience, which allowed the actors interpret our ideas and explore their own characters, but still keeping it fixed to the social realist genre. The opening sequence is 1:41, which barely scrapes the 20% of 2 minutes either way, but I feel like we have explored as much of narrative, characters and locations that we possibly could have. All of our editing and filming was material we recorded ourselves, and the music was copyright free, and creative commons, which means we needed no permission to use it. We also included basic opening sequence conventions: Film 4 logo: showing the institution we had made our film in conjunction with, and also a Production logo, Compass Films to show the company who supplied general filming equipment and such. The graphics in our production included producers, writers, directors, editors, producers and actors, and did not included roles such as make up artist and location designer, as there was no make up and sets designed to keep to the true realism of the brief and relate back to the genre.

Production Company Logo

Institution Logo

(0:48 the title appears)

The title of my production is 'Faith' which is first shown to the audience at 0:48, as Usama is walking down a road to mosque in his Muslim clothing. We chose to use the superimposed graphic over this shot as it shows the Islamic nature our film holds to it reinforcing that religion is a main theme that runs throughout the film. By showing clips of Usama praying (0:18 & 0:26-0:31) this establishes that Usama's religion is a big part of his life. By having these praying shots parallel to shots of Joe waking up and getting out of bed (0:20-0:25 & 0:32-0:34) , foreshadows that these characters will meet later in the film and be involved in each others situations. Another connotation of the word 'Faith' is that the word foreshadows the friendship Joe and Usama build towards the end of the film. Usama eventually has 'faith' or 'trust' in Joe, and realises that he is not a bad person, just someone who conforms to the majority / authority figure, in our film this would be Bobby. 

My opening sequence is about a muslim teenager, Usama, who is on his way to mosque, and while walking there, he gets stopped by a gang of angsty white national boys. One of these boys, Joe, doesn't like how the gang leader, Bobby insists on beating him up, and feels sorry for Usama, and goes to stop Bobby, but Eoin holds him back. The fight scene idea came from the This is England fight scene between Combo & Milky, a racist nationalist and a Jamaican teenager, a racially motivated fight. There is more indepth analysis of this sequence on my treatment. 

One of the main themes in our production is violence. This is show majorly in the dialogue and actions during the fight scene. Eoin saying ''he's just on one of his crusades again'', connotes that Bobby is a violent thug. Joe proceeds to say ''Kill one for me, yeah?'' connoting the gang of boys are all as violent as each other. At 1:21 the low angle shot of Bobby looking down at Usama and breathing, who looks proud of what he's done and who he got all his pent up anger out on. Another theme is religion, the ethnic font we used for our typography is an arabic style, which connotes the religious element of the film is a strong yet harsh one. Usama's costume was a Jubba, a muslim item of clothing which is used during prayer times for the Islamic men, making the religious aspect of the film inforced even more, making it more realistic. The contrast of clothing between Usama and the white boys is very different, Usama wears religious clothing while the three boys don dirty tracksuits and large scummy coats to make them look bigger and tougher than they really are. Poverty is another main theme in the film. We can see poverty through locations, appearance and clothing. The montage at the start of the film shows run down old locations: an alleyway with graffiti, train tracks, gratified/barbed wired building, old flats and a main road with old cars with old registration plates.

These locations are raw and real, and give the audience a perception of where the characters live, and an idea of what locations they hang out in. Usama's house is quite poverty stricken. The paint is peeling off and cracked on the front porch door. This connotes poverty and the fact that the families do not really care about the appearance of their house. This is then contrasted with the fact that Usama says 'bye mum' as he leaves, connoting the family may not have a lot of money but they have each other and thats all that really matters.  Also the location where the fight scene is held is in a disgusting, grungy back alley, further exploring the harsh nature and poverty families in Britain face every day.

Overall, I feel like I have met the brief, taking in to consideration all of the typical opening sequence conventions and conventions of the British Social Realism genre. Also, our film had a blue tinted colour palette which is commonly used in BSR films like Fish Tank, which is set in a location not too far to where we filmed our film.