Kes Trailer Deconstruction

•  Starts in school-Teacher has dialogue, sounds aggressive and assertive-stereotype of school master as he uses punishment of young boy and calls him 'scoundrel'. The accent is Yorkshire and it clearly working class. 
• At 0.30 there is a close up on the boys face-he is given dialogue - sympathy for boy through music. Dirt on his face suggests working class background.
• 0.33- voice over starts and overlays images of boy misbehaving.
• 0.49-destroying nature.
• Game of football-shows a masculine environment.
• 1.05-"A friend like kes"-image of kestrel shown, juxtaposition given. The shots become longer and pans are used, this shows country life and how the boy is at one with nature.
• 1.33- "Employment office sure" - a young boy going for a work interview seems true to the time (1969) which gives connotations of working in mines and therefore poverty. 
• 1.43-violence juxtaposed with images of bird, could represent hope and freedom.
• Montage of quick shots showing series of violent moments triggers sympathy.
• "Kasper you make me sick" - zooms in on his face crying - sympathy lies with Kasper and repetition of his name gives the feeling he is bullied and that it is constant in his life. 

Website background idea

This is an idea for our website background, we have decided not to use this because it is too city located and doesn't reflect the location of our film.

Tagline inspiration

"Fate chooses your relations, you choose your friends."
- Jacques Delille (1738 - 1813) French poet.


"One loyal friend is worth ten thousand relatives."
- Euripides, Greek playwrite


"The friendship that can cease has never been real."
- Saint Jerome


"Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light."
- Helen Keller


Fear makes strangers of people who would be friends.
Shirley MacLaine


It takes a long time to grow an old friend.
John Leonard



After researching into Social Realism film posters, we noticed that the tag lines all relate to the key theme of the film. The main theme of our film is an unexpected friendship and so we researched famous friendship quotes to give us ideas and inspiration for our own film tag line.

Unexpected friendship in films

Is Anybody There? 2008

Goodnight Mister Tom 1998

Karate Kid 1984

Up 2009

These are films that have inspired our own film. They are not all social realism however they all include an unlikely friendship. These film all feature old gentlemen and younger boys that are pre adolescent, They all serve roles as mentors or some kind of guidance be it martial arts or as in 'is anybody there' he en-stows wisdom about life and death. This gave us our inspiration for our own old character, He shall be Jacobs guide in how to get out of his situation.

Poster Idea

This is our first poster design. We wanted to create the feeling of hope as he looking towards the sun hoping for a better future. However as the poster is for a social realism film we needed to include some sort of corruption to connote his difficult life, therefore we chose this font. The font has a cracked effect to represent the struggles he faces. We thought about using a graffitied font so that social realism was connoted further, however we believed this would be too difficult to read and is associated with gang culture which we did not want to represent. 

This is the idea for our website background. Even though it is graffiti and more urban that our film suggests, we decided to use it because of the message written on the wall. We felt the message was a good correspondent to the basis of our film. We took the image from google.

Test shots- cafe scene

The location we have chosen for the cafe scene is in Tonbridge by the library. we took these shots to experiment on different angles for the scene with the old man.

Character shots-mum

These are pictures of the actress we were going to use for the mother character. We chose her originally because of her accent and appearance, both fitted a working class woman. However, recently we learnt that she was no longer available to film so we are having to look at other options which is delaying our filming.

Film Title influences

When thinking of the title for our film trailer, we decided to use the main characters name which is Jacob. We chose this name due to it's religious meaning.

The story of Jacob is in Genesis, and tells of a man called Jacob who leads a deceitful and sinful life in which he betrays several people. Jacob has a dream, in which he see's God at the top of a ladder signifying the bridge between heaven and earth. This significant moment in Jacob's life saves him as he becomes good.

We do not want out story to be directly inspired by the religious aspects of this story, however the meaning behind the story if reflected in out film by:

• The old man can be interpreted as a saviour in the boys life leading him to good.
• The narrative of the film reflects the change from bad to good.

'Is Anybody There?' Poster Deconstruction

     This is a poster for the film 'Is Anybody There?' which is a British drama. Although we are doing a social realism trailer we decided to look at this film as it included an unexpected friendship between an older man and a young boy who is interested in the idea of the supernatural. 

It is obvious from this poster that the film is not a social realism as the fact that it has a famous actor in it is strongly highlighted at the to of the poster in a bold, yellow font. This shows that the actors are a main attraction to the film. 

The use of the colours blue and yellow makes the poster bright and also implies happiness. The yellow is reflected in the text, the bus stop and also in the young boys clothing, the only thing that does not fit into the colour scheme is the man's clothing which in entirely black, this creates a sense of mystery. He contrasts with the environment and the boy further suggesting an unlikely friendship.

Trailer Deconstruction: A Room for Romeo Brass

Codes and Conventions of Film Trailers

Through analysing film trailers we have established a few codes and conventions for film trailers. Firstly trailers start with he production company logo and a certification alert. The company logo can be themed in a high budget film, an example of this is Dreamworks. The films usually have names of actors within the film which may entice the audience into wanting to watch the film. Similar to boasting of names they may announce awards, nominations and highly recommended reviews.
Editing within the Film Trailers is very fast paced with many different camera angles which interest and excite the audience. There are key scenes from the film added into the trailer at random points to create suspense and interest for the audience.
Audio is also very important, non-diagetic music appears first in a Film Trailer and this ties in with the genre of the film, this soundtrack is also important to set the pace of the trailer. Voiceovers are usually used in trailers to tell the audience key parts of information which may not be shown on screen.
Lastly, the release date appears and is the final thing shown so the audience are more likely to remember it.

Sound Examples

This is the soundtrack to This is England. It is simple as only one instrument is used. The music is sombre and melancholic. The music is used as a motif throughout the film to signify traumatic moments in the narrative, it also acts as contrapuntal sound over the top of violence. We first considered using music similar to this however for a trailer we thought it was too morose and might give too much of the narrative away.

This music is an acoustic version of a mainstream piece of music by skrillex. This music is simple but effective. The use of guitar only as a soundtrack works well with a Social realism film as the films depict real life and everyday characters and this kind of music does not distract from the onscreen action and does not glorify working class life. 

    

After looking at many social realism trailers, such as somers town, Fishtank and The kid we noticed the music was primarily acoustic guitar or mainstream  music from the time, for example in This is England. As we cannot use copyrighted music we decided to use an original acoustic music. This piece is simple yet memorable, for these reasons we feel this would make a suitable soundtrack for our trailer.

Somers Town Deconstruction

Fishtank poster deconstruction

• Heroic- proportionally she is filling the majority of the poster, this suggests a need to overcome her background and economic struggles. small buildings in the background: tower blocks, flats connote council estate and working class.
• Weather behind is blue sky and clouds as well as sunshine gives a sense of hope and happiness, however, this is contrasted with her serious and distant expression, suggesting this happiness is faced with trouble and disruption.
• The font/text is bold- orange font contrasts with blue sky. this represents the girl contrasting with her lifestyle in society.
• The light shines from the left creating shadow on her face, connoting a side of darkness and unhappiness within her character.
• She is wearing a hooded jumper, portraying the "hoody" stereotype- associated with having to act tough and stick up for herself. The media represents "hoodies" as intimidating and are typically referred to as ASBO's. Her hood acts as a form of identity, the wind appears to inflate the hood as if to show her true identity.
• Small white font informs the audience of actor names, awards, success of the film and ratings. This text is positioned at the bottom of the poster because is it a social realism film and so actors are not famous.
• Fishtank as a title demonstrates the idea of captivity and a sense of claustrophobia within society. This shows the idea that we are all fishes trapped in society and cannot escape however hard we try.

Origami Cranes

This is a picture Maria took in japan. The picture shows hundreds of colourful origami cranes which are traditionally a symbol of honour and loyalty, they also say in japan that if a person folds 1,000 cranes they will be granted their greatest wish. We wanted to include this symbolic feature in our film as it implies the hope and desperation for a better life. In our trailer we want the central shot to be of our protagonist and the antagonist walking into a room (in the antagonists house) exposing hundreds of cranes hanging from the ceiling. This shot will represent hope in the old mans life and showing it to the boy is the passing on of hope as he tries to rebel against his working class upbringing. 

This is England research and deconstruction

This moment in the film shows Shaun as he takes the side of combo because he can relate to him in regards to the Falkland’s war, Shaun sees Combo as a mentor figure and gets wrapped up in his nationalist and racist views. The atmosphere changes from a comical mood with Shaun being chased round the shop by the owner, Shaun uses racial abuse however the shopkeeper can handle it as Shaun is young and naive, with the entrance of combo as he reveals his weapon it is shocking and dramatic, the audience see the danger that Shaun is ignorantly getting into. This scene needs no music as the language and images are dramatic enough on their own.  

 We see Shaun at the end of his journey as he experiences Combos xenophobia when he severely attacks milky, the only black member of the group. He abandons Combo and discards the English flag he gave him, however it is ironically patriotic as he throws it into the sea. The music is mellow and melancholic, a cover of the smiths which is music from the time making the realism more authentic. The location is strangely beautiful, perhaps made more so through the music and emotion created through the loneliness of Shaun. He walks down a path, almost a path of discovery as his joyful views of England have been corrupted by the Nazi ideology of combo. The scene ends with an extreme close up of Shaun, his face almost aged and worn, his expression melancholic as if he has given up, a direct look at the camera ends the scene, this contact is moving and brings to life the hole film as Shaun breaks the fourth wall. 

Character shots

This image shows the person we have selected to use as our antagonist. We wanted to use an elderly man becuase we though the bond between the two would be more unexpected and interesting to view.
His dialect and appearence connotes working class and so he would be perfect for our trailer.

This image shows one of the possible boys we could use for our protaganist. We feel he suites our characters appearence and his dialect strongly connotes working class. However one of the strong codes and conventions of a social realism films is convincing and natural acting and so we decided to look at other options.

This is our second option for our protagonist. He fits the age most popular in our questionnaire. We liked his small frame and his unconventional appearance as he is not stereotypically "beautiful". However his appearance still allows the audience to sympathise when the character is suffering hardships, this is because he is not "ugly" either. We are trying to convey normality as much as possible and after doing some filming with Oscar we believe he is suitable. 

Sunset

This is an image we found on the internet and we were inspired by it for our ending shot for both setting and lighting. We like this shot for our ending shot because although it is a pleasant setting which would imply a happy ending, our character is walking away from the camera and into the light creating a silhouette allowing the scene to be more ominous, giving a sense of hope for the character.

 This is a photo we took ourselves of a sunset. The shot creates the atmosphere we want as it is beautiful yet remains slightly melancholic because of the darkness created by the cloud. We still need to play around further with sunset shots so we find the right lighting to create a silhouette. 

History of British social realism

Social Realism

Social realism, also known as socio-realism, is an artistic movement where life struggles such as racial and social injustices and economic hardship are portrayed through the visual. The subject depicted is often showing the working class and their activities as heroic. In the artistic movement, the image depicts a scene that would usually convey a political and social protest and would typically be edged with satire. This was reflected in the social realism movement in the cinema with Britain adopting it as its main cinematic style. The idea of working class hardships was portrayed in films taken from Dickens and Thomas Hardy. One of the first film makers to establish the change from pictorialsm to naturalism was James Williamson. His films are considered innovative as they offer a narrative which was not common in earlier films from this time, in 1902 his films became available in America and influenced other film makers to construct a narrative through a number of shots.

The social realist films typically show working class struggles and how they are dealt with in early day life. Mostly set in the north films such as ‘Kes’ and ‘Billy Elliot’ show the struggles of young boys from a working class background.

Inspirational Films.