Our film, is based on a real life story which involves a 'revenge rape'. In our adaptation of the article the story involves the two girls, Jordan and Chelsea, being best friends after growing up together on an estate. This friendship is tested when the girls both start to spread rumours about one another after an incident occurs where their trust is broken. This leads to Jordan wanting to get revenge on Chelsea, in the form of sexual assault, which is carried out by Michael - Jordan's brother (the antagonist). This is only a flashback at the beginning of the film-the entire film then develops into a story about Chelsea's life and how she copes with being a young mother, as she never aborted the baby; how will she afford baby food and all the items needed to properly care for a child? It also shows aspects of how Jordan deals with being the babies auntie, causing tension between them. Michael's been put into jail and struggles to have an input in the child's life, the film will focus on his struggles and fight to have rights to see the child-he wants to be an amazing dad but is stopped by laws of justice. It is a linear omniscient narrative as the film will show the point of views of the three different characters and switch between these all the time to keep the audience interested.
News Story on 'Mail Online' (Girl-Aliyah Weekes)
Our opening sequence will revolve around how Chelsea got in this situation (the flashback of the film). The two minutes involve the rape and introduce the three main characters. It begins with Jordan and Chelsea arguing about the rumours and they get into a heated conversation, where the line 'snitches get stitches' is exchanged. Followed by lots of mid shots/close ups that include texts exchanged talking about their verbal fight. It then blacks out and the audience see Michael dragging Chelsea off to a public bathroom. The shot then goes to a door, from which you can hear screaming but it isn't clear who it is. This is followed by Michael walking out and putting his hood up, revealing to the audience that he carried out the 'revenge' rape, this will also create enigma between this shot and the next shot as the audience will want to know who's been raped. The last shot is off Chelsea sliding down the bathroom door in tears. The themes that will be present in this opening are; sexual abuse, friendship, revenge and violence. We do not believe that this will give away too much of our story as this is not the main story-this is purely a flashback in Chelsea's mind whilst she is in court as the actual film follows on from this to Chelsea, Jordan and Michael in court-the entire story is about the struggles of a single, young, pregnant mother and a father who is in jail. So, the opening sequence purely sets this up. In terms of mise-en-scene, it will be set in a very urban location, such as an estate/alleyway. It will also include props such as BlackBerry's and hoodies as these are props and costumes which are associated with the teenage years, also this costume is associated with the regional location of the characters.
Possible location-public bathrooms where Chelsea is raped
Phones which will be used-as blackberries are not very expensive they are suitable for the characters as they are not rich and live in estates connoting elements of poverty.
The conventions of BSR we will use are super imposed graphics, as these allow the audience to view the image as well as reading the titles. Also it connotes how the actors aren't very famous as they would usually have a full screen graphic, like in Hollywood films. Engaging music - This will help to create excitement as it's a smash mouth opening, so the fast pace of the music will match to the pace of the editing and dialogue. Our opening will also include minimal dialogue as it will only include the two girls arguing and then there will be shots of texts exchanging and then the rape. We got the idea of having a smash mouth opening from the film 'London to Brighton'. The opening will also introduce setting as we will have establishing shots of urban locations such as estates, alleyways and parks. This will also set up to introduce the characters and their regional identity.
To put all of our ideas together for the film, we made a Narrative diagram that included the; Exposition, Agents of change, Conflict, Elaboration, Climax and Resolution and also the Coda. This diagram helped us to plan our opening sequence as we knew what we had to represent in the opening the related to our film. We needed to get across the characters, locations and the themes.
Target Audience
Our target audience is people aged from 16-24, which is in the same age bracket as our characters. This allows the audience to relate to the characters through the uses and gratifications of personal identity. The gender of our audience is both male and female and this is also represented through the characters as they are of a mixed gender. The interests of our target audience will be mainly socialising via online social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and BBM. We believe people with these interests will enjoy our film as it plays a big part in the storyline-it is how the rumours are initially spread. We think that the target audience also have other media consumption such as listening to Capital Xtra as this includes urban underground music-we will try to include this music into our opening sequence to interest them. TV shows our target audience would usually watch consist of shows like Waterloo Road, Geordie Shore and many reality shows-we believe this is because they enjoy watching people of their age in crazy situations with a lot of drama; our film also does both of these.
The audience we are aiming to target our film towards would usually download their music illegally online such as YouTube converter-this is because they cannot afford to buy every song that they enjoy listening to-it would simply cost too much-the characters in our film are going through problems related to money so we think this would be relevant to the audience (personal identity from Uses and Gratifications Theory). The class of our audience will mainly be teenagers from working class families and possibly under class-this is because the storyline looks at the idea of being homeless and poor so the audience will be able to relate in some way to the characters. The narrative will appeal to our target audience as the narrative includes the girl becoming pregnant and this is a growing issue in the UK-the video below shows an episode from a TV series 'Underage & Pregnant'; this looks at the lives of young girls who have became mothers and discovers how they dealt with the new responsibility. This is linked to '4Walls' as Chelsea becomes a young mum and struggles with the new role. Our film is also linked to this video as both Chelsea and Becca (girl from clip) share the same regional identity-this creates a representation of British girls which suggests pregnancy is a common problem.
Our film will appeal to the audience of 16-24 year olds as the themes of sexual abuse, revenge, friendship and violence are themes which are commonly seen in many of the tv shows they watch for example Waterloo Road shows many of these similar themes such as friendship and revenge; there have also been stories in this tv show related to sexual abuse. Our film is also a very dramatic text which involves a lot of confrontation and conflicts and other shows they watch such as Geordie Shore and Towie include this similar level of drama.
Violence
'4Walls' has a very unique selling point as most BSR focuses on purely how the characters got into their bad situations whereas we feel our film develops the stories of each character further by looking at how they deal with these situations in depth-we focus on not only Chelsea and Michael but continue to explore how Jordan deals with the label 'auntie'; we chose to do this as it will show many people the possible consequences of their actions and we also think it would be an interesting area to explore. Another unique selling point we have is that our film is based on a real life story-this is interesting as the story itself seems very dramatic and seems surreal; the news report of the real life event has not yet been fully completed so we used this story and expanded on it. This is effective so it doesn't relate too strongly to the news report and still has a creative element. The news story is simply the beginning of our film. We have conducted some primary research into the idea we wish to explore by asking two people of different genders what they think of our idea and thankfully we received a lot of positive feedback-they believed our ideas were realistic but would be interesting to watch. The YouTube clip below show the primary research we found.
Title
'4Walls' is our title as it connotes the characters situations. Chelsea's main struggle involves finding a place to stay each night where her and her child can remain safe whereas Michael faces the daily reality of prison life and being trapped in four walls without the privilege of seeing his child grow up. This connotes the main theme of struggle as it represents their main issues and is enigmatic-what are the four walls? The title is conventional of the BSR genre as it is short and easy to remember-as it is only two syllables it is memorable. We believe it will appeal to our target audience as the 'four' will be numerically shown instead of using words-this relates to texting and the digital age of the characters which also happens to be the same age of our audience; this brings in the element of personal identity. We got our inspiration of a short syllable title from 'sket', 'adulthood', 'shifty' and 'ill manors'-these words are also very simple and easy to understand which is important considering our target audience of teenagers. We believe it also reflects the characters in the film as they are not well-educated and it connotes their social class. The title also only has a weak link towards the story but has a strong link to the situation which the characters are in-this is important so it doesn't give too much away. In our opening sequence the idea of finding a place to live each night and being in prison is not explored however the title foreshadows this.
Technology
The technology we will use is the standard camera equipment that we are given to at school. This includes a camera, tripod and a dolly. The tripod will be useful as it will allow us to create smooth shots and pans which would be useful for establishing shots. The tripod is commonly used in BSR to follow a character smoothly with a pan as it makes the audience believe they are there in the scene and makes them feel closer to the actors. The dolly would be useful for tracking shots and would allow us to follow the characters for longer distances such as through parks and corridors in school. It would be interesting to use other equipment such as a mic blimp as it enhances the audio which would increase the verisimilitude of our work-it would also be useful as when we want to film outside the mic blimp will cut out the audio of the wind hitting against the mic which is usually picked up, however we do not have access to this equipment so to avoid hearing the wind in outdoor shots we will aim to choose days to film where there is still weather and possibly even only film inside where we know the surrounding sound is low so only the audio from the characters will be heard.
Mic-blimp, also known as 'dead cat'.
Representations
The key characters in our film are Chelsea - the protagonist, Jordan and Michael - the antagonist. Another non human antagonist could be poverty, as this is mainly what stops Chelsea from having a home, a place to raise her child. Rape could also be considered as an antagonist as this is the reason why the three characters all in their current positions. The typical archetypes of BSR that are shown in our film are; Chelsea who represents 'the lost boy' as she was on the right path in her life to getting an education and career but lost her way and is now going downhill into a life she never expected. Jordan is the archetype 'Weak but aggressive man' as she is the main cause of conflict in the film-if she had not planned the revenge rape none of the situations would have occurred; she is also very intimidating and bullies the protagonist (Chelsea) when really she is not of any higher status compared to Chelsea. Michael would be 'the follower' as he has purely done what he has been told to do by Jordan-he didn't question her, we have developed on this archetype as usually 'the follower' is not a main character but in our story Michael is one of the two main characters whom the story revolves around.
Our film subverts to the typical representations of young people; they are violent, they don't think of the consequences and they are irresponsible. These representations are displayed as Jordan slaps Chelsea and has a very terrible revenge plan. Michael didn't think of the consequences of the revenge rape which has led him to several years in jail and having no contact with his child. All of this is very irresponsible as a whole. We feel we had to subvert to some representations as they fit the BSR genre well and some people may even feel as though they are able to relate. Another representation we have explored is that deprived people who live on estates cause issues and problems to society-as the three main characters live in an estate they have caused many problems such as being put into jail, harassing the residents for a place to stay and more.
Images of the actors who we may use are below:
Michael
Jordan
Chelsea
Conventions
The conventions of BSR Mise en scene we will use are; natural lighting, real locations, dull colour palate, simple empty sets, untrained performance and working class locations. We will use natural lighting, as it helps to create a real atmosphere for the audience, it fits in with the realness of BSR. If we were to use huge lights during scenes in flat bedrooms it would look very unrealistic as usually the bedrooms have small windows from which views are restricted and do not allow plenty of light through. Real locations is a typical BSR convention as they don't film on sets, again they want it to look as real as possible. We already have a few locations in mind, such as the alleyway near one of our houses and also a park that's not too far. The real locations will help to connote the seriousness of the our story as if it was done on a set, it looks fake, so they would believe that the story is fake. Where as because we're using a real location and a real story, it makes them believe it more. Also BSR tends to use real locations as planning sets increases the costs which we do not have as we have no budget. A dull colour palate will be very important to use to display the misery the characters are going through within the film, it also creates a sense of realism as Hollywood films make everything extremely bright to enhance the positive mood. The colour palate will consist of a blue/grey overtone over the filming to make the mood slightly negative as something bad is always due to happen. Some people may think this would take away from the realism aspect but it will only be done slightly so it is almost unnoticeable.We have chosen to film in simple, empty sets as this is realistic for the social class we are aiming to film around-as they are poor and struggling with money their homes will not have many possessions and the empty locations will emphasize how desperate they are and how they do not own many luxuries. These sets will also be easy to find and film in as we live in a very urban area so finding deserted locations would be a simple task. We have chosen to have untrained performers for our work as we have no budget to employ professional actors-most BSR films are filmed with untrained actors also because of the same reason. However we do not feel that this will affect the quality of our work-we think it will increase the quality as the actors will resemble real life people, hollywood actors look very fake and have had a lot of makeup artists etc to aid their appearance. Also the acting will be mainly improvised which will mean that it will add to the realism aspect and as our chosen actors live in the areas we are filming in and are of the working class we think that they will be able to relate to the characters they are playing and therefore be very realistic in persuading the audience that the story is real. We have also chosen to have working class locations as this will be simple for because we live in London-we are able to access places such as estates, schools and there are many alleyways close to where we live, these locations relate to the working class groups as they are not fancy and look like they have actually been 'lived in' which will also add to the realism aspect.
the alleyway where we are thinking of filming.
The type of flats that the characters would live in.
The camera conventions we are going to include will be; slow pans, tracking shots, medium/close ups of main characters, loose framing and jerky camera movements. We will include some slow pans in our opening sequence as establishing shots of the area, these wide shots are useful as they display to the audience the regional identity of the film and will allow them to see the poverty in which the characters are living in, the slow pan could also be used throughout the film to reveal something slowly to the audience-as it slowly pans across it will create enigma and excitement. The tracking shots are important as they will invade the personal privacy of each character and allow the audience to feel more involved in the film, they are also useful in BSR as they look more realistic as the audience gets to travel everywhere the actors go which works well as BSR is filmed on real locations instead of sets-it also helps with the omniscient narrative. The medium shots and close ups of the characters is useful as this will allow the audience to look at their facial expressions and how they are feeling at the moment in time, I think some extreme close ups would also be useful in times of extreme emotion-for example when Chelsea finds out that she is pregnant I think a closeup of her trembling hands would be effective. The close ups and mid shots will also display who the main characters are as usually the other characters do not get many close ups as they are not the main focus. We would like to have some loose framing on our work as it would add to the BSR genre effect-not completely complying to the rule of thirds is typically seen in the BSR genre as it adds to the edgy feel of the film and the realism-not everything is perfect and exact in real life. Also not framing the characters completely in the centre of each shot will help us in achieving this look. Jerky camera movements will also be important as they will create that edgy feel yet again and add to the realism as they will look like the audience is just a person at the scene observing-if the camera is constantly smooth it appears very fake and unrealistic for the audience. All of these camera conventions are especially seen in 'Fish Tank' an example of the loose framing of the main girl is displayed in the mid-shot of her below; she is not placed in the centre of the screen and the rule of thirds has only been loosely followed, the trailer of the film is also shown below as the camera techniques used in the trailer relate to the BSR genre and some of the conventions we aim to achieve in our opening sequence. At 0:08 there has been some loose framing as we cannot see the woman behind the door but I believe that this was not done to create enigma but to show that it is a BSR film and to add to the rough edges of the film. From 0:20 to 0:24 the camera looks like it has been handheld apart from one very quick shot between these times, and the jerky movements add to the rough aspect of the genre, it also allows the audience to become closer to the characters as it feels as if they are actually there with them. The close up of the main actress at 1:46 displays how she is the main focus and there are many other close ups and mid shots of her throughout the trailer such as at 0:18. 0:29 and 1:02. These are important as it also displays how she has the most screen time so the audience is immediately interested in her as a character and enigma is created around her.
The editing conventions that we will use in our film will be; long takes, simple editing, infrequent SFX's, slow pace and music to enhance editing pace. We will use long takes as when we get to post production is will be much easier to edit-if we have at least 5 seconds either side it will allow us to cut a little later to add to the realism aspect and I think this will also create the slow pace required in BSR. It will also be good to film longer than planned as we are using untrained actors they may do something which looks really good accidentally-and if we catch this on film then we would be able to use it in our opening sequence. The simple editing will be important as it is common in the genre of British Social Realism-this is because it simply gets to the point without being fancy and that is what the genre is all about, it will be direct and fades etc will not look realistic. I think we will only use one fade in our opening sequence when we change from the establishing shots to the actual characters to display a location change. Simple editing is used in BSR as it allows all the shots to flow. Infrequent SFX's are important as they can be seen as very unrealistic-in films such as action films or adventure films they are widely used but if used in BSR they could take away from the realism aspect as usually in real life you wouldn't hear sounds like these. However, if we were to use any sound effects which were not caught whilst filming we would use foley sound effects as they are the most realistic, they would be useful as they create the same sounds which would normally be heard but during post production and may be created with different objects to the sound itself. The editing convention of having a slow pace will also be important as BSR storylines are usually about working class normal people going through a struggle which is not as exciting as an action movie for example-because of this a slow pace is required to fit in with the story line, of course at times when there is chaos the pace of editing should increase but most of the time there will be a slow pace with long takes and instead of cuts many pans will be used to increase the length of each take and to avoid cuts which would increase the pace. I think that this is important especially at the beginning of the film to slowly reel the audience into the film. The music will also increase in speed and become upbeat when the correct situations in the film come along-for example during the climax.
Our film will not be a hybrid as we want to keep it as a pure BSR because we feel we have all the relevant themes and character archetypes for this genre, other genres such as action, romance and comedy will not fit into our idea and none of their elements play a role in our story line enough to make it a hybrid film. A hybrid BSR film is 'Attack the Block' which is a hybrid film of sci-fi and BSR, we liked this film as it was very interesting and unique but we will avoid hybrid as we want to focus on the hardship and struggles of a pure BSR.
Style and Iconography
Using the correct camera techniques in BSR is very important as they help to unravel the story and plot. For example, if we were to use a pan for our establishing shot, it would reveal the whole location to the audience connoting the regional identity-this could be personal identity from the uses and gratifications as the audience will be able to relate to the region. In an estate most of the buildings look the same, so by showing all the buildings with a pan, it emphasises that the characters in our film are all stuck in their ordinary, struggling lives and nothing changes and nobody is superior to anyone else. The similar buildings also empahsise the repetitive element of their lives-every morning they wake up and go into the same routine everyday-which is common in BSR. There's nothing important about them, they're all the same to other people; they're just people who cause trouble. Another technique we will use is a tilt. When Michael comes out of the bathroom after raping Chelsea, first there will be a normal long shot that denotes a boy walking with his hood up. The shot will then start at the character's feet (create enigma) and tilt up to reveal that the boy was Michael-which will shock the audience. The effect it creates for the audience is that it slowly reveals who raped the girl in the bathroom. It creates suspense and mystery before you actually see his face. Close ups can also be used for effect; one example of where we may use this is in the scene of Chelsea sliding down the bathroom door in the opening sequence. We could have a close up of her hands trying to cover herself as she feels very disturbed and insecure about what has just happened. This creates an effect for the audience as you don't see her face in the shot, you just see how she feels about what has happened and the extreme use of a close up will strongly highlight this.
The gif below is from our work called 'The Encounter'. The gif denotes a tilt as it starts from the girls knees and the camera tilts up towards her face. We want to do something like this when revealing it was Michael, but more serious as this piece of work was meant to be comedic. He would just be walking straight and the camera would reveal him with his hood up, of course the lighting of the shot would also be different as here we have artificial lighting which would not be the case as we want to create a moody scene with low key lighting; this will also represent his character as dark and mysterious.
In regards to editing, we will mainly use normal cuts for transitions, as that keeps in the with aspect of reality; we may even use some cross cuts to switch from different views of perspective. One point where we could have a fade is when it goes from the establishing shot of the estate to the characters. We will use a fade then as it gives a link between the two shots, it connotes how the characters live in that type of area, which allows the audience to make their presumptions of the characters. In the gif below, again from our project 'The Ecounter', denoted is an establishing shot with a pan that shows the office of the characters, it then transitions to the next shot through a fade. This is the type of editing we would like to do in our opening sequence as it will help to show the audience that these characters are at that location; it allows the opening to make sense.
Costumes and props will be important in our film, as it provides a visual aid about the personality of the characters. We want our characters to come across as real life people that are struggling which will be done through our use of props and costumes. For props, they will have BlackBerry's where the messages will be exchanged via BBM or whatapp. These are free social networking messaging apps which we will use as they are used by the younger generation and as they are free it will connote their social class. Most of drama happens on these broadcasting apps and rumours in real life are also spread via these apps so it is relevant and realistic. Costume wise, the characters won't be wearing very fancy and expensive clothes which are branded, as we want them to represent the under and working class. They will be wearing jogging bottoms, hoodies, body warmers and trainers, which will all be dark colours to represent the struggle they're going through; these colours will also represent the mood of the film. Their clothing won't be bright colours as this would connote themes of happiness and this is not the case, dark hoodies are also associated with gangs and crime. If you look at my previous blog post where I discussed the mise-en-scene of Sket, the types of costumes and props they have in there are the ones we want to replicate as I thought it was a very good film in terms of how it showed the harsh reality of teenagers lives. The costumes and props especially helped connote the characters personalities as they all looked quite rough.
Possible costume-dark hoodies
The type of costume our characters would wear.
In our opening sequence, we will have music of the grime/rap genre. Although this is non-diegetic sound it will be relevant as it connotes the genre, and many teenagers listen to this genre of music so it will interest the audience. This music is generally quite urban sounding as most people that listen to this type of music, live in urban areas such as Croydon or Hackney. We believe that the music helps the audience to establish what kind of location the characters are in and their personalities. If the music was of the pop genre, the characters are likely to be quite bubbly and energetic and if the music was classical you would associate the characters to be quite calm and intellectual. The type of artists from the grime/rap genre are; Skepta, Sneakbo, Devlin, JME and Ghetts.This song has many of the grime/rap artists called Game Over.
Skepta
The song below by Professor Green and Maverick Sabre, is the type of song that we would like to have in the background of our opening sequence. In the song Professor Green even says 'Welcome to Hackney', connoting how these types of songs are relate with urban areas. I think this type of instrumental will suit with our opening as there will be establishing shots of flats and alleyways and also shots of teenagers in hoodies, who are the main consumers of this music. But we can't use music that has been copyrighted, so we will either have to make our own music or find it from a copyright free source. I think this type of music will effect the audience as it's the type of music that makes you aware of it as the beat is quite loud and a lot happens within in, is not a simple piano or guitar in the background; the upbeat music is also a convention in opening sequences as it will help to interest the audience.
Our opening will not contain any other non-diegetic sounds such as sound effects (SFX) as this will take away from the realism aspect of our work, so we will concentrate on diegetic sounds like dialogue to communicate the themes and storyline.
Institution
The production company in our brief is Film 4 Productions. A couple of weeks ago we had the task of researching the company and producing a fact file. The research can be found here (Paman Uppal) and here (Simran Bhatti). When researching we found that Film 4 Productions has an ethos; a set of morals that they follow when producing their films. Two ethos' that we think applies to our film is 'development of new British talent' and 'innovation in the British film industry.' All of the three actors in our film have never acted professionally before, but they all have the aspiration to become an actor/actress as they are very talented. This ties in with the ethos of 'developing new British talent', as someone could see our opening sequence and think the actors are very good and maybe want to get in contact with them to help them build a career. As they also have no acting experience this adds to the realism aspect as it will look less polished. Film 4 Productions also likes to leave people thinking with their films. Our film will do this as the topic of a pregnant teenager struggling to get by hasn't been in explored in the British Social Realism genre much; many BSR films are usually about peer pressure, gangs and crime; so it would leave people thinking as the film will show the harsh reality of her situation rather than the journey of her sorting her life out. It starts bad for her and will end bad for her. This could make the audience think twice about what they do in life and think about the consequences of things, especially for our target audience which is important as teenage pregnancy in the UK is a large problem.
This will affect the distribution of our film as Film 4 as well as producing films, also distributes them. From IMDB, we found that Film 4 has distributed quite a lot of films, nearly 60. They either distribute them worldwide on all media or just in the UK on the TV. As our film is a BSR film and will appeal and relate to the British public, it's likely that our film will only be distributed in the UK. Although we would like our film to be distributed in cinema's as well as it would give it more publicity; we think it would be suitable to be shown in cinema's like Vue at Romford and Ilford and the evenings would be a good time as it would probably be a 15 certificated film because of the sexual abuse and bad language.
As well as cinema's, we think our film would be exhibited on platforms on New Media Technology such as Netflix, Now TV, Amazon Prime and Blinkbox. It would exhibited here as our target audience is people aged from 16-24. This age range barely has any time to actually go out and watch films as they're either in school and doing a levels, at uni or have a full time job, also these ages do not have a lot of money to be watching many films in cinemas. So to have the film stream on these sites would make it more available for people who don't have the time to go all the way to their cinema, they can watch it from the comfort of their homes, which is becoming increasingly popular, especially with our target audience.
Below is an animated powerpoint explaining how I analysed the opening credits of Anuvahood, in one of the slides the image of the timeline is unclear so I have placed the same image below which you can click to enlarge.
