Evaluation - Part 1 : Brief.

The brief stated that we had been '...approached by Film 4 to make make a British Social Realist film aimed at British 16-24 year olds... to produce the first two minutes of the film...[and it] must conform to the conventions of the Social Realist genre... Finally to keep costs low, all visual and audio material used in the film must be entirely original.' I feel that we met the briefs requirements because when in pre-production we had conducted a lot of research into the British Social Realism genre to gain a better understanding of it's conventions and find some inspiration for our film. For example, we analysed the British Social Realist film 'Fish Tank' and looked at different elements of the film that were typical of the genre, (http://lorellethompson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/analysing-fish-tank_22.html). My partner and I had stuck to the brief and aimed our opening sequence towards a British audience between the ages of 16-24 year olds as we included some cultural references, such as the London Underground which appeals specifically to British people and particularly people living in London as this type of transport will have more meaning to them. The iconic London Underground is evident in our film at 1:34 as we
see her entering a subway with the station sign in the background and also at 1:44 as we see her entering the sign posted station. It also appeals to those of or within the ages of 16-24 as the use of public transport is a more common thing for these teenagers/young adults because they are less likely to be able to drive as it is very expensive, public transport is more affordable for them. We also used a young British actress who is within the target audiences age as we felt that this would create some personal appeal or identification within the audience as they could relate to the character and what she is experiencing. Our actress is in our opening sequence from 0:14 and for the remaining duration but you see her best at 0:58. We also met the brief as all of our opening sequence's visual material is original as it has been produced and created by my partner and I. The audio material in our opening sequence is also 'entirely original' as the song was produced by a friend of mine and is copyright free. The song used in our opening sequence starts from 0:15 and plays throughout the rest of our opening sequence.

We titled our opening sequence 'Maze'. We decided to give our opening sequence this title as we felt that a maze connoted our main characters struggle to escape her abusive relationship with her unfaithful boyfriend, in hope of a better life for her unborn baby and herself as stated in our treatment (http://lorellethompson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/treatment.html). A maze is isolating and confusing due to the amount of different narrow paths to take therefore we felt that this would connote that a character/s in our film feel very isolated and confused because of what they are going through. Following Propp's narrative theory, our opening sequence is immediately affected by an agent of change which is evident through the use of a smash mouth opening and the speed of the action starting at 0:13. Another British Social Realism film that uses this convention of a smash mouth opening is 'London 2 Brighton'. My partner and I saw this film and we too decided to use a smash mouth opening as we liked how it made us as the audience feel. In our film the agent of change is the pregnancy of Leah - our main character. In this case it is a positive change as it urges her to try and escape from her violent boyfriend. The agent of change sets up the rest of our film as there is still the conflicting complication, the elaboration, the climax and resolution and the coda to be seen, which would all be revealed in the rest of our film. The rest of our film's narrative is displayed in a blog post titled 'whole film narrative' (http://lorellethompson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/whole-film-narrative.html), since this post our narrative has been altered in production due to peer feedback.

When identifying the themes of British Social Realism, we found that there were a range of themes that were majorly about the hardships of the working class population. These themes included; aspiration and escape, violence, pregnancy, childhood, poverty, etc. Some of these themes can be seen in some research into themes in real British Social Realist films like; Bullet Boy, East is East, The Football Factory and Kikdulthood, (http://lorellethompson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/how-british-social-realism-themes-are.html). When taking a closer look into the themes used in British Social Realist films they all seem to have a link to the news. When researching further I found that the production companies of British Social Realist films and the news influence and inspire each other, (http://lorellethompson.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/use-of-themes-in-british-social-realism.html). Based on this research my partner and I had individually conducted we decided to look in the new for any stories that revolved around the main themes of pregnancy and domestic violence we had planned to use in our narrative. On the BBC news website we had found a story about a girl who had been abused by her boyfriend at the age of 16 (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17787243), this really helped to develop and inspire our narrative. We used the theme of domestic violence and this is evident in our opening sequence at 0:39-0:47, it is connoted when Leah is looking in the mirror at her bruises and
bloody nose. We also used the theme of poverty which is connoted throughout the mise-en-scene in our opening sequence, for example from 0:48-0:50 where we see Leah grabbing a prop of coins, which signified she has very little money and we see the location of council flats which is where she lives, this also signified that she is financially unstable and could be living off of benefits. Both examples connote the theme of poverty. This is similar to the British Social Realist film ' Adulthood' as we see many council flats and people with little money.