2. Social Realism
• The conventions of Social realism:
• Events often involve; drug abuse, violence, racism, alcohol abuse, sex, parties, theft, bullying, deaths &
teenage pregnancy.
• Characters are often: played by unknown actors (to enforce the realism because the actors could be just
anybody in society), usually teenaged based (15-21) out of education and out of work, characters usually
from a city background with heavy accents, usually more male characters because typically women stay out
of the troublesome issues that are often featured and because generally the storyline appeals to more males
as it has been proven most female audiences prefer to watch ‘rom-coms’, there are many multicultural
characters shown.
• Themes often shown are: hard gritty realism on life, drug addiction, drunkeness, unemployment, unwanted
pregnancy, gangs & violence, racism, poverty, inner city estate, illness and disease, and sex.
• Mise en scene usually include: city setting, council estates, low lighting to make it appear grim and to also
represent the typical dull British weather, and costume is low in fashion to show lack of money, tatoos to
display gang initiation, strong accents and language used establish the location of the story and type of
character; for example, the strong London accent heard in Kiddulthood reinforces the ‘gang’ member
stereotype and the use of stong language enforces the angry persona of the character, the font used is
usually always Sans serif as it appears as a working class font and looks like less effort has gone into it, many
titles including This Is England appear in a graffetti style which is an issue shown in the film and it also matches
the stereotype of the lower class characters.
• Editing is: minimal editing to create a realistic appearance opposed to a “glammed up” Holywood film.
• Camerawork is: often filmed through a shakey handheld camera to again create a realistic effect to
represent a documentary type film. Many close ups are used to show the facial expressions, there is also a
large use of wide and establishing shots to allow the viewer to understand where the action is taking place
• Sound: diegetic sound to enforce realism however modern ‘party’ music often played when necessary to build
tension
3. Why we chose Social Realism:
•The everyday realistic issues are easy to relate to therefore can
be easily reconstructed.
• Social realism requires less set, props, costume and make-up
compared to thriller.
• Many scenes from social realism films are often filmed in
everyday locations such as a park or an alley way which therefore
makes it more accessible for us to film in.
• Social realism films demonstrate hard hitting ‘in your face’ issues
which often get ignored.
•Social realism films often appear as if filmed through a handheld
camera which makes it look like a documentary type film which
again enforces the realism. This suits the available equipment we
have in schools.
