Media Coursework

1. Location is a typical convention of social realism where social
realism films are usually shot on location as opposedto Hollywood
films which are shot on a set or in a studio. For British social
realism, location plays a big part in setting the scene and the films
are usually shot on location (e.g. council estates) to show the gritty
nature of social realism making them appear more true to real life
for the audience. In our short film, we have shot on various
locations such as a park and college to portray the reality of a
teenager’s life and create verisimilitude in our film.
The use of the café scene shows the gritty reality of this characters
life as cafes are often associated with poorerpeople and the
lighting was dark to show how grim she was feeling.
In our short film we used various locations we and other teenagers
would use to enhance the portrayal of reality in our film. One of the
locations we used in our short film was a park and by using this we
showed a place where teenagers regularly spend time with each
other. We also used the location of our college which adheres to a
British social realism film convention of shooting on location
because teenagers typically attend a place of education in real life
and by showing this it conveys a sense of reality to our audience.
Ferdinand de Saussure focuses on the theory of semiotics which
the study of signs and their meaning in society.A sign is
something which can stand for something else – in other words, a

2. sign is anything that can convey meaning. We have used this
theory in our short films by showing signs to stand for things
through the use of our location. For example, the location of the
park signifies youth because children typically play in a park and
this shows the adolescence ofour characters. Also the use of the
college location signifies education and shows that our characters
are still young due to the fact they still attend education. Finally,
the location of an alley signifies danger because there is a sense
of eeriness and alarm.
In this part of the essay I will be explaining the ways the characters
in our short film were presented and whether this adhered or
challenged the forms and convention of social realism. It can be
argued that females in British social realism and films are usually
portrayed as dependent,passive,sexual objects e.c.t. This
argument is supported by media theorist Laura Mulvey, she
focuses onthe concept‘male gaze, she believes that in films the
audiences have to view characters from the perspective of a
heterosexual male. She argues that this is done through the
camera, mise en scene such as clothing e.c.t. According to
Mulvey, the camera lingers on the curves of the female body, she
agues that films relegates women to the status of objects.This is
apparent in many social realism films, in particular ‘Fish Tank’.
This is due to the fact that the main female character ends up
having sex with her mothers boyfriend,another example from Fish
Tank is the fact that the main characters mother is portrayed to be
dependentof her boyfriend and weak, and that she cannot love
without him. Both these examples support the male gaze theory as
the female characters in the film are portrayed as sexual objects,
weak and reliant on males. In our short-film it can be argued that
we challenge this, this is due to the fact that the two main female
characters in our film divert away from this stereotype.For
example, the character Amberis portrayed as violent and

3. dangerous, this is show in the scene when she stabs Shanice.
This challenges the typical codes and convention of social realism,
as she is not passive or quiet, she does an act that many may
deem as abnormal behavior of a girl. It can also be argued that
boys usually perform knife crime. As a result of this our short-film
does challenge the forms and conventions of social realism.
The typical editing style of short films or social realism films
includes long cuts, minimal establishing shots and no special
effects or over-trickery. An example of this is the short film Two
Cars, One Night, which includes mostly mid-shots of the two
characters, and long-cuts.We used this convention in our short film
by using long-cuts and mostly mid-shots. However, we also
developedthis convention by including some tracking shots,
establishing shots and non-diegetic sound, in the form of a musical
score and a couple of sound effects such as “Metal Crash B” from
the editing software we’re using, Final Cut Pro. The musical score
is used in the opening scenes of our short film and the tracking
shot is used for the scene,which follows the characters into the
bathroom scene.Weused non-diegetic sound in the opening
scenes of the film because it represents how the lives of the
characters depicted are happy. We used the sound effect“Metal
Crash B” because it brought an abrupt end to both the musical
score and the opening scenes.
Creativity is a key part of the processof making a short film, in this
case a social realism film. As our equipment was limited it meant
that we had to think of creative ways to make to our film appeal to

4. our target audience such as editing camera angles. An example of
a creative choice was the time lapse that showed the scene
rewinding in a fun way. As our target audience is young teenagers
we know they like visually aesthetic content and therefore
considered this whilst filming our short film. We adhered to some
of the typical conventions in our film such as the length of our film
and shooting on location, whilst challenging it through the ideas
and stereotypes such as girls not being associated with violence.
The use of editing music in our film was a creative choice as it
fitted the scene and the mod that we were trying to convey – e.g.
sad or mysterious.
This scene adheres to the ideas of danger that is often shown in
reality, as is a dark alleyway and people would assume that
something bad is going to happen.