Our film is categorized as a British Social Realism (BSR) film that aims to highlight social issues and provide insight into characters and topics. To develop conventions of the genre, we shot scenes in real environments outside and at a character's home to make it realistic. We also included realistic scenarios involving gang violence and drugs to portray societal issues typically shown in BSR films. Throughout the film, we used various camera shots and challenged conventions like maintaining consistent character outfits to engage audiences and maintain the story. Overall, our film effectively uses and develops conventions of the BSR genre to distinguish it from big budget Hollywood films.

1. EVALUATION QUESTION 1
In What Way Does Your
Media Product Use,
Develop and Challenge
Conventions of Real Media
Product?

2. Well, our film is categorised as a BSR which stands for British Social
Realism Film. One of the main reasons BSR are films are constructed is
to, highlight different society issues within the community which don’t
really get addressed properly in public. Another reason is so that the
audience can get an insight, understanding and connection with the
characters as well as the topic of the film. Lastly BSR films tends to shy
away from big budget production films type of genre, so it would be
more realistic/relatable to the viewers. Our Film “The Last Pack” is a
typical drugs / gang violence film which are similar to films like
Brotherhood, Attack the Block, Goodfellas etc. However we wanted to
switch it up from you’re typical gang violence/ drugs films. We decided
as a group (Elegance Pictures), that we would show it from a sixth
former prospective in how that sort of lifestyle tends to be. It also
helped to highlights his daily struggles as teenager being exposed to
all these harmful substance and individuals.

3. In our film we decided to add essential characteristics which highlight the whole
point of BSR (British Social Realism) films, like shooting our scenes outside in
real environments. Although most of the scene was shown within a school,
Emmanuel is showing his lifestyle and how he’s trying to get away from gang
violence and drugs. In one of the scene’s called the “Chase Scene” to make it it
as realistic as possible, we decided to shoot the scene outside near shops,
alleyways etc. However some of the audience might question why would the
main character be involved in gang violence, when he’s a sixth form student or
why was the mentor allowed randomly into the school etc. Lastly we also went
out to Harry's house to film the home scene’s to do with Emmanuel to show
what a typical teenagers spends his time doing when they arrive back at home.
We showed that through the character playing video games, eating downstairs
etc. We showed this scene because we want to display Emmanuel as a normal
teenager outside his gang and drug dealing lifestyle.

4. Within the Film, we tried to surprise the audience twice by revealing
that Arianna set up Emmanuel and the person Emmanuel bumped
into the shops was his mentor later on the film. However with
Arianna, we had left the audience clues to indicate that she was a
doggy character at the beginning. Alex constantly reminds Emmanuel
that he’s positive that he's seen Arianna before. When Alex finally
remembered who she was, it was too late to save Emmanuel from the
situation. Nevertheless throughout all the warning Alex gave
Emmanuel, he decided to ignore them all and go along with his
feelings. Lastly we also revealed that Emmanuel had a mentor that he
bumped into that same hour when being chased from Solomon and
his gang. The reason we did this is so the audience would at first
think he’s a normal civilian walking out o the shop, however he would
later on be the same person who prevents him form getting caught by
Solomon and his Gang, and mentor him towards a better future.

5. Also In our film we decided to add realistic situation/scenario’s which
tend to occur in society issues such as gang violence and drugs which
are normally in BSR films. The reason we decided to include these
types of bad scenarios/situaitions is to highlight the whole point of
BSR films. Unlike Hollywood big budgeted films, BSR films highlights
all the pain scenarios which typically occur in today’s society issues.
Although with Emmanuel, as a group we tried to show how his
lifestyle in the beginning was changing when the film was beginning
to end. This is so the audience isn’t entire disappointed throughout
the film and can feel a sense of happiness acknowledging that
Emmanuel is becoming a change teen.

6. Also in the film, we added other characters which is used in similar
films like “Show, Don’t Tell”. Within the film we, Emmanuel is
mentioned a couple times about his drug dealing past but never show
the drug dealing scene’s itself. We decided to use this effect because
we didn’t want to remind the audience about his past because he’s
trying to change his current self throughout the film. That’s why in
the film there were little point to show about his past without going
to much in depth about his past. We also showed that Emmanuel is
involved in gang violent related activates when he runs into Solomon.
Solomon and his group surrounding and harassing Emmanuel with
questions to do with the money Emmanuel owed him in the past
which Solomon hadn’t received yet.

7. Within the film, we had used multiple variety of camera shots within
the films so the audience would get an appropriate view of the
storyline whilst feeling engaged with the characters. The shots we
had gathered are typical shot which tend to be in most BSR films. We
used multiple camera shot like over the shoulder shot, tracking shots,
long range shots, close ups. All the shots had played crucial shots in
giving the audience a good understanding of the film whilst feeling
engaged with the audience. A good example would be when
Emmanuel pushed away from Solomon, he showed multiple shots so
the audience could get a 360 viewpoint of what happened to Solomon
when he got pushed. One of the shots we had used when Solomon
got pushed was medium shot because as a group we felt that we
could capture everyone’s emotions effectively with this camera angle.
Also we felt this technique would be good way for the audience to
grab everyone’s emotions effectively this way.

8. In the film we had o challenge multiple conventions which helped to
keep the consistency within the film. We made sure if we had to
record the same scene a different day, the character all still wore the
same clothes etc. Also if the character was in a different day then the
character would change their clothes, to indicate the day has changed.
However in some scenes we decided to keep some of the characters in
the same clothes to because of the environment they were living in,
always being in the streets etc, that they didn’t have enough income in
household or weren’t receiving enough money form their parents etc.

9. When using all the different characteristics in a typically BSR film like,
different camera angles, using real environments, creating suspense,
using realistic scenarios/situations, challenging other BSR films. We
can confidently say that our film doesn’t have the same similarities as
big Hollywood budget films and successfully made a short film.