This document discusses the conventions of social realism films and how the media product challenges and develops these conventions. It notes that typical conventions include having a troubled protagonist who receives help from a supporting character. While the media product incorporates these elements, it also subverts conventions through techniques like handheld camerawork and character introductions. The document argues the media product takes inspiration from different genres to challenge strict definitions of genre, as theorized by Neale and Todorov.

1. In what ways does your media
product use, develop or
challenge forms and
conventions of real media
products?
Ben Finch‘Genres are instances of repetition
and difference’ -Steve Neale

2. Typical conventions of social realism
• The overall convention of a social realist/coming of age film is that a young man or woman
experiences problems which the audience can relate to.
• The protagonist uses help of a supporting role who helps them through their troubled
times.
• In Submarine, OliverTate is the troubled teenager who is making his way through
adolescence.The support who helps him is in the form of his girlfriend Jordana.
• Another example is This Is England, in which a young boy is having issues with bullying, as a
result, a skin head gang take him in to help him.
• This is a constant theme which I used as an underlying storyline in my trailer.

3. Links
• My main protagonist is having problems as a result of trying to imitate the
lives of his rock star idols, his friend is the one who tries to help him.
• Directors of social realist films make the protagonist appear isolated in the
beginning of the trailer, I have managed to follow this.

4. Links continued
• As well as this, the protagonist gives a voice over to explain his situation and
outline any problems. I have used this technique to set up the character and
the setting of the film.
• Another use of sound in my trailer is the music. In the trailer for Submarine,
AlexTurner has done the music as he is an example of the type of music the
audience would listen to. I have incorporated this by taking inspiration from
bands favoured by my target audience when writing my trailer’s music.

5. Subverting conventions
• In the trailers I have seen, most use standard methods of filming with a lot of
interesting camera angles. However, in my trailer, I used a handheld camera which
gave it a slight shake at times.This was done to subvert the connotations and allow
the viewer to feel more connected and involved with the story.
• I also used a trick to introduce the characters, this was done by freezing a frame of
the character and putting their name on screen.This was not done in the social
realist trailers I watched, however, it was done in the trailer for the movie ‘Snatch’,
this is where I got the idea from and I feel it works well in my trailer.

6. Theorists
• Neale argued that it is difficult to make distinctions between different genres as the
overlap.There are always different features that mean a media text can be interpreted as
different genres.This is true of my trailer as the original genre was to be social realist,
however, there are elements present that could also define it as a coming of age film.
• Todorov goes one further and states that ‘any instance of a genre will be necessarily
different’, this means that each film presents its own genre or take on genre.
• Even though different media texts do pose new incites into genre, it is important for them
to keep aspects of repetition as that is what keeps audiences and allows them to enjoy
films.