Feedback from Screening

We were given the opportunity to present our trailer to the year 12 media classes in our school. This was a fantastic opportunity to get feedback on whether they felt we matched the conventions of our genre and whether they would be inclined to go and see the film.

We handed out a questionnaire to each person containing a variety of questions from "Would you watch this film?" to "What are the three main themes?". As you can see from a few of the responses above, everyone generally had the same answers. All of the participants noticed that it was a social realism, as well as being aimed at females and for the 16-21 year old age group. We also received an overwhelming amount of compliments on the adventurous story line as the participants thought it was quite challenging. The majority of the responses noted that the main themes were abuse, relationships and having a dream.

From the feedback, we can feel confident that through our use of shots and work in post production we have created an effective and appealing social realist teaser trailer.

Final Trailer

This is our final trailer.

Final Website Design

We decided to do some further development on our website and changed a few things as well as worked on what we already had.

HOMEPAGE

For our homepage we chose to use an image, similar to the one we used on our poster so that continuity would occur. We used the Sepia colour filter as well as we did use this type of colour filter on the poster, and compliments the pink date to make it stand out. The colours of pink used, highlight that our target audience would be more female, however, it also helps the key iconic parts of the film such as the date of release stand out. We changed a few elements to help improve our homepage:

1) We changed the Font on the top left hand side to our iconic font that we are using in our poster and our trailer, to create more continuity.

2) We also added our trailer (which will be the finished one) onto the home page and selected an option so that it started automatically when the website came up, increasing our chances and views by people, as they are almost forced to watch it, because the music will start playing and catch them by surprise.

3) We changed the date heading from 'July 2013' to the date that shows on the poster and at the end of the trailer as well, just to create continuity again as they will recognise the numbers rather than the month we felt.

ABOUT

We did not need to change anything on the 'about' section, however if we were to develop the website further, then we would include more quotes and more information on there about the film itself.

GALLERY

We felt that a gallery would help our publicity and show some photos of the characters, which aren't used in our actual trailer. This makes the viewer feel more familiar and maybe more interested to watch it so they can find out about the character and her journey.

CAST

This last tab we felt would be good as it would give a small insight into the characters if someone was further curious after watching our trailer. It will help the viewers relate to characters as well before the film and may encourage people to watch the film more so they find out answers to some cliff-hanger questions that are given away in the bio's of the actors and characters.

Social Realism In British Film

Social Realism in film began in the 1930s, they started by showing documentary films, this was first established by the director John Grierson who created films such as 'Drifters' and Industrial Britain. He decided in these films to show and give everyone an insight into the various careers and also the people behind those jobs. 

Social realism became most successful during the 1960s, this was when a new style of film was made known as, 'British New Wave' and to this day has influenced British film ever since. British New Wave is style of film which displays real life stories and subjects, they tend to be about how harsh the reality of working class Britain is. The stories they tell tend to be about peoples everyday struggle, trying to endure life in working class societies. The setting for social realist films is usually in run down urban areas.

The idea of social realist film began to develop in to something known as the 'kitchen sink' dramas, they were often referred to as 'angry young men' films. This was mainly due to to the focus of the films being on the social and economic problems a young male would endure in a working class societies. They established a male protagonist who attempted to escape society through the use of alcohol, sex, money and drugs. At this time there were many directors coming though who were creating social realist film, a few of these being Karel Reisz and Lindsay Anderson who were directors of the films 'This Sporting Life' and 'if....'.

Tony Richardson was a director most known or his work during the 1960s, he was a part of the 'free cinema', this was the practice of putting ordinary people with problems on to the big screen. This made the films he made seem more realistic as the featured actors weren't famous, they were merely just normal people. He is and example of a director that has adapted his films from types of literature and theatre which were full of social realism. One of his most famous films being 'A Taste of Honey' which was originally a play.

The early social realist films have largely influenced the film industry to this very day, and the films being made are still based upon the constant struggle in working class societies. The films, Ratcatcher, Billy Elliot and This is England are all modern day examples of the traditional social realist film, based around the working class communities attempt to survive at the bottom of the social hierarchy. 

Conventions of Social Realism Films

-Social Realism films usually depict working class activites as heroic, therefore are commonly set in council estates and run down areas.

-The actors and actresses used in these films are usually unknown so when the audience watches it they do not have a opinion or knowledge of them, therefore it is easier to believe that they are a nobody, making the film more successful as they fit to their character.

-There is also a lack of flashy edits to make it look more realistic, as well as the sound being mostly diegetic to emphasise the realistic aspect of the film.



We will use these conventions as a tool for our trailer. We have seen that these social realisms are usually very hard-hitting and therefore we need to reflect this aspect of the genre in our trailer.