What impact did the media institution film 4 have on each production stage and why?
Pre-Production •
•
Film four focuses on the gritty kitchen sink drama to represent Britain in a realistic way . They do this to challenge stereotypical views of what Britain is actually like for example This is England is set in a particularly poor looking area to bring attention to the working class lifestyle . In our film the locations we used were estates to connote a run down area in which the gang are brought up in. Also film four look into very controversial themes to address in there films to leave a lasting impression on there audience to create a word of mouth. This would be found in the film hunger as its about terrorism of the IRA and how they were treated in prison, this was a real life story and therefore more people could relate to it as they already had knowledge about the topic. We chose a controversial topic in our work as gang culture is an issue currently being tackled by the government for example with the London riots people developed a certain perception of teenagers in London. We thought that addressing this storyline with a twist to it would change peoples original perception, as our main character wants to get out of the struggle of gang culture. Film four also like to showcase4 new talent in their work, for example John Byega was casted as a lead character in ‘Attack the Block’ we were able to then use characters that didn’t have much experience in acting but had a similar lifestyle to the characters in our film. We also looked into the sound used in Film four films, we thought that the grime music used linked well with gang life, as they enjoy that type of music, we also chose to have a lot of diegetic sound as it is more realistic when there is no music.
Production •
Film four use shaky camera movement when showing fast pace action for example someone running away in fish tank to show the intensity of the scene and this makes the audience feel more involved and makes the shot look more realistic. We used this when the gang were running away after robbing a lady’s bag, we used this because we felt it can clearly relate to a British social realism film as it’s a realist portrayal of that type of situation.
•
We used a lot of slow editing the reason being to create a more documentary type feel to the scene, this was used when the main character was on the phone in the hallway as it creates suspense and also creates a tense kind of atmosphere to show the emotion of the character. This technique came from the scene in hunger where they use a long take when showing the conversation between the two men and this also created a tense and serious feel to the scene. Film four budget is low as they are an independent company meaning that the quality of footage is poor, this meant we saved a lot of money on the equipment we used as it was funded by the school. We used standard handheld digital cameras however we would have liked to have used HD cameras as the quality would be much clearer and would be a lot more realistic of what the film four company would have used. We was also able to use iMovie when editing meaning that we could edit the film similar to how a british social realism film would be edited.
•
Distribution •
Film four use there website and also there channel to promote and advertise there own films for example This is England – they made a spin off show to keep the film relevant to there target audience. In our film we would look to use the film four website to virally market it as internet access is free and accessible to the target audience and as our audience is between 16-24 year olds they would be more likely to go online and view or purchase our film.
•
Another way would be to showcase it in a art house cinema as they show independent label films and this would also attract our target audience as they would visit these type of cinemas as they are more aware of where they can access there films.