Events in a Social realism often contain reference to drug use and abuse, alcohol abuse, sex, theft, parties, death, violence, teenage pregnancy and racism. Our short film definitely follows this convention. One of our main characters are displayed openly smoking and consuming alcohol around a child aswell. Although, no racism, theft or deaths are shown throughout or the use of dometsic violence i feel there is an aspect of neglect to the protaginist which can clearly be identified.

Characters:Many of the social realism films often feature actors and actresses who are unknown or not very well known globally. This keeps to the genre meaning it could happen to anyone in today's society. Teenagers are mainly featured in social realism films. The characters are often unemployed or out of education (poorly educated). Social realism films often feature multicultural characters from urban and city areas with heavy accents. Our film follows this convention to an extent whereby non of the actors are proffesional but however instead of using a teenager for the protanginist we used a young boy. This was in order for the audience to connect with the character and feel his pain and struggle more. Due to the target auidence being mainlyadults, the maoirty may have kids which means they will feel a connection for him without planning to. 

Themes:Social realism focus mostly on poverty, hard gritty reality of the working class and poorer individuals in life. Unemployment, drug addiction, violence, domestic violence, gangs, racism, illness and disease. My theme touches upon addiction with alcholcol and cigarette use and unemployment but the key theme portrayed is mental illness.

Mise en Scene Social realism is featured in urban areas, cities, estates. The use of low lighting to create a dark and dingy atmosphere representing the typical British weather. Costume is heavily depending on the film. It is often urban clothing such as tracksuits, baggy clothing, trainers and hats. This lack of fashion sense shows the poverty effecting those featured. All of the characters in my film wore plain white or black, the protaginist was always seen in the same outfit of a black tracksuit.The accents which are featured within the film by the characters help establish the area which the film is based. For example; in the film Kidulthood, the strong London accent the characters speak is evident. The use of strong language puts across the anger of the characters. The film including strong language is what made me change the target audience to adults as it would no be acceptableto those under the age of 15.Fonts that are used within the films for the credits are usually Sans Serif. This is seen to be a working class font as it is simple showing lack of effort fitting the social realism genre. Some also appear in the graffiti form, for example the “This is England” titles appear in the graffiti form attempting to add to the stereotype of the lower class characters. My title consists of Sans Serif but the title remains bold, plain and clear to emphsise the dull life he leads.

Editing: Social realism uses minimal special effects and editing features to keep it looking as authentic as possible. This is compared to the use of lots of special effects in the Hollywood “glamorous” industry.