Objective One: Realistic Performances

 

For the two objectives I chose to write about, both of them were almost entirely focused on during the shoot days and only the shoot days. The first objective, achieving realistic performances over dramatic, was probably the most important aspect of the film in terms of direction. The first day of shooting was when the actors started to become quite comfortable with their roles. When going through the first takes, I feel I was able to calm them down and encourage them to put less emphasis on some of the actions. On the first day we shot scene four and scene five, both required a lot of anger. By letting the actors use the dialogue as a guide, I encouraged them to say exactly what they thought the character would say in that situation. This mainly lead to the father character add in some useful actions during Sam’s dialogue.

Objective Two: Social Realism in a non working class environment

This was the most concerning part of the entire shoot. Possibly the biggest challenge, I used as much as I had learned to tell this story realistically without relying on any unrealistic techniques. One of the main ways I incorporated this was the use of only natural light and practical’s. This immediately makes the footage look much more realistic, as there is not light coming from an unknown source. As well as this, I used inspiration from Archipelago for some of the shots. Using longer, drawn own shots for some of the scenes aided in sticking to the genre as the audience is forced to focus on one character. As well as all of this, the use of handheld throughout the film not only aided with the speed of the shoot, but created a personal space for the characters which I loved.

Overarching Aim: To understand the main difference between Drama and Social Realism

From creating this film, I have come to one rather surprising conclusion. There are almost no differences between social realism and drama films, whether they be short or feature length. The main difference I have found between the two is the dialogue. In drama’s, the dialogue is significantly more planned and “perfect”, whereas in social realism it seems to be more of a guide as to what to say.

On Set:

I don’t think the shoot could have gone any better than it did. We had three full days in the house with no interruptions. The only issue that arose was the tardiness of an actor and crew member on the first day. However the actor was stopped by the police, and the crew member had to carry food for the entire cast and crew, which was only 7 people.

Look into the future:

Myself and my group have decided to try and enter this film into as many festivals as we are allowed to, mainly focusing on LGBT festivals due to the very subtle homosexual theme.