Conventions
One of the most obvious conventions of a UK film is the accents
and the music it contains as only UK films use “Grime music”. The first sound
the audience hears is an un-copyrighted track by the UK grime artist Joe black.
Automatically this points to a UK youth film coupled with typical UK flat
layout the audience is shown afterwards. The clothes Cavell is wearing is
typical of British Films with its dark theme, in other countries on a sunny day
it would be out of the ordinary to see somebody dressed in dark clothing and a
body warmer however this is a typical convention of British teens. A typical
convention of gangsters is the way they walk or bop around, Cavell walks with a
swagger regardless of his emotional position, this could show how he’s been a
thug for so long it has become part of his while life affecting everything he
does. Another convention used is the use of a hood, Damien is driving his car whilst
wearing his hood behind heavily tinted glass, this connotes that he is trying
to hide himself or something from somebody possibly the Police. Just the
possession of a firearm is a crime that is highly punishable in the UK, knowing
this to have one would mean you have to have a lot of money to get a hold of
one and guns are created to kill people so to need one would make one assume
that they are murderers or are involved in deep criminal activities.
Our opening sequence does look like an opening sequence as we have
used many cuts to show the pace of the story; we have also introduced the main
characters in the film quite early in opening. From only seeing the film
opening that we have created we believe that an audience would know what type
of film is to follow. Opening sequences from similar films such as Kidulthood
and Adulthood make use of both of the aforementioned techniques and have been
successful after using them. I showed the film opening to some of my colleagues
at work and asked them what they thought the film was about and what Genre they thought it belonged to. The main response was that they thought it was a story
about a boys life and what he has to do to survive and at the end he would be
killed. The thought it was a British drama film that showed the wayward actions
teenagers of today do. This was an excellent response as the assumption of the genre was very accurate; the prediction of Cavell’s death or imprisonment was
very realistic for this kind of film so this was also deemed as good feedback.
