Period Drama - This Is England

I chose 'This Is England' for my peroid drama choice. The film was made in 2007 and directed by Shane Meadows. The story is based on his real life experience of growing up in the early 1980's England, when Margret Thatcher was in power and privitizing. But the main story of This Is England is about his run-in with the skinhead generation. He uses a young 12 year old boy called Shaun to tell his story, who is a boy who gets bullied a lot by in school. He meets a group of skinheads that take him under their wing, and from there the film takes some twists and turns.

Narrative Structure
This Is England is not just a made up story but it is an account of someone's life. For that reason the movie is very much linear. For example the begining of the movie starts off with Shaun as his normal self and gradually meeting the skinheads to the point where he turns into one, as we can see in the clip above. This clip is shown halfway through the movie. Everything happens in chronological order, there are no time skips in this film whatsoever. It would not make sense otherwise. The clip above is a very important part of the story. Combo, the skinhead talking throughout it shows his true colours in this scene, and it makes us beleive that Shaun has been brought into 'hanging' around with the wrong group of people. If this was shown in a flashback or something around those lines, It would not look the same nor would it feel the same, as feeling like you as a viewer is being there at the moment it is happening.

The film is very realistic. Im sure this is something Meadows as the director wanted it to be like. The film is very bland and gritty. Which is not a bad thing, This just makes the film more realistic. Overall we would call this film a realist. Everything in the film feels so real. Meadows make sure you really feel like you are there and thats the most you as a viewer wants. Like said above. The film does not jump, It has no gaps, it flows, like a straight line, from the begning to end. And it's like we are taking a journey with the characters. I can again use the clip as an example, the face that we watch the fight for a whole 5 minuites. The characters all have back stories (which we kind of find out about the the TV series) but do we get a flashback to how they feel? to what they have been through? No. We just watch the fight it it's entierty, Because this is a real account, not just a fictional story, where flashbacks would make more of a appearence.

Technical Aspects

So here is another clip I found so there are two to look at. It runs along the same lines as the first one, but it has a different setting and a different atmosphere, so when looking at the technical aspects i can compare/look at both analitically. To start of with the camerawork in the film is something I think is very different to a lot of British films I have seen. The camerawork is very still and very professional looking, it is never shaky and never misses something out. It always has a focal point. This is to do with the telling of the story, It wants us to focus on each character. It dosent want us to waste seconds going back and fourth to each little thing. The most important part of this film is the characters and the camerawork makes sure we know this.

Look at the lighting in this clip and the lighting in the clip above. They are both very different. One is more darker than the other but the thing is they both cover the same themes, Of this guys personality and his racial views and how it makes the other characters feel. I think this is a question you have to think about yourself. Personally in mu opinion i think it's because of the end scene, where there is again another fight and we again subjected to this dark and gritty feeling. So having another argument in a light manner gets you prepared for the more darker sensations to come. But that is my feelings about it. There could be many reasons why this was done.

I think the sound is very natural. When they are in a open building, like the clip above, their voices echo. It's part of the film being a realist film. There is not much else to understand.

What i think is amazing about this film is that there are minimal edits. Of course it cuts back and fourth from person to person, but the frames are deffinatly more prolonged than films I have seen in the past. Part of me feels like it is for realism, other parts of me have seen it in other British films, so weather this is just a convention I am not sure, but in this film weather or not that was planned it certainly gives effect.