1. Social Realism Research By Ben Amiet

2.  Social realism is a mainly typical ‘British’ film genre.  It depicts the social, racial and economic hardships felt by people in everyday life and how people struggle.  The activities and hardships in which the working class have to deal with or represented as heroic Social Realism

3. General Conventions  The situations and events, in which the characters find themselves in are all realistic e.g. gang warfare, illegal immigrants, racism etc. Gang action in kidulthood.  Social realism films mostly set in realistic locations, usually urban cities, towns etc. Which include gritty urban environment's.

4. Camera shots/angels/movements  The movement used is raw, usually handheld.  POV and Tracking shots get the audience in the action, and keep them entertained  There is a high use of close-ups, to show the emotion in the characters face

5. Example Moneyball clip  In this clip, Billy Beane is consulting his scouts over the loss of players and the way of combating it. There are a great use of close-ups to show the characters feature and emotions at the time. Also there a few mid-shots to show more of the characters and more than one at a time.

6. Visual examples Dirty Pretty Things and This is England Here is a close up from This is England, this show all the features of the character and how they are feeling at that point in time. In this shot from Dirty Pretty Things, is also a good close shot which shows the emotion and contact between the two characters.

7. Editing  In social realism films there is continuity editing to convey realism.  The cuts which are used are simple and slow to reflect real life.  The cross-cutting between shots link different character’s storylines and conversations between them.

8. Editing Examples Moneyball editing example In this clip there is smooth simple cuts between scenes showing the conversation between the two character and how they interact with each other. They are slow paced and reflect the real time speed.

9. Characters  The characters in social realism films are shown as working class hero’s, who overcome the situation in which they are in  The types of characters found are not usually found in mainstream films. So groups or individuals that are marginalised and underrepresented.  The specific defining of a social realism character is hard as society changes with history and so does the character within the films.

10. Examples of Characters Trevor Trevor is a 15 year old boy, growing up in urban west London, from the film Kidulthood, the situation he is in is realistic (gang culture) and has many things to overcome in his life. Billy Beane Billy is an older guy from the film MoneyBall which is based on a true story, he has to take a failing baseball team with no money to a championship winning team by taking away all the normal ways of buying players. By the end he is seen as a hero for changing the way baseball is played

11. Mise-en-scene  The lighting on social realism films are usually dark and de-saturated  The settings are most often urban cities and large or small communities  The props used are all just normal items in everyday life.