which part of my film I am filming

I will be filming Barry leaving his house and going to meet the Loan Shark. I will also be filming them both speaking and sorting out 'business' problems.

Synopsis

1984 in Britain and Margaret Thatcher is prime minister. The poor are poorer, the rich are richer and unemployment is through the roof.  Barry Clark has just lost his job and has hit an all-time low; he lives in a damp rented council flat and rarely sees his son who lives with his ex-wife. He needs to start getting some sort of income or just enough in his pocket so he can pay his rent but getting a job is not going to happen any time soon. Although he really doesn’t want to and knows it may end badly Barry goes to see a loan shark. At first the loan shark seems like a decent man and loans Barry an adequate amount of money. However, when it comes to Barry paying the money back the loan shark isn’t so reasonable. Obviously Barry cannot pay back the loan shark, or at least all at once, he just needs time but the loan shark wants it all at once, and Barry has 48 hours to get the money to him.  The loan shark then calls Barry and arranges to meet him down at the old fishing docks for a ‘business’ meeting. Barry goes to meet him, but doesn’t have the money, luckily and unbelievably Barry manages to talk his way out of it and gets his repayment time extended, and in the end gets the money that he owes.  

genre conventions

Social realist films try to be as ‘real’ as possible. They tend to steer away from really fancy cinematography and special effects to keep the film as ‘real’ as they can. Ken Loach, for example, who is a social realist director, uses less known or unknown actors and only gives them the script for the scene they are filming on the day so they don’t know what will happen, thus creating a ‘real’ feel as their emotions and responses will be real as they didn’t know what was coming and a lot of improvisation was needed, again giving it a more ‘real’ feel to it.

Social realist films often involve the working class and tackle problems which are going on the world such as unemployment. Such films are generally set in the north of England in council estates and grimy pubs. The characters nearly always have a very strong ‘common’ accent.

My film extract however will also have some conventions of the crime genre. Crime films tend to focus more on the criminal opposed to the police officers and glorify the rise and fall of the criminal. Within the crime genre you would expect to see at least one of, if not several or all of the following; serial killers/murders, robberies, chases, shootouts, heists and double-crosses.  Crime films are more then often set in the big city, or underground clubs and dark alley ways away from the police and other civilians. Film gangsters are usually materialistic, street-smart and self-destructive. A significant plot within a crime film would be a rivalry with another criminal. The gangsters or criminals Success is often measured in material goods – flashy cars, expensive clothes, and mansions.

Vary rarely does the criminal get caught or end up dead, and if they do get arrested they will most probably end up finding their way out of prison. They are also often set during the night time as a criminal wouldn’t work during the day as it would be too easy for them to be caught. Sometimes big heists such as bank robberies may take place during the day while the bank is open.

Update

The genre of the extract from a film I am making will be social realist, I was inspired by the work of Ken Loach after watching a few clips from 'Raining Stones'. Although, my film extract will also have conventions of the crime/gangster genre as I am using the story type 'the debt that must be repaid'. The part of the film I am shooting will involve an unemployed man whos in debt meeting with the loan shark, but I want to make it different to the typical 'man gets in debt, cant repay it then gets beat up' so im still in the process of writing the synopsis but I do have the majority of it written so I will have that finished this week. I want to film my extract on the old fishing docks as its all run down and abandoned and looks the type of place for dodgey goings on. I have ideas of what I want characters and costumes etc to be like and as soon as I have written the synopsis I will start writing the script.

Brief

Develop an extended sequence from an imagined feature