Comparison and Analysis of each of our Narratives

Decided Film Narrative

Sam Warren, James Scott and I met up and shared each of the narratives we had made up. We looked at the benefits and drawbacks of each and combined our ideas to create a single narrative, leaving out aspects that were unsuitable or unachievable for our budget. After deciding this we started putting together a storyboard and I will upload pictures at a later date. Combining our ideas gives us all some involvement and makes us more self invested in producing something of good quality. I feel as though the death of our main character at the ending makes our film stand out from other in the genre because real life doesn't always have happy endings. Usually in British film Dramas the female character is the cause of some violence, however in our narrative she is more of a saviour and helps Shaun get clean.

The main character is a 17 year old male who attends his local high school to study for A levels. However he leads a troubled life as early in his teenage life his mum died, driving his dad to alcoholism and an abusive relationship between father and son. They would constantly argue and bicker over the drinking and most issues that faced them, the petty arguments eventually led to physical confrontations that would ensue whenever the main characters father would drink heavily and as the months passed on this became every night.

Originally Shaun was an A grade, punctual and attentive student at school. He had a large group of close fiends with similar but also different interests to himself which complimented his ability to communicate with anyone no matter what background they had and this made him a very likeable character. It was unlike Shaun to get into trouble for anything with anyone, always did what he was told and finished classwork and homework on time with the occasional late hand in. He and three of his friends were very active together going to the GYM most of the days of the week and playing football on the weekends which kept him healthy and got him away from problems at home.

These characteristics that his father has past on only become prevalent later in the plot of the film. Before this the character starts hanging around with a friend he has met through his other close friends and he soon realises that this persons has different pass times than he and his normal group of friends do. This person introduces the main character to smoking cigarettes at first ,which is unhealthy but not too bad but as the weeks go by this escalates to harder drugs and getting up to criminal activities such as theft. He does these things to get money to purchase the harder drugs as he cannot hold down a part time job with the constant absences and going in late he gets fired from most of them.
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Because of his regular drug use our character developed a working relationship with the dealer and began to sell drugs for him at school discretely as a way of making money to pay for necessities at home and personal items as his dad was still absorbed in alcoholism and spending the majority of money on himself. Despite the characters lifestyle he still managed to get 7 A-C grades at GCSE securing himself a place at his schools sixth form. Unlike the other students his priority wasn't to get the grades he needs for a better life but to keep him self close to his regular customers. By now he had developed enough trust to start selling harder drugs to his customers and was entrusted with introducing them to cocaine. This brought him an increased income, but his "mates" from high school who failed their GCSE's were stuck as runners, delivering drugs to houses that had ordered from the the dealer. They become jealous and begin to harass the character questioning him why he was abandoning them when they were the ones that made his "success" possible. This leads to a fist fight between the main character and his best mate that would also have a strong narrative within the early film to establish him as a character, but the main character ends up winning the fight and the mates split up with a sour taste lingering in their mouth.

As the weeks progress the main character becomes friendly with a girl who is new to the sixth form and doesn't know about his life and so as they begin to talk after sitting next to each other in a class, they begin to fall for each other. As they begin to date the main character opens up about his life and instead of her abandoning him like he expected she stays and helps him to turn his life around. Our main character begins to study for his subjects and gradually starts to move away from the life of a drug dealer eventually cutting ties with the dealer and his associates to go straight. He even begins to try and reconnect with his dad despite him still being a drunk, but years had passed since his mother death and their physical fights had decreased once the protagonist could fight back. they began to talk and slowly rebuild the relationship they had lost.

Around two months pass without the dealer having any contact with the main character and so he sends one of his enforcers to check out the situation by sending him to his house to ensure that he doesn't tell anyone about what he knows. The enforcer finds the house and knocks on the door. The protagonist opens it and immediately recognises the enforcer as one of the dealers people and tells him he is no longer under his employment as he can better himself through lawful means. The enforcer reacts by threatening the protagonist in order to ensure his silence, threatening him and his dad. Although the protagonist had been clean for two months and no longer associated himself with his criminal contacts he still had the mentality that had been drilled into in recent years. To not take threats and respond with violence. He grabs an empty beer bottle his dad had left by the door and glasses the enforcer over the head cutting him deeply. Surprised the enforcer recoils back in pain and the protagonist puts the broken bottle against his throat and tells him if any of his men come back he will do permanent damage to them. Clutching his head the enforcer runs off to inform the dealer of the confrontation and the protagonists words.

After hearing about the confrontation at the protagonists house the dealer decides that the protagonists knows too much about his operation and needs to be silenced. He orders a hit on the protagonist and tells his old friend to do it to make it more personal for the protagonist glassing his enforcer.

The friend knew where the protagonist lived and the route he took to and from school. He gets two of his other mates to help him ambush the protagonist on his way to sixth form and decides that the side street by the river is the best place to do so. They make there way to the spot the next day and he orders his two mates to sit on a wall and chill for a a bit whilst he took position in a hiding spot. When the protagonist arrived he would spring his ambush.

Unaware the protagonist walks down the passage holding his folders when he spots the two the two teenagers sitting talking by the wall and recognises them as the enforcers runners. He decides to walk past them to show them he isn't afraid of the dealer or his threats when both of them stand up and block his path. Before the protagonist can react his old fiend jumps out from hiding holding a knife and hearing him come up behind him the protagonist turns around to see his attacker as he plunges the knife into his stomach. The two lock eyes and pause for seconds that feel like hours before the attacker twists the knife and pulls it out and the group run off in multiple directions. The protagonist falls against the wall and holds onto his wound. His breathing raspy and his body cold he looks down at his wound and sees nothing but bright red. Looking up at the sky the thinks of the past few months and how he was changing his life around for the better and the girl who made it possible. He smiles as he thinks of her and looks once more at his wound. Despite what has happened, he wouldn't have changed  his decision to go straight he thought as he looked up once more. They were the best two months he had had in years and he was happy that he had tried his hardest to fix his his life. He smiles an even wider smile. Then he's gone.

Magazine Analysis

Unable to find a magazine with a film that relates to the genre we have chosen, so I have decided just to analyse the layout that film magazines have.

BBFC Rating for our film

Films that are going to be theatrically released are normally examined by two people using the published guidelines, and most of time will be approved by a senior examiner. The examiners must look at issues like: discrimination, drugs, horror, sex, sexual violence and violence when making decisions.

We have decided to rate our film 18 due to the strong violence and references to drugs that would not be suitable for a young audience to witness or hear. If we decided to censor certain scenes and dialogue from the film then we feel as though it would lose its initial momentum and message. There is also a chance that it could seem less realistic to viewers ,which would give it a watered down effect. However you could also say that since the viewers have not seen the rest of the film or scene we have shot it would not make a difference to them.

I feel as though a better way around this would be to create a greenband trailer, including all the violence and foul language, and to create a television trailer which can be viewed by the rest of the public giving mass  media coverage influencing other to seek out the greenband trailer. 

Poster Comparisons

Green Street Hooligans

The Brick wall used as the background of the poster conotes that the film takes place in an urban environment , as this is the most common place for football stadiums to be and where hooliganism takes place and if they didn't decode this from the title it is reinstated here.

The use of a group of people in the poster represents the sense of gang mentaility, which is a popular convention of British Film Dramas, and the importance of having other people to look out for you in the urban environment the film takes place in.

Legend

The use of two of the main character standing side by side in the poster denotes that the two have a strong family and friend relationship, that they are there to protect each other, which follows the convention of the importance of family in British Film Dramas and the part the family plays in getting into crime. The fact that in Legend and Green Street the narrative is shared between charcters shows that the majority of films in this genre involve side by side stories of individual and so to make our trailer stand out it would make sense to have a narrative that focuses on one character.

The use of a blood red border to the font and the outline of the city connotes that there is a lot of death and viloence throughout the film, again following the conventions.

My Narrative Idea - Street Life

My idea focuses on the social life of an adolescent boy in sub-urban Manchester and the challenges he faces when it comes to peer pressure, drugs, alcohol and violence.

The main character is a college student and so has a lot of free time available outside of school, which is when he hangs around with lots of his friends. By day the group seem to be an ordinary bunch of well rounded teenagers, slowly turning into adults. They have part time jobs that pay quite well for their age, they play lots of different sports, go to the gym frequently in the week and make sure all there work is done on time to a good standard. However. when the weekend comes around this calm and collective side to them changes and with it comes the drugs, alcohol and eventually ,for our main character, addiction.

It all starts at home with marital issues between both of his parents, his dad would have affairs with other women without his mother noticing for a time until she found another phone in his trouser pocket that was the original one he had. After looking through his phone for a while she comes across some text from past flings he has had and this is the straw that breaks the camels back, as they had been arguing quite a lot lately. Once she moved out it was just our main character and his poor role model of a father and although their relationship was good and they were close, the father bad habits became the sons.

These characteristics that his father has past on only become prevalent later in the plot of the film. Before this the character starts hanging around with a friend he has met through his other close friends and he soon realises that this persons has different pass times than he and his normal group of friends do. This person introduces the main character to smoking cigarettes at first ,which is unhealthy but not too bad but as the weeks go by this escalates to harder drugs and getting up to criminal activities such as theft. He does these things to get money to purchase the harder drugs as he cannot hold down a part time job with the constant absences and going in late he gets fired from most of them.

Problems arise when he gets into debt with a drug dealer and frequently misses his college classes. The main character promises to pay the dealer back repeatedly and avoids contact with him for weeks as he sees this as his lowest point and decides he doesn't want this life any more and wants to kick this addiction. The problem with this is that the dealer needs the money to pay his suppliers and knows people that go to the main characters college who he gets to look out for him and inform him of what will happen if he doesn't pay the next time he sees him.

After a month or so of no contact with the dealer and almost kicking his addiction, the main character is walking home one night from a local GYM when he notices he is being followed by a large man, who he thinks he witnessed leaving the GYM just as he arrived. The pace of the man following increases with his own, nerves strike him hard as he recalls what the dealer told him a month ago and a chase begins. The main character gets closer and closer to home, jumping walls and taking alternate routes to help him get away from the antagonist but he just cant seem to get away. He approaches a train line and notices a train coming about to pass and sees it as an opportunity to lose his follower and just as the train comes to pass he makes it to the other side of the track, narrowly avoiding the train, however his follower is not as lucky and is hit by the train.         

Moodboard for Narrative