Results
Fish Tank – 2 minute intro Analysis
The film starts with a blank background with bold plain text of the title ‘FISH TANK’ accompanied with the sound of heavy breathing for a few seconds, the breathing continues and cuts to a girl leaning forward breathing deeply. The opening to a film sets the tone and the theme for the whole film; by just giving us a simple title with no effects or starting with a few establishing shots this sets the film up in a different way, what it first does is give us the sound of the first shot with an uninteresting title then continues the sound with the shot of the main character who is in the same position as the title shown previously, and facing directly at us like the title ; this way the opening title becomes part of the opening scene itself, and why the director would of done this, is to throw the audience straight into the film without a build-up so that we are gripped and focusing on what is happening right away, it makes you wonder ‘why is there a girl out of breath?’ and makes the viewer think about her, the place and the scene right from the title making it more interesting because we are encouraged to question and meaning that the dialogue does not have to explain much about the scene or situation.
The film starts with a blank background with bold plain text of the title ‘FISH TANK’ accompanied with the sound of heavy breathing for a few seconds, the breathing continues and cuts to a girl leaning forward breathing deeply. The opening to a film sets the tone and the theme for the whole film; by just giving us a simple title with no effects or starting with a few establishing shots this sets the film up in a different way, what it first does is give us the sound of the first shot with an uninteresting title then continues the sound with the shot of the main character who is in the same position as the title shown previously, and facing directly at us like the title ; this way the opening title becomes part of the opening scene itself, and why the director would of done this, is to throw the audience straight into the film without a build-up so that we are gripped and focusing on what is happening right away, it makes you wonder ‘why is there a girl out of breath?’ and makes the viewer think about her, the place and the scene right from the title making it more interesting because we are encouraged to question and meaning that the dialogue does not have to explain much about the scene or situation.
Next the girl straightens up and gathers her breath, this is the first we fully see her and is our first impression, what we see at this point is a bright room and coloured wallpaper but no household items like furniture or electronics around so we can only tell that the room seems normal and have little idea of her surroundings or her social status or class. She is dressed in casual loose clothing and nothing formal or expensive so we do believe that she is by herself and that she may be a chav as the tank top and jog bottoms are what are associated with the chav style but in saying that we are left wondering as the setting does still feel normal and bright and she may of just been exercising or dancing. The camera cuts to a shot behind her in the same scene and the room and her are in pitch black illuminating only the location out of the window which seems to be an urban council estate and this with the next shot of her arguing on the phone is done to show us who she is and where we are, the cut from the light scene and her, to the dark room with the window is a transition from us seeing her by herself just finished dancing which we later find out is something she prides herself on and enjoys, to the shot from behind that shows the realisation of the area and where she is, this is done to give her some complexity and a story to her. This story of her is easily picked up by the audience as it is coupled with the title were we were put into the story right away.
When she is on the phone the camera pans around her in a hand held shot, this shows us two things: One; the area is shown in more detail and because it is a shot panning around the girl by the window we see the whole area from her view on both sides. Two; the hand held shot gives the effect of stress and tension which enhances the mood of the scene and adds to feelings expressed in the conversation, as well as adding to the atmosphere of the area we are seeing. There conversation over the phone is very interesting in both the conversation and how it was shown to us, during the conversation the girl is blurred out and the outside is in focus; this does what I said earlier and brings the area into our own impression of her but also by blurring her out it puts emphasis to the conversation she is having making the audience listen. This opening minute is in direct meaning to the title and is why coupling the title with the scene works well, a fish tank makes me think on the inside looking out like a fish in a tank, those feelings are expressed through this first minute going back to my points of the girl in her own safe environment were its light and appears normal to the dark more gloomy shot of her actual surroundings. Often in the film we do see her by the balcony or window looking out and seeing the everyday life around her.
The next scenes first shot shows the girl walking up and no one else, also she is in the same outfit from the last scene it cut from so we can tell that this part continues on from the last bit, she throws a couple stones at a flat and asks to see the girl who she just rang, this tells us two things: that she knows the family well as she left straight to her house and the father knows who she is, it also shows that she has little patience and a serious temper. We can easily see this is how she usually acts and because we are still be introduced to her as a character this type of over-reaction is what we come to expect of her. While she and the other girls father argue there a three little girls sun bathing on the grass, these girls don’t react to the situation a few feet away from them and when she swears and walks off the girl just laughs and is fully aware of what she means by ‘you’d be so fucking lucky’ the girls in this scene have the most impact as they show us what the area is like as they are very young and yet a fully aware of sexual matters and swearing, they are also sunbathing and are not supervised which may suggest they are trying to act older than they are and that their parents are less responsible than they should be, none of this is confirmed but it is the impression we get from how the girls are. All though the man is aggressive to her he did not mention about the stones she threw straight into his house meaning that he doesn’t care about his property, again showing what the area and what the people are like.
In this 2 minute opening we are given the area and what the people are like, but the main focus of it is showing us the main character, we see her act out aggressively and vocally, and right at the beginning we see her alone and stressed, were are not introduced to her lifestyle, if she works or is in education, or her home and family we are just introduced to her attitude how she acts, what I believe is that the reason she acts out like she does is due to her not having a father figure, she likes to be alone and she has little to no respect for anyone else we see in the scene so we know that she is a loner, not having a father around could easily be the cause of her being used to loneliness, her loneliness causes her to be angry, her being aggressive leads her to being alone, this never ending cycle is what drives the emotion for her character and is the reason for what she does throughout the film.
Target audience research
Social Realism Coursework
Paragraph 1
Realism’s basic meaning is depicting from all things that are real as in are physically there and are 100% fact no doubt to their existence in reality, but to look more deeply into the idea of realism is to also see the actuality in a situation or story to know or to even be able to show what is to be real. For example in the arts realism came about in the middle of the 19th century in France where people believed in the ideology of the object of reality, this movement was partially a revolt to romanticism which was a exaggerated emotional movement starting in literature and the arts, Realists goal conceived of only truth and accuracy and so in the time of the 19th century the industrial movement was in play and artist’s began to focus on people at work as it was ‘realistic’ art which with the introduction of the photograph grew far popular. In art realism is to look at and to make art from not just real scenes but from situations in today’s society and that are affecting the world and each of us. This is also true for film, although film does look into real life situation it has many genres that do go into the idea of imagination and most are based on fiction, ideas of worlds or stories that have been conjured up by writers and are sometimes full of effects that are impossible in the world we know like super human abilities, but in the sense of film realism is used in another way, realism in film is how a story or character or location or idea is made to be believed as real, by the way the film sounds and is shot or edited to look and the characters emotions and actions are made realistic all of that is used in a clever way to make far-fetched ideas seem possible and for rich, shocking and emotional story lines effective or to seem like they directly effect you the audience as a real story is able to connect to us the viewer in our real existence. Social realism is the work of art, literature or film that looks closely at and truly sees and feels a situation or story or event that is or has happened, it can show the emotion behind events like social or racial discrimination and is not meant to amuse the audience but to show the evils of poverty the injustice of the government and the immortality of war you could even go as far to say that it is a medium which the director or artist uses to show there view of the world, leaving a comment that can effect many people’s view’s. Much like realism it is based on real-life struggles and situations and shows it in a clever artistic way such as short films and series of photos.
Paragraph 2
Social realism began its powerful movement in 18th century with the work of many artists such as William Hogarth who made engravings of the 1730’s to 50’s showing the stupidity of drunkenness and idiotic extravagance, and Francisco de Goya who done a large collection of shocking and terrible etchings called ‘The Disasters of War’. Social realism became big in Britain but in the 1900’s the British social realism tradition carried on at the Ashcan school in the United States. Many American painters focused on this style during the 1920’s and 30’s showing the effect of the great depression sparking the art of social realism again. Now social realism is still a form of art and film mainly a style of short film which is hugely popular in Britain and as a genre dominates most of the British film industry. To trace realism back to how or when or why it started is hard to say as in the past realism has been so widely accepted and used no one has really defined it as genre when filming began the idea of it, showing the hardships of the world has sprung up everywhere many times in different ways like socialist realism in Russian literature, or art work during the great depression. The earliest I have researched is going back to documentaries and news from the First World War and the boar war, the earliest I can see a commitment and where audience’s realised the effect of the conventions of real film was in 1898 and it was the first ever war film around about 90 seconds long and it showed the Spanish flag being teared down, it was during the American – Spanish war and showed America what it would be like if they were to be invaded and the horror of it. In Britain however when the invention of moving image began there was mainly documentaries and plays like that of Shakespeare’s work being filmed and distributed so realism wasn’t yet fully understood it wasn’t till around world war 2 that British film makers were expected to start looking into realism as the work had to be realistic showing the truth of the war and what it caused around the world.
