​AARON'S AS MEDIA

I considered the opening of this film from 00:40 to 04:30.

We were tasked with deconstructing the openning to 3 films which were in the genre we had confirmed we'd be working in. The genre I have chosen is crime/teen drama. Ill Manors is the first film I decided to decontruct the opening to. 

The very first shot of the film is a close-up shot of an unknown man lighting a cigarette, the camera then cuts to a slightly further away shot of the man's face, we then begin hearing the voice of a Jamaican lady talking about kids in urban places, focusing mainly on parenting and schools. We then see the lady on a TV screen, the screen and the voice of the lady are both diegetic sound, so we are immediately aware that we are seeing the TV either through the man's eyes or from his prespective. We then cut to a shot from the side, both the TV and the man are on screen, as the man blows out the smoke of his cigarette. He is sat in quite a bare room, the only things I could pick out were posters on the walls and smoking, and drug, paraphernalia on the bedside table next to him. He is portrayed as an average urban young male, probably in his early twenties. We then see the TV from over the man's shoulder, so it is aparent we're not viewing the film through his eyes but just in his perspective. It then becomes clear, from the TV, that he is watching some form of protest as lots of black men and women are stood talking and shouting the camera-man passionately, again, about urban kids. We then hear a seperate voice, still on the TV, begin talking about tough times of young kids who grow up in foster care. When the man on the TV says "it's definitely a bonus to have a strong family" we see the man in the room staring blankly at the TV, blowing out another puff of smoke, although we can somehow tell he is slightly phased or distrubed by what the man on the TV is saying. From this short scene at the very beginning of the film we can tell the man sitting in the room is our antagonist, as we were seeing the TV from his perspective and the whole scene was centred around him and what he was viewing. 

We then hear the voice of the narrator, Ben Drew (a.k.a. Plan B) who is the producer of the film and also wrote and developed the soundrack (his album also named Ill Manors). We hear him say 'Are you sitting comfortably?', as the screen cuts to black. We then see an establishing shot, zooming into the city of London from a suburb, as we hear Plan B perform a short piece of spoken word, describing that he is the narrator and what the story is about. From Plan B's strong cockney (East London) accent and the fact we are zooming in towards London, we can tell that the film we are about to watch is based in London.

 

The titles then begin rolling, to the sound of Plan B's song 'I Am The Narrator', the song describes what is going on, on screen during the titles. Throughout the titles we see sped up footage of lots of different people and groups, and just footage of the city itself. The footage is sped up to symbolise the fast paced life in the city and how fast it seems to everyone outside looking in, as the audience are. Everybody in the title sequence is linked in someway, mainly via drugs or crime. For example, we see a lot of people consuming drugs, selling drugs, switching sim cards on phones, threatening people with guns, and picking up prostitutes. Backing up this, we see each one contact one another via calling or texting, this could be to show the audience how people who are completely different and from totally different backgrounds can all be linked together in such a large city to form a sort of network of criminals. Half way through the titles we see the man from the beginning, sat in his room still, recieve a call from one of the other men featuring in the title sequence, we then become aware that the man sitting in the room is linked with all the other people and integrates into the titles sequence, as we constantly follow his journey through the city, to outside a pub, joining a man we also saw earlier in the sequence. As the music slowly fades out, the footage is slowed down to a normal speed as we see the two men outside a pub selling drugs to people as they walk in, this is where the story begins.