Fish Tank : Social Realsim Conventions

Fish Tank : Social Realsim Conventions: This film is typical of social realism genre conventions because they use:

Cinematography:
Hand held camera's and P.O.V shots are used throughout this film this is a common convention within social realism for instance in the scene where Connor leaves the family to escape the encounter with Mia however this back fires on him when Mia realises what has happened and begins to run after Connor as he leaves the estate shooting in a P.O.V shot of all the doors and miss-en-scene capturing Mia's P.O.V this is so the film can showcase an everyday life of a 15 year old and how she see's instead of a middle class would see the underclass. Mia run's down the corridor and out the steps a hand held camera is in use in this scene as it follows Mia's pattern and rhythm as she exits the estate this is used to enhance the social realism and make the film more believable as it reflects the life of when it was filmed.

Diegetic Sound: diegetic sound is used more often then not over diegetic this reinforces the fact of reality. The camera will focus on the item the music is being played out of to enforce this by doing this the sound quality will have been different when played through different items such as the T.V and speakers as the audience only hear what the character hears so the audience isn't manipulated via non diegetic sound. Connor and the mum are watching T.V later on in the scene the T.V is turned of and the CD player is on a clear sound quality is changed making the audience be fed the social realism in which they would ignore or not associate with.

Unknown Actors:
Unknown actors are used throughout this film this is due to the director making this film a real as possible. Mia's character was approached when the directer spotter her and her boyfriend arguing at a bus stop using fowl language in a underclass estate this is reflected in the film as they use the word 'CUNT' highly and the mise-en-scene. The reason for using unknown actors is due to making the audience believe what they see is real life if they would have used a well know character as Bruce Willis in this film an audience may only watch as they are attracted to him however in this film it strips this all from the audience. What they see and hear is reality.


Social Realism genre represents the underclass who are not represented or are different the the well know , this is why Fish Tank takes on the genre of Social Realism as they want to gain an audience awareness of a certain class and how they are affected by the issues at the time.