Gritty Realism Conventions

 What is Gritty Realism?

Gritty realism means showing a negative aspect of something that most people would rather ignore. For example, homeless people on the street, or poverty in Britain today and in the past. These films are often national lottery funded and so are stereotypically made on a small budget compared so other Hollywood blockbusters.

An example of a Gritty realism film that I have watched is Bullet boy. A film based in a industrial estate in London, following the life of a youth who is trying to escape his communities gang culture, but cant seem to stay out of trouble. This film, like many others of its genre, has a male protagonist and the film shows his day to day life in a underprivileged society.

Gritty realism is a genre that doesn't follow the usual structure used in Hollywood blockbuster movies that include the equilibrium, disequilibrium, and resolution. Gritty Realism follows a protagonist usually wanting to escape something or run away. For example, in Bullet boy the main character and focus of the film is played by Ashley Walters (Ricky) and wants to run away from getting killed, and causing any more harm to his brother and family.

When looking at a few gritty realism films, I noticed that there are not really main characters. Usually the focus in on a small group of people. For example in bullet boy a lot of the focus was on Ricky but a large amount of the film was also about his brother and the rest of his family and the repercussions of Ricky's actions on the ones around him.

The films are usually set in real live towns such as Manchester, London, and Bristol. These films don't usually follow a hero verses a villain, and instead follow the life of one character and the people surrounding him/her. Because the film usually follows one person the film usually will usually include high levels of verisimilitude, in order to show the simple day to day evens that go on in between key points of the film. The filming itself usually has high levels of verisimilitude as the lighting is usually dull and plain, suggesting it's trying to give the impression of daylight. This is done by low levels of high key lighting, to replicate sunlight or the lack of it.

Gritty realism films usually seek to educate about a certain lifestyle or to give the audience a moral message. Again referring back to bullet boy; the educational value would be to show people today the extremes of the gun culture that exist in man poor towns today.

When watching the film I didn't notice much music, apart from in the scene in the woods. The rest as all diegetic, and so i think this further adds to the verisimilitude of the film. But when there was music or audio added on top of the dialogue, it was parallel sound in order to reflect what was going on in the scene.

The main target audience of these films are "reformers". This is because they are they have an educated opinion and have an influential voice in manufacturing and can use this information for positive change in the community.  

Personally I enjoyed the film because I found it interesting and enlightening. The film exposed a walk of life that I didn't know much about and I found the narrative exiting. I really enjoyed the high levels or verisimilitude as it made the piece far more hard hitting and me and my class mates were more shocked by the upsetting narrative. Furthermore I think if the film had lower levels of verisimilitude don't think we would have enjoyed it and have learnt as much as we did.

Although this film was emotional and hard hitting at some points, I did enjoy it thoroughly and learnt from it.