Audio

One suggestion in the crit was to use British sounds, like railways etc. However I think for the pace of the videos and the drawings it would be more appropriate to have some music. These are a few songs that I've been looking at just small clippings from each mostly the beginnings without any vocals just the music.

I really like the beginning of this song and it is used within Somers Town and so it is highly appropriate, also I think it fits well with the pace of the drawings.







Again I like the start of this, not the vocals just the instrumental part, however I think it might just be a little slow for my video.





I love this and because of its pace I think it would work well with my animation I'm jsut not sure if there is enough time at the start of it to fit into my ten seconds but because its punk I think it fits well with the whole British theme.

Shane Meadows

The vast majority of Meadows' films have been set in the Midlands area. They recall the kitchen sink realism of filmmakers such as Ken Loach and Mike Leigh, with a post-modern twist. He has a relaxed directing style, encouraging the actors to ad lib in order to create a better sense of reality.


Much of the content of his films is semi-autobiographical and based on his experiences in Uttoxeter.


Twenty Four Seven was inspired by his youth, both at a boxing club, and also playing in a local football club. Despite some huge losses, the club's coach never lost faith in them. A Room for Romeo Brass was also inspired by his youth. After Paul Fraser — his best friend, neighbour and future writing partner— had a bad accident and was bound to his bed for two years, Meadows instead hung around with some of the town's more undesirable characters. Dead Man's Shoes is based on the more unpleasant side of his youth in Uttoxeter. It was inspired by a close friend who had been bullied, developed a drug problem and then committed suicide. He said "I couldn't believe that, going back ten years later, he had been totally forgotten in the town — it was as if he had never existed. I was filled with anger against the people who had bullied and pushed the drugs on him, and with despair at what drugs had done to that small community".


Re-occuring actors


Paddy Considine- Richard (Dead Man's Shoes), Morell (A Room For Romeo Brass)
Vicky Mclure- Ladine Brass (A Room For Romeo Brass), Lol (This Is England)
Andrew Shim- Romeo Brass (A Room For Romeo Brass),  Milky(This Is England)
Thomas Turgoose- Shaun Field (This Is England), Tomo (Somers Town)

Imagery- locations

Dead Man's Shoes

Somers Town

There's a lot of iconic imagery and locations used within Shane's films, using the same ideas I am going to try and capture some of the moods and locations with my own photographs of places like tower blocks of flats and parks etc. I know I can get tower blocks from Little London just down the road.

Locations from the films

Dean Rodgers Photography

This Is England

 

Dead Man's Shoes

 

Looking at photos like this and scenes from the films has helped me gain inspirationand ideas for my backgrounds for my animations, I want them to all have a British feel as this is one of the aims, to get the point across that Shane Meadows is a great British film maker.

Line on a path

So after looking at videos and my photos I was really intrigued in making line drawings appear throughout a video. I looked into it and eventually came across this tutorial which gave me the guidance to create what I wanted.

TYPE FACES

I've been looking on the Channel 4 website and This Is England website and Film 4, all seem to have a consistent sans serif typeface running throughout. I like the way this ties everything together on the websites and within channel 4 adverts too. I think it would be suitable therefore and fitting to use a sans serif typeface. Also I want it to be simplistic and create continuity between my indents and title sequence.

Shane Meadows Films

Shane Meadows research- Film 4

A room for Romeo Brass- Film 4 review

Any faint glimmer of light at the end of the dim tunnel of 1990s British cinema rests with a handful of British directors, including Shane Meadows. The boy from Nottinghamshire has progressed from his debut (Twentyfourseven) with an equally sympathetic but more accessible drama about young people.

Romeo (Andrew Shim) is a teenager with a good pal in Gavin (Ben Marshall) who needs a back operation. Romeo's dad isn't much in evidence, possibly a good thing for his put-upon wife, and the two boys - dependent on each other - meet an older guy, Morell (Paddy Considine - in perhaps the first of his truly great performances), with initially comic then darker consequences.

Shane Meadows's calm approach results in intelligent and committed filmmaking.

Twenty Four Seven- Film 4 Review

That's twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week to the rest of us, who observe the bleakly repetitive lives in a working-class town in Northern England. Shane Meadows feature debut springs out of a tradition of thirties' British documentary and the 60s-so-called realist cinema, brought up-to-date with elements of rough humour and abrasive language.

Bob Hoskins stars as a former boxer who initiates a club for youngsters only to find that it's not just the physical aspects of their lives they carry into the ring, but psychological problems and enmity. The need for such an inhuman sport as part of the solution remains unexplained.

Worth a look, particularly in light of what this director would later go on to achieve.

This Is England- Film 4 Review

At 12-years-old, and young-looking even for his age, Shaun Fields (Turgoose) looks hardly capable of breaking and entering a boiled egg. As elder skinhead Combo (Graham) jokes, he looks like "he came out of a box, like an Action Man, or Barbie doll". Shaun's loss of innocence is at the heart of Shane Meadows' most autobiographical work to date (notice how 'Shaun Fields' deliberately echoes 'Shane Meadows'), along with ever-relevant subjects like absent and surrogate fathers, Western imperialism and white working-class marginalisation, particularly in the post-industrial suburbs.

Right on time, the film also addresses the biggest flashpoint issue of the day; an incipient racism virtually legitimised under recent governments and in sections of the press, stoking anti-Muslim sentiment. This Is England packs a lot into its 100 minutes, but never feels hectoring. Therein lies its power. Not to mention a terrific, danceable soundtrack, laid down with love.

=

A brilliantly conceived zeitgeist-surfing dispatch from one of the most vital directors working in Britain today.

SHANE MEADOWS:
Born on Boxing Day 1972, Shane Meadows has risen to become one of the UK's most beloved and respected film-makers, staying true to the humour and vision that have made his films so popular from the beginning of his career.

Shane Meadows research

I was looking on 4od and film4 sites and I came across a Shane Meadows area dedicated to his work. I think this justifies my reasons for making my chosen channel, channel 4 and who my audience is.

500 days of Summer

I'm pretty sure this isn't the official title sequence but I like it anyway because of the line drawings and how they gradual appear, very basic outlines but they work so well.


500 Days of Summer title sequence from Sophie den Hartog on Vimeo.

I think this still is from the original I'm not entirely sure, either way I love how the buildings appear like as if they are being drawn, I would love to use this kind of style within mine just got to find out how.

Juno

I was given the idea to look at Juno in the crit, I'm really glad I did because I love it, I was vary to use line drawings but looking at this its proved how good it can look. I need to try out some more drawings but I really like this style

Juno - Title Sequence from Alain Benoit on Vimeo.

Top 10- research

I just put together some imagery from the films to start to draw some ideas from, I love the setting and how British they, I might focus on this and incorporate it with type and sound, then again I love all the collage stuff from the This Is England website but I'm not sure I want to actually use people within my animations.

I've also been looking at typefaces of the films, I need a typeface which will be suitable to all films as I want the style to be consistent throughout my animations. As of now I'm thinking a sans serif typeface like arial black.

More Shane Meadows

Once Upon A Time In The Midlands

Dek (Rhys Ifans) and Shirley (Shirley Henderson) live together with Marlene (Finn Atkins), Shirley's daughter by the sexy delinquent Jimmy (Robert Carlyle), who skeddadled years ago and hasn't been heard from since.

Decent-but-dull Dek loves Shirley so much that he humiliates her by proposing without warning on national television.. Jimmy witnesses Dek's TV proposal and he returns to town, convinced that his nerdy rival doesn't stand a chance against a renewed romantic assault from the great love of her life. 

The race is on for Shirley's affections, and Dek's the one driving the Ford Sierra.

For his third feature film, acclaimed director Shane Meadows has gathered together a who's-who of British comedy talent to tell a quirky, heart-warming tale of big emotions in a small town.

Background

After A Room For Romeo Brass, Shane's next major project was the Shane's World collection of shorts for Channel4. One of the short films in the collection is a film about a boxer called Three Tears for Jimmy Prophet. It was this short film that became the original inspiration for Once Upon a Time in the Midlands.

When the main focus of the film was still to be about a boxer returning to society after a spell in prison, the film had a provisional title of Standing Eight Count.

Shane's love of Spaghetti Westerns was always intended to be incorporated into the story of the film, and eventually became a very prominent part of the films style.

The film had the biggest budget of all of Shane's films, and to compliment this, Shane wanted to work with actors that he had respected over the years. After previously only working with mostly unknown actors and smaller budgets, the big budget and the famous faces in the film were both challenges that Shane wanted to take on.

This is the only film on which Shane had to share final cut of the film. This is the main reason that Shane believes the film didn't turn out as well as he had hoped.

Actors:

Dek

Rhys Ifans 

Jimmy

Robert Carlyle 

Charlie

Ricky Tomlinson

Carol

Kathy Burke

Shirley

Shirley Henderson

Marlene

Finn Atkins

Donna

Kelly Thresher

Donut 

Andrew Shim

Vanessa

Vanessa Feltz

Released: 2002

Somer's Town

In Somers Town, a London neighborhood by St Pancras rail station, young Tom, who had nothing to keep him back home in Nottingham, encounters Marek, a young Polish immigrant with nothing to fill his days.
It's a mismatched friendship: Tom (dubbed Tomo by Marek) is full of youthful swagger and Marek, an amateur photographer who lives with his disciplinarian father, is more introspective and cautious. Their dynamic is uneasy and awkward at first as each teen believes himself to be the more mature, but a genuine rapport develops between the two. 
W hen Tomo and Marek both fall for the same girl, the common ground between them is further solidified.

Shane moves from his usual Midlands setting down to London for Somers Town, but he explores territory quite familiar to him: the working class and fathers and sons. Thomas Turgoose, who stars as Tom, manages to be cocky and vulnerable at the same time, whether he's wearing a tracksuit or a housedress, and he lives up to the expectations of the most promising newcomer prize he received from the British Independent Film Awards for This is England. 






The script was sent through to me a few weeks ago and to be honest, I was really impressed with what fraser had done and agreed to get involved. It is basically a 30 page script which tells the story of how a young Polish boy and his father come to London to live and work in Somers Town. 


Actors


Marek
Piotr Jagiello

Tom
Thomas Turgoose

Marius
Ireneusz Czop

Maria
Elisa Lasowski

Graham
Perry Benson

Jane
Kate Dickie 


Re-occuring actors- something I can maybe use, iconic characters used within more than one film of his

Shane Meadows research

Shane Meadows work

Films, dramas, short films
Films

• Small Time
• Twenty Four Seven
• A Room for Romeo Brass
• ONe Upon A Time In The Midlands
• Dead Man's Shoes
• This Is England
• Somers Town
• Le Donk & Scor-zay-zee

Shorts

This Is England

t's 1983 and school is out for the summer.

This Is England, is the story of those long weeks between terms where life changing events can take place.

12-year-old Shaun (Thomas Turgoose) is an isolated lad growing up in a grim coastal town, whose father has died fighting in the Falklands war.
Over the course of the summer holiday he finds fresh male role models when those in the local skinhead scene take him in.. With his new friends Shaun discovers a world of parties, first love and the joys of Dr Marten boots.. It's at one of these parties that he meets Combo (Stephen Graham), an older, racist skinhead who has recently got out of prison.
As Combo’s gang harass the local ethnic minorities, the course is set for a rite of passage that will hurl Shaun from innocence to experience. 

Themes:
skinheads, racism, abuse, 80's Britain

Main characters: Shaun, Woody, Lol, Combo, Milky
Actors: Shaun Fields
Thomas Turgoose
Combo
Stephen Graham
Cynthia Fields
Jo Hartley 
Milky
Andrew Shim
Woody
Joe Gilgun
Pukey
Jack O'Connell
Kez
Kieran Hardcastle
Gadget
Andrew Ellis
Lol
Vicky McClure
Smell
Rosamund Hanson

Released: September 12, 2006

Dead Man's Shoes

Two brothers return to the home town they left years before. They are close, but very different: Richard is strong and purposeful, Anthony younger, more hesitant. Everything Richard does, Anthony innocently mimics. He is slightly retarded and completely in awe of his brother, who in turn is very protective of him. They set up camp in the hills overlooking the town, reminiscing over their shared past. But they're not here to reminisce. Richard is here for revenge.

He knows who he wants and he knows where they live. The town he left eight years ago is still run by the same gang of small-time drug dealers and thugs. The threat of his presence is enough to instill suspicion and paranoia. Why is he back? What does he want? Who is he after?

A fantastic performance from Considine and a darker, yet still distinctive filmmaking style from Shane Meadows make this revenge thriller one of the most surprising movies of the year.

Background:
I was filled with anger against the people who had bullied and pushed the drugs on him, and with despair at what drugs had done to that small community. What was done in the name of recreation had had such devastating results. I started to wonder what might happen if someone chose to try to right the wrongs that had been done, instead of ignoring the terrible tragedy of it all."


Themes:
Bullying, drugs, death, revenge

Actors:
Richard
Paddy Considine:

Sonny 
Gary Stretch

Anthony 
Toby Kebbell

Tuff 
Paul Sadot

Herbie 
Anthony Wolfenden

Gyspy John 
George Newton

Big Al 
Seamus O'Neal

Marie Jo Hartley

Mark Paul Herstfield 

Patti Emily Aston

Soz Neil Bell 

Released: Oct 1, 2004