'This is England'

An analysis of the film ‘This is England’ explaining how the production practices appeal to the target audience.

The film 'This is England' was produced Shane meadows and is an auto biography of his own life. 'This is Engalnd' is about a young boy that has been growing up in 1983, which at the time was a skinhead era. Shaun who was the young boy was walking home from school on day where he just had a fight because it was his first day at the school. As he walks under a bridge Shaun comes across a group of skinheads - Woody and the gang and they were just hanging about as you do having fun and laugh together so they make Shaun feel welcome and invite him to join them. Soon after this theybecome best friends and decide to change his looks to suit the group - skinheads, he hangs round with them all the time and loves it. By doing this they buy him Doc Martin boots, a Ben Sherman shirt, and they shave his head so he has a skinhead hair style. This all suddenly changes when Combo an old mate of Woody’s comes back, which suddenly cange the mood and atmosphere of the group. Combo is a psychotic, bitter, dangerous, and very racist man, you would class this as a typical skinhead culture. The gang splits with the help of Combo and Woody leaves the gang and takes a few lads with him, which left the rest with Combo which includes Shaun because he realises what had happened to his dad which encourages him to stay. All the way throuhg this film Shaun and Combo and Woody are the main charactres. Personally, i think that this was done so tthat you could see the differences in age between the same culture.The way in which Combo looked and brought Shaun up i think that he would have been brought up very simular to this which would mainly come from people in the working class. Therefore this is because there was high unemployment in working class. Which determined people forming gangs such as the skinheads, another idea could be that it could be resembled as the Midlands man - Working class that is unemployed and resulted into the skinhead culture. Also there were many females in the skin heads in the 1980's the 'female charm' was very common, therefore they had control over men by charming them. This is known when the girl and Shaun get together in the garden for the first time when they kiss! She charms Shaun into liking her. The cameras used in 'This is England' are 30mm camera lensend which is good quality that has good picture.In 'This is England' there was not a lot of editing through the film as they wanted to make the mise en scene in the film as natural as possible. On the other hand the budget was low for the film so they spent the money on the camera quality to make what they had filmed of a really high quality and look really good. The actors used in 'This is England' aren't very well known or famous stars vecause he had such a low budget and because Shane Meadows didn’t want a well known actor that would be in what is quite a racist film because it would have been bad for the actor. An example of this would be by having Pierce Brosnan acting a Combo or Woody wouldn't have seemed convinced to the audience and could of felt threatened. So by having an unknown actor like Stephen Graham is

convincing and makes it feel more realistic. The lighting used in 'This is England' is mostly from natural light, they did this because they are on a tight and low budget therefore they could not afford to pay for special lighting and for lighting scenes. Another idea is that by using natural lighting it makes it more realistic as to what era it is and where abouts it is set and to give a feel of the time period it is set in. Shane Meadows was trying to portray the time period of teh 1980’s (1983). In this era there wasn’t much to lighting in housesat because of low money incomes and horrible weather at the time. Also it is set in the Urban area in Nottingham on a council estate the mise en scene is really dull, as they would have much money to buy have expensive lighting on a low budget film, also it makes it enhances realism. The props and costumes used in 'This is England' are critical as there was a low budget and that they need to get the most suitable and cheat but not tacky props for every scene. An example if this is when using the cars for the mise en scene in the 1980’s they bought old cars off ebay instead of hiring them which saved lots of money. Even if the cars they brought didn't move it didn't matter because they where just used in the scenes as parked cars.