This Is England

Produced by Warp Films, on a relatively small budget of £1.5 Million - mainly funded by the National Lottery, with £90,000 of funding coming from the UK Film Council. It was released in 2006, and directed by Shane Meadows. The inspiration for This Is England was from the director's personal life experiences, growing up as a child in the 80's in Staffordshire. He experienced first hand many of the issues raised in the film, such as bullying, unemployment, anti-social behaviour and racism.



The genre of the film is social-realism, and many attributes of the production add to this theme. For example, many of the actors used were amatuer, with little to no experience - creating realism through the fact that they were just normal people. A lot of the camerawork is handheld, also creating a real-life atmoshpere as the camera almost becomes like a seperate person, and the shot is their perspective. This Is England was filmed on a pre-fabricated set, (due to the budget being too low to produce one), however it had not been changed at all since the 80's - so had a real authentic feel, again adding to the construction of the social realism element. The majority of props used during the filming were authentic 1980's items, resourcefully obtained by Shane Meadows by using the internet, and then sold on again in order to reduce the money spent. This included cars and clothes, and again gave the film a real vintage feel - making it more realistic. Also, the use of entirely natural lighting not only saved money, but again made the film more true to real life - fitting in with the genre.

Many features of the film make it appealing to a British audience, such as the involvement of real-life issues at the time - unemployment for example. Audience members who were around at that time can relate to the issues, as they had their own experience of them, whilst the younger generation can learn about the culture from those days and compare it to now. I feel the target audience is working class people, as they can probably relate most to many aspects and thus will enjoy the film more. I also think that the film has a strong message to teens, with the use of Shaun (played by Tom Turgoose) as this has a positive influence, with the way he turns his life around.