Analysis of Kidulthood:

This British drama follows a day in the lives of four poor youths living in an impoverished neighborhood in West London, where the pressure and desperation of poverty propels each of them towards the choice between a life of bleakness, violence, and crime, and the terrifying prospect of striving for a better life. 

In our short film we tried to make something similar in a variety of different ways including:

Sound: The music used both in Kidulthood and our short film is of the Grime\HipHop genre which appeals to the target  of urbanities who can relate to the happenings in the film  

Language: The language used in Kidulthood is of the Jamaican known as 'patois' or 'Jafaican' which is a term coined to define a recent dialect of English, spoken mainly in inner city London. Whereas our short film is in English but more inner city Manchester slang to show the less intellectual skills they have than middle class people living in Manchester.

Mise-en-Scene: The clothing worn by the actors in kidulthood is commonly street wear which is usually worn by the average teenager, we portrayed this in our short film by dressing our characters in dark clothing consisting of hoodies , trainers so the audience will start thinking about what will happen. The setting of Kidulthood is mostly backstreets, council houses and public transport this reflects the inner city realities, our short film take place under a inner city motorway which may give the audience a sense of believability and authenticity towards our short film.

Audience: The primary target audience of Kidluthood is mostly urbanities and teenagers who would be able to relate to the context of the text. Also it may be able to relate to audiences who are in authority in the country e.g  government  who can tackle issue raised in the film. The audience our short film was aimed at is mostly black youths of a working class type because of the characters portrayed in our film but it can appeal to other ethnicity's of urban and teenage type because of the ages of our characters. 

5. Who would be the audience for your media product?


I expect my target audience to be teenagers and young adults between the ages of 15-21, as I believe they can easily relate to the everyday characters that have been used in this short film. This is the kind of audience you would expect to be interested in these types of films because it contains characters the audience can relate to being there age or that some of the audience have experienced the goings on situated in our short film e.g experiencing drug dealing. Furthermore the main gender of our audience would be mostly male because all our protagonists/Antagonists are male and get caught up in crime and violence, this is what most young men like in films to keep them interested and decrease boredom, on the other hand many females may be interested in this type of film because not all females like the 'Romance' or the 'Chick Flick' type films which society heavily stereotypes that with women for example British types of films which our short film takes idol from such as the 'Kidulthood and Adulthood' series had a big amount of female viewers , in my opinion i think that was due to the female characters situated in the films but it did contain a big amount of male dominance and lots of action so that shows that some females like a bit of action and thriller to keep them on there toes. The main ethnicity of our audience would be black youths because all our characters in our short film are black teenagers and they would appeal to this certain type of ethnicity because it shows the experiences and hardships black teenagers would go through to get by, turning to crime etc. But there isnt a boundary to what ethnicity can come and watch it it may appeal to other people, they may of had the same experience of crime and drug dealing so may find it interesting in seeing other people and what they went through.

7. Looking back at the prelim task, what do you think you have learnt the progression from it to the full task?


I believe that there is a number of areas in which I have progressed in in terms of ability from the preliminary task to the full product. I think that one area I have learnt about and improved in is my performance on-camera during the full task. During even a relativeI believe that there is a number of areas in which I have progressed in in terms of ability from the preliminary task to the full product. I think that one area I have learnt about and improved in is my performance on-camera during the full task. During even a relatively basic task such as the preliminary I was evidently nervous and perhaps originally slightly uncomfortable about being on camera and had to get out of bad original habits such as talking into the camera as opposed to other characters and not timing the start of my lines correctly.


I have also improved on and learnt a lot about the importance of working well as a group on a project such as this. During a small task like the preliminary this wasn’t so evidently needed but it was still vital that we worked well as a group as we had to get it right both on and off camera as well as when it came to the editing stage of the task. With the full task, it was much more important that we worked well as a group and broke up separate tasks and jobs accordingly between members of the group. With regard to planning the film as a group, I have learnt that it is vital to split up planning jobs amongst members of the group with jobs such as the shooting map, writing the storyboards and planning the storyline itself. I have also learnt a great amount about working together during the shoot of the full task. My learning of the timings between starting the camera and commencing the action in the scene, particularly during the sniper scene, has definitely improved and it was vital that it did as everybody had to be in the right place at the right time in order for this ambitious scene to work.


Our skills with the camera also, in my opinion, hugely progressed between the preliminary task and the full product. During the preliminary task our camera work was extremely poor and the handheld work with the camera was very shaky and unreliable. However, mainly due to quite a high amount of practice during the making of the full product, our camera work improved quite dramatically and we was now able to also hold a camera steady as a handheld for a long amount of time and this was especially important as a number of the closing camera shots involved us using the camera handheld.


Finally, I believe that the most important thing I have learnt about film-making during this process is that you do need to have patience, especially during more ambitious scenes and that you will never get every single shot right in the first couple of takes

6. What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?


During the creation of this short film 'The Dealership' I've learnt a great deal about technologies and they have vastly helped and improved the construction of our final media product. During the construction of my media product needless to say i did use a computer but below is a list of other technologies which was used:

1. Digital Video Camera
2. Digital Camera
3. Blogger
4. Final Cut Pro

  A Digital video camera was used in filming our final short film it was really useful because it enabled the camera man to take shots from all angles e.g over the shoulder and they can video hand held to create realism and suspense and it enabled them to video stationary to get all characters emotions in the shots. I never got the full use of a video camera before and when i did i was a bit shaky and first but then i got used to it playing with the zoom in/out to get the right shots in and just general videoing of random things to see if i can get that 'precision' shot. Then it was all systems go it enabled us to get our Final media product finished.






A Digital camera was used in taking location shots which we would later use in our final media product this was a simple and easy way to get clear shots of surroundings which we would discuss whether to be our location for our media product. Using this technology i learnt that you dont always have to use the most expensive equipment in order to get the best out of a film and also i learnt that its alway good to have a digital camera handy when in the process of making a film because you  may see something which you could include in your film or on your blog in discussion of it.


 The website blogger was used specifically to pin point the stages of where we were at in making our final media product and the research we done before we started thinking about making a film, the blog includes things such as our preliminary task which was just a film we made to get used to the camera's etc, questions explaining the ins and outs of int he filming business and just general research about different films and how we could entwine them with our media products. Personally I didn't know what Blogger was until we had to use in in or Media work so it was very hard using it at first , getting used to how to publish your finished work and how to upload pictures but i got used to as the days went along. It was very useful because it enabled me to write down ideas and brainstorms for our media products and then publish them when we actually got down to making the products in very fast succession.






Final Cut pro was used to get rid of any unwanted scenes and sounds in our preliminary and final media product. It enabled us to add credits and titles to our films and adding fades of different colors to create the flashback effect, furthermore it enabled the user to cut the filming time short so like our media product it was a short film we was aiming to do but during the construction of that we film a lot of scenes so thanks to Final Cut Pro we deleted and threaded wanted scenes together to create the movie up to our standards and have the perfect short film consisting of titles and credits and no forgetting a soundtrack. When i first heard we was using this software i was puzzled because  i never heard of it before due to me being used to using Windows Movie Maker back in High School, it was hard really getting used to because there is different tabs you have to click on in order to delete and thread scenes together and putting the actual scenes into Final Cut Pro was the hard part but we finally got used to it and it helped us a lot and got us to where we are now evaluating our finished media product.

 3.What kind of media institution would distribute your media product and why?

The kind of media institution that would distribute our media product is 'Revolver entertainment' which has released such films as 'KIDULTHOOD' and 'DEAD MAN RUNNING' which have the same genre's as our film such as comedy, action and crime. Both films that are above are located in the UK like our film and are lower budget films as apposed to hollywood films. Another media institution that would distribute our media product are Paramount picture or Universal picture because they have released such big hit crime films such as 'The Godfather' and 'American Gangster', which are both crime orientated films that have a small female cast, due to the genre being male orientated cause of the crime and drug use rates in the film. Our media product is similar to the film 'dead man running' because of the threats made upon the main character (Ramiel) and a time limit given to Ramiel to retrieve the drugs back or consequences with be dealt with... Universal which has distributed the film 'American Gangster' is also similar to our film because it is drug orientated and has no females in the main roles. It also has a dominant character like (victor) who acts like a boss figure to his 'drug runners' the people who sell the drugs for the boss.

The way that our film would be marketed is mainly on 'above the line' distribution such as advertisements on the media i.e. Internet, popular social sites such as myspace, twitter and Facebook, billboards and posters on public transport such as buses, metro links and trains. I would decide to use this kind of distribution because 'Dead man running' used the same distribution methods to get their film around in the UK. Social websites are a good way of distribution because its not very costly and millions of people go on social sites everyday so at least thousands will acknowledge the advertisements. Billboards, posters and public transport advertising is also a good way of advertising and distributing because just like on social sites thousands of people get on public transport, and drivers will see billboards & poster all around town.

4. How did you attract/address your audience?

Our film attracts the audience through its genre which is Action/Thriller and also through the characteristics of the actors. For example, Victor (drug lord) character is more of an aggressive character when it comes to business this would specifically appeal to the male audience. Whereas Ramiel is more of a funny drug dealer who makes jokes even in real and serious situations, this would attract the female audience because they like a bit of comedy in films.The camerawork throughout the film constantly changes shots during the climax of this opening film,This adds to the action and creates a sense of urgency both for the audience and the characters. The editing also helps keep the audience both engaged and interested because of how the story links together well.We also constructed a soundtrack using “Garage Band” which is a music construction software on all Apple compatible computers. Our soundtrack on our short film is of the Rap/HipHop genre to endorse the sense of suspense in the atmosphere  when the drug dealing was taking place. This music is more of a British type because it is 'Grime' and 'Grime is a very common genre of music for British teenagers, this shows that our audience would be mostly people between 15-21 and of the ethnicity of black and white youths.