'Bullet Boy' - Gareth Allen

This film seems to have the genre of social realism. The reason why I think this is because, they use an urban area during most of the film. The story itself is about crime and violence between different gangs in an urban area, presumably London. The characters in this film are Afro Caribbean and it is set in their community.

This film seems to try and mix the genre of social realism in with some thriller aspects. This is done briefly at different points of the film. The main part where you can tell that they try and introduce thriller aspects to is when the two boys are playing hide and seek in the woods. Curtis is holding the gun and looking for Rio in the woods. Whilst Rio is hiding, they use a lot of quick cuts to increase the pace that the film is going at. They also only show you Curtis untill it is just before Rio jumps out at him. At this point where they are using a lot of quick cuts, the audience can tell that something is going to happen, but they are unaware of what it is going to be. This is good as it is building up the tension that there is already, and are making the audience pay close attention to the film.

Throughout the film, they use a mixture of diegetic sounds and non diegetic sounds. This i think is done well mixing the two together. I do think however that if they used just diegetic sounds throughout the film, then it would seem to be more realistic. However, the non diegetic music is used to create different effects (sadness, tension). They also use non diegetic sounds to fill over establishing shots that they use of the green outside Curtis' house. They don't use silence in this film very much which would be why it isn't a thriller film.

Gareth Allen