Ill Manors Music Video Research

The Ill Manors the soundtrack to the movie was released on Atlantic Records.
The average score for the album was 83/100 based on 14 professional critics. This indicates that the soundtrack has been acclaimed worldwide therefore indicating that the album has had very good promotion.
The lead single also titles 'iLL Manors' Sold 37,455 copies within its first week

Media Representation

Within the video the characters are mainly male dominated to show a form of masculinity and this can also be seen as Mulveys Female gaze. However we can also used Medhursts theory of stereotypes being based on the truth in this example as statistics show that men are more violent than women and therefore this video has been male dominated. Also it could be said that as Plan B is the opinion leader and he is a male therefore indicating he could have more male followers than female. The age of the people in the video are roughly people from 18-35. apart from a few exclusions which includes people who are younger than 18.

Media Institutions

This music video does not promote anything in a way that people would look up to or want to be like as most things in the video have a negative representation. For example most teenagers do not rob and loot however the teenagers shown in the video do rob and loot. The video glamours the ideas of anti social behaviour although the lyrics of the song are justifying the reasons why only some people may act this way and that people to blame are the people with more authority not caring about the youth that is at a disadvantage. The video does have a message indicating that there is a a very distinct difference between those that are advantaged and those who are not and Plan B is making this video as powerful as possible to convey his message to a much larger audience.

Media Audience

The media audience for this video is likely to be the youth, music fans or even people from an older generation that would like to be educated and people who would like to see an opinion leaders point of view as Plan B is representing the disadvantaged youth. I think the youth will find it appealing as they are more likely to relate to the situations Plan B is describing even if they are not from a disadvantaged background they still may be able to understand other youths point of views. I think that people in the psycho-graphic groups of reformers and aspirer's are likely to be attracted to this as reformers may want freedom from restriction and that these youths may be fighting for what they classify as freedom and may claim to be restricted. Struggler's may also find this appealing as they might be relate to the video more as they come from similar backgrounds or situations. The demographic groups of C2, D and E may also be interested as they probably have low income and feel the same way about politics and society as the people in the video or the disadvantaged youth.

Ill Manors: Ted X Lecture

Plan B's main message was to inform the people who were not yet educated about why exactly some of the youth are in deprived situations and what exactly makes them worse. His argument was that instead of making a disadvantaged child feel left out, someone should make them feel more comfortable because as they are left out they feel like they are not apart of people who conduct themselves normally. This results in anti social behaviour and makes the youth feel like they are not part of society and they are outlaws. Plan b emphasised that this is were society fails to recognise to treat everyone equally.

By looking at the crowd the people seem to be wanting to learn from people with different experiences thus attending the lecture. The majority of the crowd seems to be middle class white people. According to demographics I would say that people in classes A,B,C1 and C2 would be most likely to attend a kind of lecture like this. Using psycho graphics I think that reformers and aspirer's are most likely to attend. The audience that Plan B associates himself with I would say is the opposite of this crowd. Plan B's music and films are very urban and therefore attracting different crowd than middle class people and people in education.

Plan b says that the media sometimes does not illustrate an accurate picture of the youths of this generation as they are misunderstood and the alternative readings of the youth are shown

The disadvantaged youth may cause a moral panic under the influence of an opinion leader as the majority of the population may fear them because they do not fully comprehend the ideas of their opposition as a moral panic is an intense feeling expressed in a population about an issue that appears to threaten the social order

MEST2 Progress Report - 16 January

Work Completed since 6 January
since the 6th of January we have completed the script, shot list, storyboard, and almost completed the mise-en scene. We have organised a group meeting which

Incomplete Pre-production tasks

Next Steps/Action Plan

Date filming will be complete
02/02/14
Date editing will be complete
09/02/14

Progress Report

Work that has been completed in the past 7 days:

Shot list has been completed however is not in the order required

1) What does this tell us about Plan B's intentions in making the film?

2) What do we learn about the production process for Ill Manors?

3) What can you tell about the possible target audience from this short documentary?

4) Does the film successfully do what director Ben Drew (Plan B) set out to achieve? Explain your answer with reference to both the film and the making of documentary.

Plan B's Intentions for making this film were to educate the audience on how living and how gritty some parts of London exactly are. He did this by setting the film in Forest Gate in East London. Which shows that the gritty parts of London however it can also show the fact that in East London the Olympics had taken place which glamorised the area.

We learn that the film was made on a low budget and therefore Ben Drew could not hire out bigger actors, however he did need actors with experience to act out more serious and major roles in the film. According to him it would be made out to be more realistic if some of the actors recruited were actually part of the life they were acting out as their acting would therefore be more dominant than actors who were less informed or grew up in different backgrounds. We also learn that Ben Drew did not know many of the key terms however as he was so passionate about film making he was able to execute and deliver such a great film 

Ill Manors Trailer

The typical codes and conventions of film trailers are for the viewer to try and establish the genre, plot and setting of the film.

Trailers are distributed digitally, through TV, Cinema and the Internet.

Ill Manors has used trailer conventions such as the quote that has been displayed at the start of the trailer "We are all products of our environment... Some environments are just harder to survive in" This already has communicated to the audience that the film entails people living in harsh environments where they find it hard to survive. There are several scenes of people going through pain or showing emotion of distress while using items such as weapons and drugs. This indicates that the film is about how negative items can make people feel negative emotions.

The target audience is adults as the trailer exposes many mature themes. The trailer consists of fast paced editing that shows many scenes of the film. The scenes are not showed in the same order as they are presented in the film, this gives the viewer an idea of what the film has in it however as it is not showed in order it does not give much of the storyline away. By showing scenes in this order it will allow the viewer to already construct a storyline for themselves and then they will then be able to compare it to what is actually happening when they watch the film. The main characters are visible in the trailer though not all of the characters that play big roles in the film are made visible. There is a scene which shows the director in the mirror of a car making the viewer aware that the director of the movie (Plan B AKA Ben Drew) has a small cameo in the film. Towards the end of the trailer text appears saying 'IN CINEMAS JUNE 6TH' which makes the viewer aware of the release date. There is also non diegetic music of Plan B rapping which is parallel to the scenes shown as it describes the lifestyle these characters live in.

The settings of streets and the dark lighting show that the film does not have a very positive feel. It gives the viewer the impression that the characters are surrounded by dull and negative vibrations and lifestyles. As they are mostly on the street a viewer could say that this is a urban film. The fast paced editing also shows action and that the scenes are powerful. 

Learner Response

WWW: Good references to representation theory (Psycho graphics)
EBI: State narrative theory in Q2.

The voice-over gives a sort of character and links with the editing. According to Propp and the character theory the cameraman can be seen as heroes as they are the ones filming and capturing the things that others may see as educational. They can also be seen as heroes as they are the ones who are diving into the water and potentially putting their lives at risk just to capture some footage. According to Todorov there is also a disequilibrium  as the camera man struggles to cacth the footage in slow motion

Ill Manors Review

Ill Manors was directed by Ben Drew AKA Plan B. Ill Manors is his biggest movie prject to date and it was the first time he had directed such a successful film. The first film he directed was a short film called Michelle. He is also an actor and a musician.  

The actors that played the roles of characters in the film are recognisable however they have not acted in a vast range of mainstream films, so if the film was being watched by a mainstreamer it would be hard to recognise the actors. Riz Ahmed played the main role as being Aaron. He has been in other films such as Four Lions and Trishna. Another main character is Ed Skrein that plays a character called.

The storyline consists of a lot of drug use, abuse and dealing. It primarily Consists of four drug dealers that have a lot of conflict and problems within their society. The drug dealers need a source of income so if the drugs are not making enough money they will turn girls into prostitution if they have to. I think that

The main characters are Aaron and Ed, played by Riz Ahmed and Ed Skrein respectively, they acted very well portraying characters that are believed to have grown up in run down areas of London, come from a very complicated background and cannot keep themselves out of trouble. Other characters are Michelle that is acted out by Anouska Mond who acts as a crack-head who turns into prostitution as a way of making income. Marcel is also another character played by Nick Sagar that has a role of a young adult drug dealer who lives his life according to gang culture and also initiates younger members by performing such things as harming other people. Kirby was also another main character who was a major drug dealer who was responsible for a lot of other drugs within the area, this character was acted out by Keith Coggins. I think that all the actors played the role of their characters very well as none of the characters looked like they were out of place.

The mood of this film can be seen as very depressing as most of the characters are not in any happy situations and most of them are involved in a means of crime or negative situations. Also a lot of the characters die showing that if you live the kind of lifestyle the characters live, you are taking a lot of dangerous risks in your life. I would say the genre(s) this film revolves around is Crime/Thriller Drama.

The music used throughout the film was music that Plan B had written. It was mostly rap music that told stories of the characters in the film. He used a rap to introduce the characters into the film as he would tell us about their lives.  I would call Plan B’s style of telling a story ‘Musical Narration’ as he narrated the story in a style of music. His British voice also made the music parallel to the scenes. The genre of music that was used was Grime music which is a sub culture of Hip Hop.

I think the audience of this film would be mature young adults to adults reaching an age group of 18-55. I think this because the material of the film consists of a lot of Violence, Strong Language, Sex and Drug use. I think that if the film was viewed by a younger audience they would not take the film seriously or they might not be able to fully understand what is happening due to its mature nature and theme.  I think that the film is informative as it can educate an audience on how drug and gang culture has a lot of negativity attached to it.