Research into real life drama

My research into this section of film has led me to find out that real life drama has had a boom in the last 5 years with world famous films, such directors as Shane Meadows with ‘This is England’ and Ben Drew (Plan B) with his hit film ‘Ill Manors’, real life drama reached its peak and is turning over billions. With this in mind, I want a piece of this action, and this research has just strengthened my thoughts on making a real life drama. This blog has made me dig deeper into real life dramas and I have come out with the some of the best is this genre:

 Ill Manors

Ill Manors comes completely from Ben Drews mind, and started out from a rap video filmed in one night with no budget. This rap video was called ‘Bizness woman’. The rap video was a hit, it was shown on TV and people became more and more interested in it. Ben Drew had seen ‘Bizness Woman’ become a success and decided to expand on it to make a short film called ‘Michelle’. The short film lasted 16 minutes and had a micro budget (very small). However, this too became a success and once again was shown on TV. The response Ben Drew had got from his ‘Michelle’ was good, but the audience were fascinated with the characters, so much so they wanted to find out the background story about each character in the short film, Ill manors was born. With a small budget of £100,000 Ben Drew created a film which showed the lives of the characters he had created and more importantly why they did these things. The film was a huge success. Ill Manors turned over £453,570 at the box office, in the UK alone. It also went on to win ‘Coup de Coeur’ for director and Production Company and ‘Technicolor Award’ for best Cinematography.

  

This is England

The story about a troubled boy growing up in England set in 1983. He comes across a few skinheads on his way home from school, after a fight. They become his new best friends,even like family. The story is based on the experiences of director Shane Meadows. The Budget for the film was £1,500,000 (estimated), The gross profit in America was $327,919 alone. This was a massive profit and very unexpected. It went on to win awards such as BAFTA Awards 2008, Bangkok International Film Festival 2007, British Independent Film Awards 2006 and Empire Awards UK 2008 and many more. The film has a strong reputation in the British film drama genre, also it has brought many actors like Joseph Gilgun (Misfits star) and Jack O’connell (Skins star) into the spot light of other directors and now they have become world famous.  The Link below will show all awards won:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0480025/awards

 

Quadrophenia

A story based on a boy called Jimmy, who hates the life he is trapped in and finds the only way to escape is to be a mod and live the lifestyle of one. He sees this as the dream. He slowly finds out that the mod life is not all as it seems. The film was written as a film play and was finally produced by the director Franc Roddam (an unknown director at this point). This film is seen as the birth of real life dramas, where it took a turn and was really taken in as a well known genre. Information was hard obtain about the films profit, but in Sweden alone it made a gross profit of over £1.5 million, this should give you an idea of the overall amount made. No awards were won by the film, but it is seen as one of the great British dramas and will go down in history.