GENRE – SOCIAL REALIST CONVENTIONS/AUDIENCE Meadows’ films + Mickeybo + Me

Social Realism Audience

Box Office
Social realism cannot compete with many genres in terms of mainstream mass 

box-office appeal. I began by looking at the all time box office figures for the American 

market on boxofficemojo.com. By doing this I discovered that in the top 200 films there

 was no social realist films included in this figure, but then looking at the top 20 all time

 box office figures in Britain, I found that 'The Full Monty' came 18th. I also discovered 

that most of the British all time top 20 were franchise's making it hard for other films 

to get into it as the audience are already familiar with the first film released. On looking

 into further detail on 'The Full Monty', I've found out that it is an exception that shows 

you can have a block buster social realist film. I also counted that it had 28 distributors 

in countries including Japan and Argentina and that it was distributed by one of 

The Big 6, '20th Century Fox'.  

Age
Usually in a social realist film the age rating is 15 or above for example in 

'East is East', 'West is West', 'Slum Dog Millionaire' and 'This is England',

 all of the age ratings are 15 or 18. This is generally because the target audience 

they are trying to promote their film too is an older age group. This is because 

social realist films don't have as much action as the youth of today want and

 is not the typical story line they will be interested in. On saying that some age

 ratings can be below that  for example 'Bend it like Beckham'. This is because

 he is an icon and idol to young children therefore the film he makes needs to be

 suitable for this age category as they are the main target audience. Another factor

 to age is teen characters. This is shown in 'Billy Elliot', 'This is England', 'Sweet Sixteen'

 and 'Submarine' as all of these films have characters that teens of today can relate 

with, making it easier to empathise with them and understand the character. In some

 cases such as 'This is  England' it is a problem as the age rating is an 18, therefore

 not allowing the younger teens to watch it.

International Appeal

Billy Elliot
Cover

International appeal is a huge factor as it will bring in most of the

 income to the film. This means that it needs to appeal to people in 

different countries where they have a different language, accent, 

economy, political views or generally an idilic film preference. This

 is proven in the film 'Billy Elliot' as it made a huge $21,995,263 in 

America alone. This was all down to the typical American idilic movie

 as it reflected the American Dream.

Gender

Gender is also another key factor in Social Realism films as it needs to appeal to

 the male and female audience. On looking into further depth about this I found out that 

'Tyrannosaur' directed by Paddy Considine does this very well. He uses violence

 with the main protagonist to promote his film to men but he also uses romance 

and empathy to promote his film to the female audience. By using both of these key 'genres'

 in a social realism film, it opens up the amount of people coming to watch it as

 it is for both men and woman. 'The full monty' also do this as even though the film

 has men in it, it has comedy and a feel good factor allowing a wide of people to enjoy the film.

The Full Monty box office figures

Tyrannosaur Cover

East is East Cover