Genre Investigation: Urban Drama

AdULTHOOD

How does it contribute to urban drama conventions?

Sam Peel, the Main character in 'AdULTHOOD' is a typical character of an urban drama film.

He is in a situation where is has just been released from prison after a six year sentence for killing another young, male with a baseball bat from trouble with gang violence.

The location in which the film is located at is also that of a typical urban drama. It is set in a run down London estate where the main character lives in a flat with his mother and brother. The surrounding area is also run down, including the train stations and shops that are shown in the film.

All the characters are also dressed in a hooded jacket, coat or hoodie, jeans or tracksuit bottoms and typically trainers. This is seen with every character who is involved in gang violence or one of the issues the film is showing throughout.

Title of the Film.

The title to the film is to me very interesting as because the characters in the film speak with a very colloquial dialogue and tend to shorten words like 'init' and 'ain't' it almost sound like the title is written in the way that the characters would say it because of the D in the title being small and all the other letter are in capitals.

The graphology of the title is very bold and strong with the white text on top of the dark colours of the background.





Use of Sound in the Film.

Throughout the film there is a constant sound of diegetic, colloquial dialogue between the characters and also non-diegetic music being played in the background of scenes to build tension for the audience.

There is also a part where non-diegetic music is playing in the background at the end of a scene and then continues as a sound being played as an under tone to a conversation between characters on a radio. This shows me that situations can flow from one scene to another and therefore does not only affect the people in one scene but it can affect other characters in the plot line of the story.

Editing Used in the Film.

Throughout the film split screens are used in AdULTHOOD to show two or more different scenes or characters to the audience. This allows the audience to see different emotions of the characters and how they may be affecting each other or how one situation may be affecting or enhancing another. It also allows he view to get two or more different perceptions of the film and the characters and breaks them down so that we can see them all at once and can link them together instead of having to watch two or more different sequences, one at a time.












Also Sam, the main character, has many flashbacks in the film to when he was in prison. When these happen the colour from the picture fades to an almost grey-scale look to show the difference between what is a memory and what is happening then. In some cases when the memory stops and when the present day begins again Sam is in the same position, allowing us to see how his memories are affecting him in the present day.