Textual Analysis

The film follows two days in the lives of a group of fifteen-year old teenagers from a rough area of London. The story focuses mainly upon Trevor and Alisa. An older student, Sam, is the main antagonist in the film because of his violent behavior and rough demeanor. It also transpires that a student, Katie, is being physically and emotionally bullied by a group of girls. Katie's parents do not know the extent of the bullying. After being picked up from school, a distraught Katie flees to her bedroom, writes a note and hangs herself. This act is the catalyst for the violent events, which ensue in the film.

The poster of the film tells many different stories of all those represented on it.  How Trevor on the right hand side is shown to have a calm and straight posture, signifying that he is a straight forward type person and is not your average day good guy, this signified by his ‘street/hood’ get up whereas Sam on the further left hand side is portrayed as a high temper individual who is definitely one of the violent bad guys, this is shown by the baseball bat he’s wielding, it tells us the audience that the bat has a pretty big importance in the film and that there will be a major twist due to the usage of the bat and how it is done.

Notice how the lighting in the back seems to be different, how there is a bright light effect behind Trevor on the left whereas the clouds seem dark and dull towards Sam’s side, this is another example of their respectable roles in the film. The girl next to Trevor seems a to be sitting a lot closer to him than she is to the other characters in the poster, this could mean that those two share a bond in the film and are portrayed as quite close friends or even lovers. But since the poster signifies the film to be a crime/street film you would not expect to see a lot of emotional scenes in between these two because the main theme is portraying lives of individuals growing up in a rough environment.

The dark gloomy colors used in the cover signify that most likely there will not be much of an up-tempo or ‘happy’ side to the movie.  Another example to support this statement is the clothes that each of the characters are wearing, they seem to be dark and have more of a grey/black tone to each of them. The life on the street is no different if it was to be put into color perspective because these two colors tell us the story of each of them and how it is represented onto the poster mirrors their personality and how they are towards others.

Posted by Ramish