Blood and Chips

Genre Conventions Research: Blood and Chips

The Blood and Chips film extract opens with establishing shots of a cafe setting along with light hearted non-diegetic sound creating verisimilitude and a realistic atmosphere. The next shot shows a close up of some pies and an out of focus shot of a weary worker expressing the feeling of fatigue.

The next shot of chips being thrown into the deep fryer highlights the heat intensity and may act as representation of the atmosphere as being hot and intense. This may also be used as a form of foreshadowing events to come. Again shots of other characters in the cafe suffering from what seems to be humidity, particularly a black man who we get a close up of and as he exits the feeling that something underlining is going to happen is comfirmed when he accidently bumps into a white character and receives hostility, again foreshadowing that something bad may happen.

When we first see the white male character he is a rude and disrespectful character as he addresses the cafe worker without any form of politeness. The second indication that the white character brings negativity to the atmosphere is the manner in which the paid for the chips by rudely throwing the money on the table showing a disregard of manners or respect for the worker. His costume connotes that he is a cock-sure type of character and doesn't associate himself with the rest of the characters seen in the type of hat he wears despite it being humid in the cafe.

The camera switches to two young children shouting and arguing and typically intense situations over lapping conversations add to the build up in a tense atmosphere. The Children go quiet after being told to 'shut the fuck up' by another character who seems to be of low social economic class due to the vest he is wearing, his quite rugged facial features and his reading 'The Sun' newspaper which is often often aimed and associated with working class people. The white character takes this as an opportunity to vent the anger he'd been feeling, with shots of him scrunching cigarette express this feeling. The camera gives us extreme close up shots of his eyes surveying the cafe's Chinese clocks and figures and again the camera switches back to chips being thrown in the fryer, all of which connote and indicate the emotion and feeling the white character is having. The shots of him surverying the Chinese figures starts to show that racial tensions are coming to a head, and this is again confirmed when he believes that he can share his racist views with the other white male character, due to the fact that he described the two childern as 'animals'. 'This should be a British business' is again reflective of his racial discrimination, even dispite of the fact the Chinese worker spoken in a British accent 'open or wrapped, mate?', he disregards this.

The film makers focuses on using close up shots to present the bad feeling between the white character and the two childern, close up shots of his eye looking at their dark features shows his dislike. Then again a close up of him cleaning the sweat off his throat, throughout the extract the film makers concentrate on build-up using small connotations in order to give a complete picture at the end. The camera then uses a shallow depth of focus on the childern fighting and a close up of his venting his anger of black people and presenting him as being powerful in the extract. References to blacks being 'monkeys' gives a stereotypical view of racist beliefs, the face of the other white character smiles however sarcastically.

Then the view sees a shift in power as the two childern talk to the white man and call him 'dad'. Again a close up of the racist character is seen to highlight his stupidity as he comes to the realisation that he had been talking to their father the whole time. Shot reverse shots of the two white men looking at each other shows the fear that the racist man feel and the shows the disgust that the other man feels. The racist character is now protrayed as weak as the childern say good bye to the Chinese worker Albert, a traditional English name and all speaking in a Cockney accent to highlight how English they are and shows their togetherness.

The racist character just looks at the white man and the Chinese woker helplessly, then attempts to run out of the chip shop however ironically he bumps into the same black character again, however again to show the shift in power he apologizes then runs out as quick as he can. The film maker cleverly use the location of a chip shop which again has Britsh connotations to create irony and to create a place which a able to be stereotypically subverted and is also a neutral public place so the issues being raised can be highlighted to great effect.