Analysis Of The Use Of Mise-en-scene And Editing In Sweet Sixteen

Mise-en-scene:
This sequence uses a lot of natural lighting which is a good convention of a social realist, although i am fully aware of there being staged lighting included in the sequence. Any staged lighting is either very mild lighting or highly exaggerated, for example, when there is a car at night, the lights are extremely exaggerated. Depending on the scene, the lighting changes, for example, at the beggining where the boys are in the street, the lighting is rather bright which is a big contrast to the very start where it is very dark where you can barely see anything.
The characters are dressed as a stereotypical family. There is a stereotypical chav dress type and emphasises the working class. We know this by the way they are presented in the scene. For example the boys are wearing tracksuit bottems and hats, and the way they are dressed helps us to identify what sort of person he is. The mother is in prison which shows that the family could be rough. These interpretations of the family help the spectator to identify with them and understand. It draws the spectator into the sequence to get them involved. The family beat up or bully the youngest child as he disobeyed what they were telling him to do. This shows dominace in the sequence.
The film opening is set in a village, in places that are normally busy so there is a lot of people around. For example, in a pub. As te opening gradually begins, the setting totally changes from a busy town or village to the countryside. When the boy is in the car, the camera is quite close to his face, but not enough to cover up the background, it is set in the countryside, so there is many hills and fields. The camera angles are used to put across the dominance of the characters. The closer they stand, the more dominance that character has over the rest of the characters.

Editing:
There is not much editing at all, slight sense of continuity editing but other then that, nothing is used. Continuity editing is a good convention of social realist films as they are on a low budget, therefore, have less editing. There is no computer animation or parallel editing which shows it is a low budget film. The shot durations are quite long which shows the film has little editing. The shots are long, this means that not as much editing is needed. The titles have been edited in with transitions and fades etc. Even though the shots have a long short duration, the editing is hidden as continuous editing is used which makes ti hardly visible to the spectator.