Shane Meadows

Shane Meadows, director of 'This is England' is an inspirational director to me as his work depicts the same rough, harsh reality that I wish to replicate in our own short film. I have been studying his body of work as I feel his target audience will be similar to ours, to see how he appeals and relates to his target audience, and manages to very much show the perspective on society from youths.
Arguably his most successful film, Shane Meadows wrote 'This is England', the film that is the greatest inspiration to me as it contains the stylistic and narrative features I wish to use in our own production, with its gritty, blunt views on society during the 80's. The main character 'Shaun' manages to be both relatable and extreme in his efforts to fit in despite his bereaving over the death of his father. I found an interview with Shane Meadows discussing the inspirations behind his choice of 80's culture and his own personal experiences with it which I feel has enabled to me to develop a greater understanding of the reasoning behind the film, and how I can draw on perhaps not my own personal experiences, but use things I myself find shocking controversial and interesting like Meadows has done, because being young myself I feel I will be able to relate well to others my age.



Ranked 40th in the telegraphs 'most powerful people in British culture', Meadows included scenes that would provoke public debate in this is England, touching on very taboo subjects that our society faces issues with, such as racism and prejudice as shown in the video below. The way Meadows portrays harsh reality is something I wish to replicate in our own film, as its done in a very simplistic yet effective way, letting the actions speak for themselves. I found the video below exceedingly difficult to watch, but I decided to include it on here because it is the appitamy of the emotions I wish to create, it made me feel irritated, angry, distressed but most of all it made a point.