2. History
The Peaky Blinders were a criminal gang based in Birmingham, England, in the late 19th
century and to a lesser extent, in the early 20th century. They were one of the many
urban youth gangs, in the era, which were among the earliest of modern street
subcultures. According to Carl Chinn, the name Peaky Blinders is popularly said to
derive from the practice of stitching razor blades in the peaks of their flat caps, which
could then be used as weapons. Chinn described this as a ‘unrealistic scenario’, and
says a more mundane explanations that ‘peakys’ was a common nickname for popular
flat claps with peaks. The gangs were known to have a distinctive clothing style,
wearing the peaked caps, cravats and bell bottom trousers, while ‘a line of brass
buttons down the front gave added distinction. Their style of dress was similar to that
of Manchester based gangs of the same period known as Scuttlers. Whether the peaky
blinders were a single gang or a local Birmingham term for a form of violent youth
subculture is debated. Eric Moonman states that in Birmingham, youth street gangs
were known as peaky blinders or as sloggers. Paul Thompson writes that "These gangs
would attack a drunkard and ‘probably leave him insensible in the gutter. If they
cannot trip a man or knock him down, they kick or use the buckles of belts…. They will
use knife, poker, fork or anything.'"[
3. In Popular Culture
There is a BBC television drama series called Peaky
Blinders which is a gangster family epic set in 1919
Birmingham and centred on a gang who sew razor
blades in the peaks of their caps and their fierce
boss Tommy Shelby, who means to move up in the
world. The drama stars Cillian Murphy. It is based in
Small Heath in post First world war Birmingham. It
aired in October 2013, a second aired in 2014 and
third season is filming and scheduled to air at the
end of 2015.
4. Marketing
The series of Peaky Blinders was created by Steven
Knights and produced by Caryn Mandabach productions
and Tiger Aspect Production. The series was filmed in
Birmingham, Bradford, Dudley, Leeds and Liverpool.
Railway sequences were filmed between Keighley and
Damems, using carriages from the Ingrow Museum of
Rail Travel owned by Vintage Carriages Trust. Sam Neil
enlisted the help of Northern Irish actors James Nesbitt
and Liam Neeson to help him perfect a Northern accent
for the role of C. I Campbell. In the end, he had to tone
the accent down since the series is being marketed in
the United Series as well as in the United Kingdom.
5. A highbrow text is intellectually culturally rich. Peaky
Blinders has an element of a highbrow text but also
contains various mainstream conventions. Incidentally a
criticism of BBC 2.
Peaky Blinders has been
complemented for its high
production value and
cinematography. A gratification of an
active audience who found it
appealing.
6. Audience Response
A oppositional response to the text was that it
was all style no substance. Again some critics
put this down to the budget. Most highbrow TV
series have 12 episodes per season. With Peaky
Blinders only including 6, Jim Shelly, the Daily
Mail critic, felt the series was rushes with
characters and plots often under developed and
lacking complexity.
7. Attracting the audience
One way Peaky Blinders attracted an audience
and therefore gained a positive audience
response was via breaking the stereotypical
representation of regional identity in this case
the Brummie ‘A study was conducted in 2008
where people were asked to grade the
intelligence of a person based on their accent
and the Brummie accent was ranked as the
intelligent accent.
8. Gemma Nunn (second assistant director)
visit
This is Gemma Nunn, who came and visited Titus
Salt School’s Media class. She was a former
student at TSS and did Media Studies A level. She
came in school to talk to media students about
Peaky Blinders that she has worked on and is also
currently working on its third season. She told us a
lot about Peaky Blinders. She told us what her
position is (second assistant director). Her job is to
manage the extras. She said that the people in
peaky blinders who have 11 lines or more are cast
as actors and the people who have less than 11
lines are cast and extras. Her duty is to manage
the extras on the set and also help the director
with his jobs.
9. Along with Gemma, Jim Sturgess also assisted her. They spoke to me
and my group about our idea for our short film. The short film is
about a teenage girls who everyone at school thinks her life is perfect
as she has the perfect boyfriend and the designer clothes. The short
film will be having a few flashbacks to the scenes where she is in
trouble and this is when the audience will find out that she is in real
trouble when they see her abusive relationship and see her doing
drugs. Jim Sturgess who is a very well known famous actor said the
idea me and my group have got about the short is good, but he also
said we need to have a shock factor at the end which will make the
short serious and epic. I am really pleased that I got to speak to Jim
Sturgess as he has acted in many famous films and example of this
would be ‘ONE DAY’ where he had a main role which was to play the
role of Anne Hathaway's boyfriend.
These are photographs
where me and my group
were having a discussion
about our short film to
Gemma and Jim.
