Shifty; the independent British thriller.

1. The rules of this scheme were that the film must be made in 18 days and with a budget of less than £100,000. "Shifty" was the second film that this scheme released.

2. Shifty's uncut trailer

3. "Shifty" was distributed by Metrodome. £50,000 was spend on making celluloid prints of the film, administration and advertising. The intention was to attract two different audiences.

3.1. The first audience was was the middle class audience that regularly sees small independent films at independent cinemas.

3.2. The second audience was a new, younger urban audience. This audience had made "kidulthood" and "adulthood" profitable.

4. The Plot of the film. “Shifty” is a thriller that builds slowly. There are three interwoven threads to the story. Chris (Daniel Mays), a young man in his twenties returns home to visit a best friend he has not seen for years. An enigma is set up. Why did Chris leave? We suspect something awful happened but are not sure. We quickly learn that Shifty has become a drug dealer. As he completes his ‘round’ the film creates a realistic picture of urban life. A second thread to the story concerns Trevor who is a drug addict and desperate for drugs. The audience become involved in his desperate search for drugs which becomes ever more desperate. The third and most important plot involves Shifty being placed in danger by Glen who lies and claims Shifty is short changing his supplier. Shifty fears for his safety and the film builds toward a climax of tension. The final resolution to the film takes the audience by surprise.

5. At the end of the film we see Shifty and his friend leaving his home after we are shown that Shifty has made a plan to get his drug dealer bosses away from him. The outcome of this plan is that his name is cleared whilst the people who wronged him were "taught a lesson" by the men after Shifty. This ending was very effective as it was unpredictable as we did not see this outcome as a possibility. This film overall was very effective as a lot of the context was only revealed nearer the end of the film and it allowed people to delve into a world that, in reality, many people would never dare enter.

6. The final box office takings were £143,000. Most of the film's profits came from DVD and television sales.

7. Shifty's official trailer

8. Shifty is a British film made in 2008 under the Microwave scheme that was funded by the UK film council (which was replaced by the BFI.) The aim of this scheme was to provide young film makers with a platform to make a small independent film.

9. It opened in 51 independent cinemas such as the Curzon chain and in its opening weekend took £61,000.

10. In order to attract both audiences, Metrodome produced different trailers. Interestingly, the trailer targeting the youth audience had a soundtrack of 'hip hop music' however the film doesn't contain a soundtrack.

10.1. In addition to this Metrodome ran adverts on pirate radio stations, used fly posters (illegal posters)  and gave out business cards depicting shifty as a drug dealer. A music video was also created on youtube to promote the film.