EDITED 30/03/2017: Question 2- How does your media product represent particular social groups?

How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our media product is a British gangster style film, dominated by male actors, all of which represent a different group of people; we have an elder character who represents an older generation, a younger character which does vice versa and a character who is used to symbolise the vulnerable people in society. We don't necessarily highlight a protagonist and therefore we diminish this idea of hope for any of the characters, from the start, a negative ending is foreshadowed.

This shot shows the elder character to be hosting the shot essentially.

We look to reinforce the masculinity in crime and emphasise the stereotypes that ride adjacent to the crime world. Through mise en scene, we chose to not include female actors; this is to further present the crime world as masculine and feed upon the stereotypes that are already structured. All of the shots are dominated by a male character and follow the most masculine character. Through our camera skills, he appears more prominent than the other character. He is literally and metaphorically positioned higher than the other character. We also reinforced masculinity in crime through costume. The difference in costume between these two characters shows a contrast in their masculinity. We again reiterate this through the mise en scene in this shot. One character is sitting and the other is standing, making how they formalise themselves a representation of their masculinity. The whole opening is very gritty and very true to its British gangster origins shown through the quick and slightly messy cuts- this idea of males governing the gangster world is established in many other films. For example, in Alice Creed, the only two people we see in the opening are two men. Out of the three characters in the whole film, the two male characters are the criminals and the female the victim. This reinforces a masculinity in crime. They further develop this conflict for masculine power, by creating shots in which a conflict is apparent.

The boss is talking over the shot of the other character, showing his dominance
of the edit

Linking into this, our film represents an age hierarchy; not just the world of crime but also within society. However we did present this through a gang as a hierarchy as such within is almost always prevalent. Using a similar shot as we I did before, I can show how the older a man is, the more power he has. This use of age to represent power is quite popular within various other gangster thrillers. For example, in the film Love, Honour and Obey, the character played by Ray Winstone is an older character and his power and status has grown over time and he is where he is because of his age. Another example might be the film Snatch. The character "Bricktop" is always dominating the shot and we often follow what he is doing and what he is focusing on, through camera work and editing. The director, Guy Ritchie also has this character speak over shots of other people, to show his dominance over others.

 We are able to present this through masculinity as we did before as it shows how through crime and the gritty illegal world of Britain, people become hard and masculine. There's a social status that one must conform to to ensure their authoritative position in the gangland of Britain. We show this through the way the control that the boss has over the edit. We, for most of the scene focus on him and what he is doing as opposed to what the other character is doing, unless we focus on the reaction of that character. We, however made it clear that we were not trying to belittle the other character but instead highlight the difference in authority. We can refer back to the previous shot I used to represent masculinity as it shows the same levels of dominance. We also were able to capture the boss's dominance of the edit as we follow what he is doing when he hands out the money. By showing the movement of the scene to be following the movement of that character, we re-emphasise his importance and especially his importance over his colleagues. In this same shot we show the boss character to have a significant amount of money- money equals power and the thought that this character is more powerful because of money, nicely complements his power gained through age. The age difference and the power difference because of that is again shown in the shot where they both enter the cellar. The older man is leading, and this simple trick highlights their difference in authority and their difference in age- almost holding a metaphorical barrier between them.

Our films signifies the vulnerable and their susceptibility to crime and a derogatory lifestyle. We open the film with shots of him and shots that establish his surroundings. By doing so we can focus on the sort of lifestyle he lives before he is taken. He is proposed as a character that has nothing. In this shot ,we have positioned the camera floor level to bring the viewer to his level; by doing so we can capture his desperation and really allow the audience to see his vulnerability. We can thus capture the importance in the other character coming to help him out. The cuts are fairly slow and the camera lingers on the homeless character for quite a while. This emphasises his loneliness and his desperation. In a fairly subtle fashion, we were able to develop this desperation of the character by using a track which is actually named "Desperation". The track holds a foreboding tension to it as it gets louder as the pace builds up. By using this we can allow the audience to initially determine the outcome of this character. The irony of his desperation leading to his death is mirrored through the contrast in the soundtrack. The sound builds up until it suddenly plateaus and then it develops into a very quiet, almost eerie sound. I synchronised the edit withe the movement of the music; as it got faster, so did the edit. The cuts before the music plateaus are extremely quick, similarly, so is the music. However when the lights are turned on, the music plateaus; this synchronicity allows for the viewer to be more immersed into the vulnerable character's mind.. We see his desperation as the tension builds and we see his helplessness as atmosphere turns from tense to eerie. The big contrast in soundtrack from fast to slow and the big contrast in the speed of the edit, makes this character seem more vulnerable as he is held helpless in the shot. We also see a vulnerability within the other young character. His vulnerability in the criminal world, especially his vulnerability towards his boss, almost suggesting that youth are a vulnerable group in society. The boss dominates the shot in the shots between those two characters. This shows how despite having some authority, this character is still under a strict regime where he is somewhat just as vulnerable in terms of actual importance as the homeless man. Referring back to my previous shot, we see the power difference; we see the difference in masculinity and age and these all make the other character even more vulnerable. To conclude upon such a representation of vulnerability we decided to use a fairly gritty font. insert picture. This brings the audience to perceive the whole piece in this gritty manner. The demeanour of the whole opening negative and is used to forebode a bad ending for the characters. By creating this through visuals, we then enforce an idea that vulnerable people in society are more desperate for a happy ending but in reality that isn't the case.

Question 6- What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Question 3- What kind of media institutions might distribute your media product and why?

Final Cut

Rough-cut copy

Edited 30/03/2017: Sounds and Music

My piece, although a gritty British gangster film, works on building tension. With a hostage scene being the main basis of the opening, we want a suspense to build and then plateux. This music has a slow build up. It starts fairly quite and slow, building up to a point where the volume, intensity and speed increase simultaneously. This build up creates the suspense we are looking for and with a narration over the top, hopefully we can capture the thriller aspect of the opening and furthermore keep our audience "on the edge of their seats". 

Most of the opening will be dominated by music and dialogue or narration. We, however want some sounds for specific things. 

For example we want a light flicker to sound in the hostage scene when the lights turn on. This against the silence should give it an eeriness and should forebode a certainly bad ending. It is simple and can be used as a transition from light to dark. The flickering fizzing of the light is unsettling and connotes a sense of malfunction and disposition is society again promoting this idea of turning to crime. This sound is used in a similar way in Stranger Things. Although it is used to convey a supernatural ambience, it also creates an unsettling tension,

Also for the opening, homeless shot, I want the diegetic sound of traffic to overwhelm everything else and thus overwhelm the conversation happening between the two characters. This shows that the traffic and the life of the streets is stronger than their relationship. The life of the streets is the thing that breaks their relationship in the end. They use this effectively in the opening of Shaft. It's used to establish the location and here we are able to do that.

Sound is fairly crucial in films. For example in Alice Creed, they have a fairly menacing, slow paced soundtrack that emphasises their own menacing ways. The soundtrack leaves the audience feeling ill-knowledgeable about where the scene is going. The soundtrack juxtaposes the things they are doing. The silence of diegetic sounds makes it more eerie and develops a larger contrast between the cynicism projected form the action and the contrasting music, thus making the audience feel out of place, just like the music.

Layer Cake also use sound effectively. The mood of Layer Cake is much less anticipated and much more light-hearted in the sense that it's more about a group of men selling cocaine rather than kidnapping a girl. Therefore the music is a lot more pop-like and is more apt for the mood. Also they use a narration, in which Daniel Craig talks over all of the action happening in the opening. They use it to introduce characters and introduce the plot. It's effective as it's a simple yet professional way of easily establishing the complications of the story. Within the opening there's various uses of diegetic sounds to establish the setting. For example when you hear the police sirens, it suggests that you are now in a crime-ridden area. The director also uses synchronised sound to link the story and the narration together. When they go to the jail whilst panning through the different story lines, one of the characters finishes Daniel Craig's non-diegetic narration with a diegeitc sentence.

Fonts

Fonts are key as they introduce a theme into your opening. They introduce your film essentially. If they don't follow the same mood as the film opening then they fail to establish your film. Therefore we are looking to create a British gangster grittiness atmosphere through the use of a criminal looking font. We quite liked the idea of having the titles on a black screen, breaking up the shots- similar to how Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels uses this effect.

Lock Stock opening title

I liked the look of this font as it is the same font as a reg. number on a car. This gives connotations of stealing cars or doing illegal acts of injustice using cars. The fact that cars are on roads and the lives of these people revolve around the work they do on the streets, makes this font establish a surreptitious connection. Visually the letters look robust but quite parodical in the sense that we are using a font typically associated with cars and the legality of owning a car; this plays on the immorality of the characters and also gives it a hint of dark comedy in the opening, alike to many British gangster films.

This font, indifferent to the previous font also shows a dark realism to the cynicism of a modern gangster society. However this font gives off more of a dark, hard feel to it. The letters, aesthetically suggest a violent and aggressive notion which may come from the characters; effectively initiating a dark undertone for the piece to follow. The letters almost look spray painted in their effect- this emphasises the illegal acts that are to follow by linking the opening to the illegal act of defacing property: in essence, defacing our opening.

Our last choice has more of an order and discipline to it, however it connotes, more so than the others, this idea of aggression and intimidation. The font has links to the military. The law and order of the army juxtaposes the immorality and cynicism of the characters but in some sense suggests that this gang of men work like the army and share and promote a superiority through terror and power. In contrast it also shows a corruption through this power; the juxtaposition of the two creates an ominous sense of immorality. I would like the title to be revealed as though it was done on a type writer or in a similar fashion where the letters appear one by one.