Conventions of the Gangster Film Genre
- 1. CONVENTIONS OF THE GANGSTER FILM GENRE
- Mise En Scene – colours & Lighting
- Mise En Scene – Setting
- Mise En Scene – Costume & Make Up
- Mise En Scene – Props
Colours and lighting-The colours used are often very dark, this is mainly because of the fact that most gangster films if not all have deaths in them and the dark colours create dark themes in a movie. Another film for a dark colour can insinuate that their maybe some sort of betrayal,jealously and drama.
Setting-The setting in gangster films is almost always an Urban/City location. Rundown areas and industrial estates. Directors may pick these locations for the simple fact that they want the gangster to be very gritty and realistic. Some early Gangster films such as The Godfather is successful mainly because of the location and setting showing that locations connect with the narrative of the story.
Costume and Make Up-Formal outfits like suits and ties are one of the most recognizable conventions in gangster films. Movies like American Gangster which tells the story of Frank Lucas starring Denzel Washington, you mostly see the main character dressed in a suit further utilizing the idea that these characters are men of class and are also criminals. Dresses are also often seen when women are involved. The colour red often ties in with these outfits also. For Make Up things such as blood and scars are used to maximize the use of violence in these films.
Props- The most commonly seen props in gangster films are guns, cigarettes, drugs and money. These often tie into the story line and theme of gangster films. Especially in Scar face. You could also say that these movies glorified the idea of drugs,guns and cigarettes almost saying that this was the dream life but nearly all of these movies didn’t end well for the protagonist and it was only symbolizing and foreshadowing deaths.
Today we encountered in issue with the weather therefore we was unable to film. We was also trying to film our final death scene but we lacked time and execution. To sum it all up we are going to have film tomorrow and our other clips are already edited and done. In this reflection I will be talking about our experience so far with the short and also the roles each person had, for example Shirwa is our camera man and Hamza and I are the sound guys. To be quite honest every person in our group has display great technical skill and on top of all that we decided to edit our own versions to tell different sides of the story; so the narrative and storyline will have alternate endings and beginnings. This is very healthy for our kings of Wealdstone project because we put a lot of effort and time into this project not to mention the ski mask and baseball bats we bought together as group.
Day 1 of filming- On day 1 we was doing some location scouting for our short film and we came across this isolated location, the location was isolated because we didn’t want draw any attention from people mainly because we were in masks and had a bat. We took into consideration the amount of things that could have seriously gone wrong. We also wanted our footage to be as professional as possible and we didn’t want anyone else in our shot other than extras.
Day 2 of filming- On day 2 we proceeded to start filming our opening sequence of the film, this was not the plan at first for our project it wasn’t until I looked at movie like Kidult Hood and I got inspiration to use a baseball bat for our sequence. Below you are going to see were our ski mask and baseball bat idea came from and how we developed it and made into our own thing.
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