Practicality: Pro's and Con's of 'Gangster'

Pros

• Costumes are relatively simple and recognisable: suits, jackets, etc. Easy to obtain.


• Locations are very easy as well -- offices, streets, alleys, etc. All relatively accessible, and London, an ideal location, is well within practical travelling distance.


• Few props are needed other than guns as the storyline would be, for the most part, based on a naturalistic urban environment.


• Characters are either young adult or middle ages, so it is not difficult to find a cast. We will likely be using friends and parents.

Cons

• Weapons are an essential component in the gangster genre. Replicas might not be so difficult to obtain, but possessing them in a public place, or at least having them in plain sight, is against the law and potentially dangerous for the carrier.


• Sports cars and boats, which are potentially useful symbols of power in the genre are difficult to obtain, but luckily we potentially have access to these at our disposal if we were to choose to use them.

The genre of 'Gangster' and themes

We are working in the film genre of gangster. Though this provides a large number of themes, conventions, and toolkits for devising creatively, we wanted to make sure this didn't limit us.

Films of this genre typically involve a man fighting for or against an organisation. An example of this is the film-noir classic 'The Big Heat' (1953) by Fritz Lang, where an ex detective bent on revenge goes out to destroy a large-scale crime operation.

Crucially, we are using a female protaganist and we feel that this allows us to discuss the ideas of female strength, father-daughter relationships, and play with vulnerability and naivité using the stereotype of a young girl as a catalyst. A convention often featured in films of this type is the ambiguity of this good-bad definition -- a bad character might seeming uncharacteristic tendencies of compassion or a good character lapses into a senseless and dark pursuit of revenge. The theme of revenge is a very effective way of portraying this ambiguity, where a character 'sees red' and is dangerously obsessive. This links back into the vulnerability as a character might have a point of self-realisation.