Magazine cover creation progress

Nick has made wonderful progress in creating our magazine cover to promote the film. Here are screenshots of the cover at various stages:

1:

2:

Production company logo

We decided on 'STARGAZE PRODUCTIONS' as our production company name and Calum made a logo for use at the beginning of the trailer:

Music options/choices for trailer

Music in the genre of gangster is very important: a slower acoustic Italian-style is iconic of films like The Godfather.

(LINK/EMBED GODFATHER OPENING MUSIC)

The music playing during the first part of our trailer (the slower paced half), is Nancy Sinatra's 'Bang Bang'. We thought this was appropriate given the omnipresence of guns in gangster films, and the recurring theme in our film. The words 'bang, bang' in conjunction with the calm tone of the music also provides a disturbing juxtaposition for the viewer.

Nancy Sinatra

During the second segment of our trailer, we are using The Prodigy's 'Breathe'.

A shot from the 'Breathe' music video.

This is because this half of the trailer is much faster paced visually and in terms of content, as is the convention for action film trailers: the beginning will introduce the characters and signal that the film too will start less aggressively.

The trailer reaches a climax and the action begins. 'Breathe' is an aggressive, arousing piece of music and will excite the viewer to potentially go and see it.

[EMBED 'BREATHE']

Basic plot

• Two lovers, children of rival gang leaders, have a relationship in secret.
  Despite their efforts, their fathers (or one of them) discovers this and orders the assassination of them both.


• The couple are interrupted while together by a ‘hitman’ and are seemingly both killed. Their bodies are thrown into a harbour.


• The girl survives, though injured. Her lover is dead. She is bent on revenge against her father.


• She kills her assassin. She also kills many more people on her journey to her father. She does this seemingly without hesitation.


• Her father discovers that it is his daughter killing his men. Rather than feeling remorse or paternal compassion he steps up his game and orders her immediate death.


• She eventually finds him but leaves him to live, though a broken and helpless man.
  
  The following diagram shows the flow of events as seen in both the feature film and the trailer.

You can see that while most of the pre-climactic events are condensed in the trailer, the 'action' is excluded and so the audience will not feel like anything significant has been given away, since thrillers like this are seen for the characters and action as well as just the storyline.

The final point is not touched on at all in the trailer, obviously, as this would reveal the ending.

Final typeface for title and taglines

To create our movies title ‘logo’, we decided on the free-for-use typeface ‘Ghetto Marquee’ by Kirk Shelton, found on Dafont.com:



We liked it because it has the effect of ‘tablets’ built in, which I think are reminiscent of the classic movie advertisements you might have seen many years ago at a movie theatre. The worn and dirtied effect gives the viewer the image of disuse. It suits the film because it is sympathetic with how battered the main character is. The splattering is reminiscent of the bloodshed in the gangster underworld and the crookedness signifies the disorder and unpredictability in the film.

This is what our film title looks like in the font:



In our trailer, we are using strong phrases that relate to the story to give the audience a little more information. One of these is 'FORBIDDEN LOVE'. We decided to use the same typeface as the title, but to make them look more 'beaten up', I used Adobe Photoshop to make some of the tablets crooked, and also adjusted the second 'E' so it looked different from the first. We also gave it a red hue to distinguish them from the title:

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.