Tyree's Discovery

Public Enemies Poster Analysis- GANGSTER GENRE STUDY PART 1

Tyree

Public Enemies

Poster Analysis

I think that this poster for the 2009 film, Public Enemies is a very unconventional gangster film poster.

1. Selection of Content

WORDS- The words on the poster are in different sizes, the lead star's name, JOHNNY DEPP is quite small seeing as everybody pretty much knows who he is, his name is actually the same size and colour as the tagline that is above the title. The title of the film, PUBLIC ENEMIES is the largest piece of text on the poster, and has been written in a very bright white, in contrast to the colour of the poster that is quite dark. The release date of the film is also written in white so that it stands out just like the title, as they are the two most important aspects of the poster.

IMAGES- The only image seen on the poster is that of the notorious bank robber/gangster John Dillinger (Johnny Depp), he is standing at a police line- up, which is seen briefly in the background, and he is giving a sinister smile to the audience.

COLOURS- The colours on the poster have a little bit of a brown tint to the rest of the poster, the facial area of the lead character is the brightest image that is seen on the poster (aside from the text), the "border" around the character darkens around the edge of the poster.

FONTS- All I can say about this is that the font used is very bold, and almost looks Russian.

2. Codes and Conventions

ICONOGRAPHY- In the image of John Dillinger, he is wearing a brown suit (which is quite conventional for a gangster film), so it represents and means that he is a well respected gangster, even though he is a small time gangster, it shows that he has at least his own level of power, because it isn't a very flashy suit.

CONNOTATIONS- The poster design is really simple and doesn't show much, but his suit could still show the audience of how highly John Dillinger thinks of himself, and he likes to make sure that his appearance looks good.

MISE- EN- SCENE- Setting- John Dillinger is at a police line- up

                                    Costume- John Dillinger is wearing a nice 1930's suit, to look respectable.

                                    Lighting- The lighting of the poster is set so we clearly see John Dillinger's' face the clearest

                                    Props- There are no props seen on this poster, it is very unconventional

CAMERA- The camera is set on a close- up of John Dillinger's face, so that we can clearly see his facial expression and, in a way, how he truly feels about being caught by the police and taken to a police line- up.

Scarface Blog Journal

Tyree

Task 2.1

Scarface Blog Journal



Target Audience- The target audience for the classic mob film, Scarface has certainly turned out to be something that the film- makers and the distributors weren't expecting. Initially, the film was made for mostly a male audience, due to the tone of the film and the subject matter, as well as how men are portrayed as something of great superiority as opposed to women, who are very much seen as objects for the mobsters to look good, in fact, Michelle Pfeiffer’s character, Elvira, who is at first a trophy wife to Frank Lopez, played by Robert Loggia, eventually becomes Tony’s trophy wife, and she is extremely unhappy with both men, who treat her exactly in the same way, although, I think that Frank treats her a little bit nicer. But, as everybody knows, the film was not really that much of a success, it didn't make that much money, it made $65 million on a $25 million budget, so it didn't become the big hit that the studio were expecting. The film even gathered a mixed to positive reaction from audiences and critics. But, as time went by, the film developed a cult following with the most unlikely of audiences; gangsta rappers. Through a documentary that I watched, it is revealed that gangsta rappers adore and worship the living Hell out of this film to the point where they have tons of memorabilia of the film in their houses, all the way to the point where they name themselves after the lead characters' nickname, Scarface. The reason for this is because the gang culture can relate to Tony Montana, because they understand what it is like to have a rough upbringing and they know that the only way that they could become rich and successful is through the hard way, they lived their lives just like Tony did. They understand what the character goes through and why it happened, and they sympathise with him because to some of them, the gangster life is all they know, even now with all their money and wealth. The film is about a self- made man who came from a horrible background who rises at the top of the food chain the only way he knows how, and through this, the rappers and ultimately, the gang culture and the Black community see themselves in it. I have to say, though. It isn’t just the Black community who embrace Scarface, but anybody who has a massive interest in ‘thug life’, and even something as minimal as the poster is seen on many different things that we have come to know and identify with as gang culture. If anything, the poster is just as iconic as the movie, itself, becoming an instantly recognisable image in film and popular culture.

Genre conventions- The main convention of a gangster film actually serves as the story premise of this movie. A low life thug who only knows about crime is determined to rise through the ranks of criminality and become the  World's top gangster. This premise is used in a lot of gangster films, and of the three films that we have watched in class (City of God and Lock, Stock & Two Smoking Barrels) all have that one, or four characters that want to overthrow a higher power (in this film, the higher power is Frank and in Lock, Stock, we have Harry) although the hero/villain dynamic is very odd in this film. but, I will get to that when we talk about representation. The main character, Tony is also an immigrant who heavily dislikes his own status in life and wants more, and the only loyalty he feels is for his own immigrant roots. His wealth and power is shown by his material goods such as his fancy clothes and his mansion, and also, his wife, Elvira, who is, like all women in a gangster film, is also just a symbol of his success. In the end, this backfires and Tony's supposed success backfires.

Representation- The representation of characters in this is highly conventional for a film in this genre. The men (Frank and Tony) all play up the 'machismo' aspect of powerful men, they flaunt off their wealth at any given occasion, and the two characters' personalities reflect the level of power they are at. The female characters seen in the film are all ported as either a nagging mother (who is really just a minor character) or an overly sexualised junkie (Elvira and Gina), who happen to be very close to the lead character, Tony. This shows that the female characters are portrayed in a negative way, even if they are the main characters' wife, Elvira or his sister/second love interest?, Gina. Other minor female characters and extras that are female are also strippers or dancers, or just a girl that is being flirted with by Manny. Even though Elvira Hancock and Gina Montana can be seen as relatively strong characters who stand up to Frank and later, an aggressive Tony, they're still no match compared to the rest of the characters who are all male and happen to be very powerful in the drug trade. One thing I can say is different, though, is that even though Tony is still an aggressive, evil man, he has compassion and a heart, we know this because he seems to care a lot about his mother and sister's well- being when he brings money to them. On one assignment, he even refuses to detonate a bomb attached to a car due to the fact that there is a mother and small child inside, this is very unconventional for a drug lord character.

Narrative- The story of 'Scarface' is the most well known and conventional cinematic criminal story seen on screen; a low life immigrant thug who is sick of his own status in life decides to change that and make a success of himself in a huge drug trade in America. This story is so well known that it even inspired other titles to have similar stories, that are, for the most part, tweaked. In Rockstar Game's 'Grand Theft Auto: Vice City', a low life Italian criminal named Tommy Vercetti attempts to rise up in the ranks of criminality and eventually makes his way up to a drug kingpin, the story even features the same mansion action set piece at the end and is set in the 1980's. Other examples of some form of inspiration include the television series, 'Breaking Bad', where the main character, a mild mannered chemistry teacher, Walter White is diagnosed with lung cancer, and so, to ensure that his family has money for after his dies, he enters the drug business making meth to raise enough money and eventually transforms into a notoriously dangerous drug kingpin named 'Heisenberg'. Finally, in Rockstar Games' 'Grand Theft Auto IV', the main character is an immigrant named Niko Bellic who has travelled to America to seek revenge, but is accidentally dragged into the life of a criminal for a second time. It's other films/games like these that show how influential the story of 'Scarface' is to modern pop culture. The film and its story have many narrative conventions that was made more popular with other gangster films that were made after it. This is a 'cult' film, which means that it was, at first unpopular critically and commercially when first initially released, but over time garners the respect it deserves. Another cult gangster film starring Al Pacino and directed by Brian De Palma is 'Carlito's Way', which can be seen as a 'what- if' story of 'Scarface', and what would have happened if he survived and had a big personality change. This film and 'Scarface' share sort of similar plot lines, although in 'Carlito's Way', instead of Carlito Brigante being a low life thug and wanting to become a high rise gangster, he is a former, well respected gangster to wants to raise enough money to leave the Country he lives in and begin a better life. Both of these films have been influential to many gangster films made in the future, due to their cult statuses.

Tim- Moving Image Soundtrack Report

KILL BILL VOLUME 1- The Bride vs. The Crazy 88

The big fight scene from the film features no diegetic speaking parts throughout, all except for a lot of yelling noises made by all of the characters when they are being stabbed and attacked. The music in the scene is non- diegetic to make the scene feel more over the top and more like a martial arts film.

More of the non- diegetic sounds are all of the blades being hit by one another, the loud blood effects that happen nearly every second and there are even a few instances where you hear some cartoon sound effects, which just adds to the absurdity of the film. The writer and director, Quentin Tarantino really wanted to parody and pay homage to classic martial arts films, which is why he decided to include such loud sound effects to accompany the chaotic scene.

KILL BILL VOLUME 2- Superman monologue

The sound from this scene from the “sequel” or “Volume 2” is very different compared to the first clip, seeing as there is no action whatsoever. This scene is part of the confrontation between The Bride and Bill. The character of Bill is a very manipulative character, and every scene he is in, he has a long, drawn out speech (like many Tarantino written antagonists). The soundtrack to the scene is completely diegetic; every sound from the scene is natural and has been recorded on camera, along with the rest on the acting and dialogue, of course.

Because this whole scene is just one character talking to another character, it feels very peaceful and it gives the audience time to relax and gives them a break from all the action that is included in the rest of the film. These scenes, that feature mainly natural and diegetic sounds; are very rare when it comes to a Tarantino film, but, most of his films include a scene or scenes like this, where the scene is almost completely silent and one character/a number of characters are having a long conversation that is irrelevant to the whole movie, most of his fans actually call this ‘Tarantino- ing’.

Inglourious Basterds- The Pub Scene

Another use of ‘Tarantino- ing’ is with this pub scene from Tarantino’s 2009 war film, ‘Inglourious Basterds’. In this scene, Lieutenant Archie Wilcox (Michael Fassbender), actress Bridget Von Hammersmark (Diane Kruger) and Hugo Stiglitz (Til Schweiger) are sitting at a table at a pub, playing a drinking game with Major Deiter Hellstrom (August Diehl). Similar to the Superman monologue from ‘Kill Bill’, this scene is a very quiet scene with all of the sounds being completely natural and diegetic to create a real pub atmosphere. This scene is extremely different compared to the ‘Kill Bill’ scene or any other scene like this because it is spoken entirely in the German language, creating yet another mood.

It isn’t up until towards the end of the scene where the sounds clearly become non- diegetic. The scene becomes tense and a lot of violent shooting occurs. The gun sounds are loud and chaotic and really set a completely different tone from the rest of the scene.

Inglourious Basterds- The Cinema Massacre

In this scene, one of the characters, Shoshanna Dreyfuss (Melanie Laurent) is taking revenge on the Nazi’s who killed her entire family and tried to kill her. She does this by setting a cinema on fire that the Nazi’s are at. This causes panic, and creates a very frightening scene. The sound used in the film is a mixture of diegetic and non- diegetic sound. The sounds of all of the cinema patrons screaming, I think that they are all of the extras screaming as the huge fire erupts in front of them.

The sound of the fire can be considered fake, but by the look of the fire, I would say that Quentin Tarantino and the sound designers/recorders used the natural sound of the fire on set, to help create the real effect of a burning fire. Finally, Shoshanna’s feared speech on the cinema screen is heard, and it is very loud and has a slight echo to make it sound more like it’s coming from the speakers, so it does sound diegetic, but, this could be non- diegetic and could have been pre-recorded and edited in later in post-production.

Gangster Genre Study- Scarface- Initial Screening Part 2

Target audience: MALE LEAD CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT

• Beneath Tony's tough exterior, he is a very caring character and loves his family (his mother and sister) and he wants to make them proud and protect them.
• His family life is also clearly troubled.
• Later in the story, Tony begins to take part in important Cocaine deals.
• Tony eventually becomes more and more aggressive and careless.

Genre conventions: STORY DEVELOPMENT

• Tony starts to act very arrogant and 'too big for his boots' during a point of the film.
• Tony's associates are killed off to teach him a lesson on who he can trust.

Representation: HOW ARE FEMALE CHARACTERS REPRESENTED LATER IN THE FILM?

• Tony's mother is an angry and upset woman, mostly due to Tony's lifestyle.
• Female lead character (Elvira) and Tony slowly fall for each other because of their shared hatred of Frank.
• Tony's sister, Gina becomes resentful and rebellious towards him, which goes heavily against Tony's protective behaviour.

Narrative: RISE AND FALL OF THE PROTAGONIST

• Tony slowly begins to make more money.
• Tony moves up in the ranks of the criminal underworld, small time punk= public property.
• Tony becomes a fearless, feared abusive man.

Gangster Genre Study- Scarface- Initial Screening Part 1

Target Audience: use the different ways of defining audiences from your audience profiles to identify who you feel is the target audience.

• Those who enjoy dark gangster films (the gritty side of cinema)
• Gangster films are an acquired  taste due to the harsh and violent content.
• This film is 3hrs long, so the audience would need the right attention span to watch this, to keep their interest in the story.

Genre conventions: identify the genre conventions of 'gangster films' reflected in the film. Is there anything unconventional about the film?

• Our lead character, Tony has a very troubled past to establish his character.
• The film has a relatively dark tone, but has a lot of humorous scenes, which is quite unconventional for gangster films.
• The characters in gangster films are usually well respected, but in this film, the characters are discriminated against (mainly because they're Cuban)

Representation: how do you feel men are portrayed? Identify stereotypical aspects of 'masculinity' that is highlighted.

• Tony, and the other male characters have very violent personalities.
• The male characters force themselves onto women a lot throughout the film.
• Women are degraded in this film, as opposed to the men who are both praised, powerful and are deemed superior.
• Female characters are portrayed as materialistic and sexualised- women are seen as bought objects.

Narrative: identify what you feel are the key conventional narratives of gangster films reflected in this film?

• Tony is a foreign newcomer who wants to build an empire as a feared gangster in America.
• Other characters betray Tony, but he eventually gets his revenge and what he wants.
• Lead character becomes a drug lord.
• Tony is given a 'mentor' (Frank) who teaches him about the gangster life.
• The story of 'Scarface' created the best known conventions and clichés of a gangster film.

Matt's Task 4 Report

When talking about how to identify the audience for ‘Bowling for Columbine’ and ‘Lift’, we decide whether the film is mainstream (open to everyone), niche (targeted towards a smaller audience) or alternative (a documentary that takes an unusual approach to a particular subject). With Michael Moore’s 2002 documentary about gun control, ‘Bowling for Columbine’, I think that it is made very clear that this film was made and distributed for a mainstream audience, this is because the film revolves mainly around a World wide issue that a lot of people and Countries can closely identify with; what causes acts of violence with guns? and most importantly, what was the cause for the Columbine High School Massacre? The film was written and directed by Michael Moore, who’s films’ always discuss World wide problems such as health care, Capitalism and the horrific attack of the Twin Towers, as seen in ‘Fahrenheit 9/11’.

Marc Isaacs’ ‘Lift’ is completely different, it isn’t a feature length documentary, a well- known director didn’t make it, and it doesn’t even tackle any topic that thousands of people would be interested in. Instead, the film takes a completely different albeit, very bizarre film where everything is set in one place; a lift. The director stands in the middle of it and films the British public walk in and out, and asks them personal, but harmless questions. I consider this film to be a hybrid of alternative and niche. I think this because it sounds like the sort of documentary that you would only see once on Channel 4, and a lot of television viewers are always into those, and therefore quite many people would view it, however, it is a very risky documentary and it is probably the first of its kind, so you can’t decide whether or not it would be successful in the public eye, but maybe critics would favour the film a lot more, as they are always after something different and audiences usually go for “familiar territory”, so to speak.

For both films, the techniques used to target each audience are done very uniquely. For example, ‘Bowling for Columbine’, being quite a mainstream film, uses the very common documentary technique of humour, although the film is very serious when it comes to the films’ principal agenda, it includes various different degrees of satire that acts as a conflict to the films’ serious nature. There are two instances in the film that stick out to me like a sore thumb; the first one is an animated sequence within the film titled ‘A Brief History of the United States of America’, the sequence is styled in a similar way to that of the animated television series ‘South Park’, and even shares the same form of humour, voices and the quickly paced writing style, clearly parodying the earlier seasons of the series. The second instance is a montage of American foreign policy decisions, showing news clips and examples of why America is an aggressive nation, the montage is to the tune of ‘What a Wonderful World’, one can’t help but think that this particular sequence was very dark satire, whilst watching this sequence, I could help but think of its similarities to the 1964 black comedy, ‘Dr. Strangelove’, where towards the end of that film, there is a montage of several nuclear detonations accompanied by Vera Lynn’s recording of ‘We’ll Meet Again’. It’s scenes like this where I think that humour is a good away to attract a great number of audience members to see your film. Like many films, the marketing campaign for ‘Bowling for Columbine’ mainly consisted of many different posters and trailers, playing up the laughs to obviously bring in bigger numbers at the box office all up until it was released in cinemas in the United States. While the film did happen to break records, it didn’t do so well in America, but it did do very well in the UK, and Australia, etc. It’s a common known fact that most films’ bring in a lot more money with International releases, rather than its Country of origin.

‘Lift’, however, is a different matter, with the film being merely a short 25 minutes long (most short documentaries are about an hour long) it did not get its audience with a wide cinema release, instead, this very independent film was first shown on the internet, afterwards, it was entered and shown at various different Film Festivals, where it garnered attention from Channel 4 executives, where it was then played there, before finally making its way to DVD, along with Marc Isaacs’ other films. The Internet is also a great way to show off your work and introduce your talent in order to find your audience. Some independent film- makers also find it to be a good way to get noticed in order to move onto much bigger, more ambitious projects.

I think that the audience has been targeted in different ways because they are very obviously different films. Everybody expects a film that is made by an acclaimed documentarian to get the “Hollywood treatment” when searching for an audience, and usually films like ‘Bowling for Columbine’ find their target audience very quickly. I think that ‘Bowling for Columbine’s’ audience was picked up because there are a lot of cinemagoers out there that love feature length documentaries about important issues and have a clear passion for them, especially those made by Michael Moore, who is treated like a King when it comes to these films. That is why these films generate so much revenue, and, if they don’t, they at least get a lot of Universal critical acclaim.

‘Lift’, again, is another issue. Marc Isaacs was not known when he released and showed off ‘Lift’, it was simply an experimental documentary, with an extremely risky formula that is replicated in many of his other films. Isaacs had little to no assistance in creating this film and finding an audience for it, he didn’t have any Hollywood producers back the film up for him in case it didn’t do very well, he just had to make what felt he needed and hope for the best. But, in the end, it all worked out, and Marc Isaacs is highly regarded as one of Britain’s best independent documentary film- makers, with this latest short film, ‘The Road: A Story of Life and Death’ due for release sometime in 2013 in selected cinemas Nationwide.