Wednesday 22 February 2017
List of Inspirations
Media Texts
91 days
Plot
As a child living in the town of Lawless, Angelo Lagusa has witnessed a tragedy: his parents and younger brother have been mercilessly slaughtered by the Vanetti mafia family. Losing everything he holds dear, he leaves both his name and hometown behind, adopting the new identity of Avilio Bruno.Seven years later, Avilio finally has his chance for revenge when he receives a mysterious letter prompting him to return to Lawless. Obliging, he soon encounters the Vanetti don's son, Nero, and seeks to befriend him using the skills he has quietly honed for years.
Set during the Prohibition era, 91 Days tells the story of Avilio's dark, bloodstained path to vengeance, as he slowly ends each of the men involved in the killing of his family.
My Notes
A japanese anime set in the Prohibition era at the where alcohol was illegal. It has a revenge plot where the main character Angelo Lagusa, changes his identity becoming Avilio Bruno to take down the Vanetti Family for destroying his family. What I like about this animation was the scenes that were created as the gritty animation helped with the violence being portrayed, it also has the classic italian american slumps with the set up of the different families and internal struggles of loyalty being questioned. I also liked the transformation with Angelo's character rising from the bottom as he once belonged to a respectable family but is now mostly by himself.
Gabrielle character has a similar approach to this as I created her to go through the androgynous appearance as a sense of transformation through the story. Her being brought up from nothing and struggling to survive similar to Angelo. The revenge plot also is linked to the Rags, however I used the Rags as a enigmatic and irrational entity rather than part of the main families.Once Upon A Time In America
Plot
Epic, episodic, tale of the lives of a small group of New York City Jewish gangsters spanning over 40 years. Told mostly in flashbacks and flash-forwards, the movie centers on small-time hood David 'Noodles' Aaronson and his lifelong partners in crime; Max, Cockeye and Patsy and their friends from growing up in the rough Jewish neighborhood of New York's Lower East Side in the 1920s, to the last years of Prohibition in the early 1930s, and then to the late 1960s where an elderly Noodles returns to New York after many years in hiding to look into the past.
My Notes
Similarly set in the Probation era like 91 days, the story closely ties with the slums life and growing up on the streets, which is the concept I was going for while creating the story line for the Rags. The need for survival is clearly reflected in this movie and shows the traits of the need for recognition, success and power which can be sought even with the price of loss of friendship or family leading to betrayal. Both work well with the ties between my two characters Gabrielle and Giacomo who come from the Rags.
The relationship dynamics between Noodles and his friends especially during the childhood phrase is shown to be strong and one of the elements of loyalty to the gangster genre traits, however I planned to subvert this through making the relationship with Gabrielle childhood broken as this further isolates the character making the element of survival prominent and allows the formation of alliance with Vince towards his adult life more significant and impactful as we see a sort of fatherly or brotherly bond between them.
Live by night
Plot
Boston, 1926. The '20s are roaring. Liquor is flowing, bullets are flying, and one man sets out to make his mark on the world. Prohibition has given rise to an endless network of underground distilleries, speakeasies, gangsters, and corrupt cops. Joe Coughlin, the youngest son of a prominent Boston police captain, has long since turned his back on his strict and proper upbringing. Now having graduated from a childhood of petty theft to a career in the pay of the city's most fearsome mobsters, Joe enjoys the spoils, thrills, and notoriety of being an outlaw. But life on the dark side carries a heavy price. In a time when ruthless men of ambition, armed with cash, illegal booze, and guns, battle for control, no one-neither family nor friend, enemy nor lover-can be trusted. Beyond money and power, even the threat of prison, one fate seems most likely for men like Joe: an early death. But until that day, he and his friends are determined to live life to the hilt. Joe embarks on a dizzying journey up the ladder of organized crime that takes him from the flash of Jazz Age Boston to the sensual shimmer of Tampa's Latin Quarter to the sizzling streets of Cuba. Live by Night is a riveting epic layered with a diverse cast of loyal friends and callous enemies, tough rumrunners and sultry femmes fatales, Bible-quoting evangelists and cruel Klansmen, all battling for survival and their piece of the American dream. At once a sweeping love story and a compelling saga of revenge, it is a spellbinding tour de force of betrayal and redemption, music and murder, that brings fully to life a bygone era when sin was cause for celebration and vice was a national virtue.
- Written by Anonymous
My Notes
In live by night, the aspect I enjoyed from the trailer was the glorying of the gangster life to the main character, Joe, showing the illegal nature and the regression to immorality, almost giving a sense of freedom that comes with gaining their power. The character came from a respectable place being in the Army and descends to the crime life, however it shows that he is regretful of what he has become. This creates a conflict in the trailer, as Joe seems to be breaking out of the hierarchy in the gangster life which puts a question of the loyalty and brother hood ties in this as it dabbles in the uncertainty of the absolute faith that comes in gangs. I plan on using this concept in my trailer as the new generation being Vince and Gabe are on their journey of defying their Don which in turn means going against the traditional rules and culture that comes from the Gangster way. Another aspect is the obvious use of Todorovs narrative theory in the trailer, in which it talks about the new equilibrium in the scene of Joe getting advice "but it never comes back how you predict", I plan on including the use of theories in my trailer as well.
Scarface
While looking at the screenplays for Gangster films, I was particularly interested in the Scarface screenplay because of the use of the descriptive writing style they used in their scenes. It was detailed with explaining the camera shots and scenes down to every movement. This was then implemented in my screenplay as I went for the more detailed and descriptive approach, compared to the Godfather's screenplay where the style of writing is more sketch like and abstract.
Now You See It
Now You See It explores film themes and tropes. It's like a college film analysis class minus the lecture halls, essay assignments, and student loan debts.
Now You See It is a YouTube channel that explains the cinematography and theories behind various films. He uses themes and talks about the different ideas that goes into film making and the consideration for the production of the film in relation to how it impacts the audience. Using collections of films he conveys the genre or theme in a visual representation. The two videos that are in relation to the genre of Gangsters are his videos
- Why do we love Gangsters?
- Film Noir: The case for Black and White
The other videos that applies to my trailer, focus on the actual film process
The Beauty of the Dinner Scene
Opening Shots Tell Us Everything
How Film Scores Play with Our Brains
Settings are characters, Too
Dialogue in Film: How Should Characters Talk?
I have tried to implement the theoretical techniques into both my screenplay and while filming my trailer as this will allow me to understand the process of how I should film and the Gangster films as a genre.
The Godfather
In most of my inspirations on top, there are similar concepts and themes used which are heavily influenced from the trilogy of The Godfather, which can be seen as the original setup of Gangster films especially ones that centre around mob families and Italian decent.
Plot
The Godfather "Don" Vito Corleone is the head of the Corleone mafia family in New York. He is at the event of his daughter's wedding. Micheal, Vito's youngest son and a decorated WW II Marine is also present at the wedding. Micheal seems to be uninterested in being a part of the family business. Vito is a powerful man, and is kind to all those who give him respect but is ruthless against those who do not. But when a powerful and treacherous rival wants to sell drugs and needs the Don's influence for the same, Vito refuses to do it. What follows is a clash between Vito's fading old values and the new ways which may cause Micheal to do the thing he was most reluctant in doing and wage a mob war against all the other mafia families which could tear the Corleone family apart. - Written by srijanarora-152-448595
My Notes
Tuesday 7 February 2017
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