Genre Convention Research: Peer Assessment Feedback

For our homework, we were given the task of writing 3 opening scenes for our own concept of a Gangster Movie. In this, we had to keep 5 of the original concepts of a Gangster movie as well as changing 1 thing to show that we've changed the normal style of the genre.

The 5 key features that I plan to keep are:
- Characters wear suits
- Keep in the theme of violence
- Main Characters are male
- Include dialogue that starts to set the main theme of the film
- Keep the main used colours black and white.

To make it my own, I would change the following:
- Instead of settling gang wars over gunfights, each individual gang take part in a football tournament.

To expand on this idea, the teams would still try to stick the the original colour schemes, however his would be hard to do due to the fact that there will not be a clear distinction between different teams. To keep this idea within the Gangster genre, there would be a crowd around the pitch, set somewhere dark and secluded from the real world, that had drug dealing, illegal betting and V.I.P seating for the owners of the team.

I made up 3 different opening scenes to go along with this genre:

Opening Scene 1
At the very start, there is a black background with white writing, showing the name of the state/city that the film is mainly based within and during what time period. Then, the voice of the main character will provide dialogue on top of footage showing the city from above. The dialogue will be setting the scene and giving a brief history on the warfare corrupting the city.

Opening Scene 2
The second opening starts as a flashback. There is a Birds-Eye-View of the city before zooming into a back alley. From there, the main character, who at this stage is a young boy, is introduced hiding behind some boxes. He witnesses a gang interrogate and kill a traitor to the 'family'. Just as they are about to leave, the gang leader spots the young boy and says that he'll be back for him when he is older. We are then brought back into the present time period, where the main character, now much older, is part of the gang that he witnessed kill that traitor.

Opening Scene 3
Scene 3 starts in a dark room, with only a desk, forearms and hands, of the gang leader, lit by light. There are also other characters in the room with him, however thay are not shown, there voices are the only giveaway. The gang leader then moves forward into the light, so his face is revealed, delivering a key one-liner before the screen fades into black. Throughout this scene, there is a slow zoom towards the desk and the gang leader.

In my feedback, I was told that Opening Scene 2 was the better idea of the trhee. This is because it was an original and unique idea that none of those in my group had seen in any film previous. Also, I was told that there was an imaginative use of various camera shots and angles, meaning that the audience would find my opening sequence a little more intriguing to watch. The other two scenes seemed to include too much simular features that were seen in films such as The Godfather, that being the reason as to why Opening Scene 2 was chosen as my better scene.