Genre Convention Research: Peer Assessment Feedback

To practise keeping within movie genres, we were given the task of coming up with the idea for a Gangster film, with three potential opening sequences, and a list of things we would do to stay within the genre and something we'd do differently.

The plot of the movie revolves around Marcus, a man who always wanted to be a gangster, and one day he gets the chance from his uncle Vince, a prolific Mob Boss. At first things seem fine, but eventually Marcus realises there is a much darker side to being a gangster than he ever possibly imagined.

To stick to conventions of the genre I chose to include:

• The distinct Italian/ New Yorker accents of old gangster films
• People dressed in suits with ties
• A dark but upper class tone to the film and the characters in it
• Largely violin/piano driven jazz music, reminiscent of the Godfather theme.
• Harsh language

To change something from the genre I wanted to include a few more african actors, as I've felt that american gangster films are very white heavy, and while this may be because that a lot of mobs in america where predominately white, it would be nice to see more black actors in roles in the mob.

The three possibly opening scenes I came up were as follows

1. A gangster explaining why he was unable to pay off Uncle Vince the money he owes him, and it's with dark lighting, Vince then gives the word and two of his men shoot him.
2. Marcus is patrolling the streets watching crimes happen around him, he has a monologue about how the town he lives in is over run with crime and how he came to become a gangster
3. A brief shoot out between the gangsters and police in which Marcus is gunned down, a monologue begins as he dies to explain his life and how he got to where he is now.

My group read over these and had mixed reactions to them, on one hand they felt that the third opening sequence was the best as it had more action in it, to draw in the audience as opposed to the other beginnings, but they also felt that the second was a very strong opening too, with it being the favourite for some of the group. The first was not as popular however, my group felt it was too generic and didn't do anything particularly new, and that there should have been more of a twist to it to keep it interesting and new.