Genre Conventions for Final Project Blog Post

 For our finial project we have selected the crime genre. This genre tends to focus on things like criminal behavior, law enforcement, investigations, and consequence all for entertainment purposes. Its more of a dramatized genre because it has to entertaining and not boring, so we need to find good balance between entertainment and realism. Going over the history of the crime genre a lot has happened. It is derived from silent crime drams from around the 1910s and was inspired by real life crime, like gangsters and mobsters. In the 1930s was where the world saw the true rise of gangster films into popularity. Showing the viewers the people the criminal underworld. From this crime films expanded into detective stories and criminal heist films from jewelry stores or banks. As the crime genre expanded we began to see a lot of correlation to film noir, therefor the two for the most part were intertwined with crime being the genre and film noir being the subgenre. Film noir was popular back in the 1940s and 1950s known for its dark themes and morally complex style characters. The style of cinematography used was also a staple point. In the 1970s was when this connection of the two genres became attached. Crime films had become more violent and influence by the real world and a trend from antihero narratives. Speaking more modernly the crime genre explores the ideas and themes of corruption and justice. To name a few landmark films that express the crime genre and give the best representation would be, Scarface (The original pioneered the way for gangerstyle films in 1932 and even having a remake in 1983); Maltese Falcon (a landmark film for film noir starring a detective in 1941); Goodfellas (From 1990 know for its realism referred to as a masterpiece); No Country for Old Men (From 2007 a more modern crime film and won best picture at the Oscars). Important figures of the genre are going to include Directors and Actors. Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver, Goodfellas, The Irishmen); Francis Ford Coppola (The Godfather series); Quentin Tarantino (Pulp Fiction, Reservoir Dogs); David Fincher (se7en, Zodiac, Gone Girl). Al Pacino (The Godfather, Scarface, Heat); Robert De Niro (Goodfellas, Taxi Driver, The Irishman); Leonardo DiCaprio (The Departed, Gangs of New York); Denzel Washington (Training Day, American Gangster). All of these people mentioned and films mentioned while its a lot does make the question quite evident, how does all of this impact a two minute film? We will take inspiration from each of them, from the film noir lighting and suspenseful storyline to the realism and cinematic elements. We want our story to be supensful yet simplistic and easy to follow. 

The crime genre just like all genres follow there own specific conventions that help establish what exactly they are. Going back and referencing our notes and research we know that there are four points that make it whole. Characters, Themes, Cinematic style, and Plot conventions. In the crime genre we normally have four common character types, the Anti-Hero, the detective/police, the vicim/witness, and the mastermind. The common themes we see are justice vs corruption, greed vs power, and moral issues. The cinematic style used is usually parallel to that of film noir, low lighting with a strategic use of shadows, close ups and over the shoulder shots, and a urban setting like dark allys or city streets. Night time for criminal dominate shots and day time for detective heavy shots, this symbolizes that light vs day and good vs evil theme conventions. Moving onto the plot conventions we can expect to see mystery and investigation go hand in hand with each other, along with chase scenes and action. Correlating this back to our finial project, we can effectively reference our research especially our genre conventions to make sure we create our crime film as best as possible, its like giving a guide rail and as long as we follow it we should get the results we want. 

In "Goodfellas" we are immediately put into the world of organized crime. The scene using genre conventions of keeping the gritty and violent portrayal of crime simple for the viewer to understand and entertaining to watch as the average person does nothing of that sort. When you compare this to a more modern film "Drive" it begins a little differently, with a begging aerial shot of los angles during the night it gives off a more neo noir feel. Its choices in style differ from that of the traditional genre conventions in its own modern way. I feel like looking at both of these films its clear they both created there own legacy and thats what I hope to create. I want to create something that follows the conventions and becomes a quality snip of what these films produce for a much longe duration. In "Memento" it opens using a Polaroid photograph and it starts at the end if that makes sense. It shows us that he killed someone but uses a nonlinear narrative to make the story so great. This would be rather difficult to produce though with a two minute time frame although if we had more time I feel experimenting with this style would be very fun to create.

Our plan with our finial project like mentioned before is to get as close to realism as possible while keeping just enough dramatic evens to keep the viewer entertained. The gift of having two minutes to work with is that we can put a lot of time and effort into those two minutes the challenge is creating a stroyline out of it and thats possibly something my group and I should discuss, on weather we are trying to create a stroy or maybe just the intro into something that could develop and snowball to be even bigger. We will definetly be introducing a suspicious character who will be guilty of a crime with the themes of mystery, suspense, and justice. For our plot structure I thing because we are in fact so limited with time we may start in the middle of a crime scene or interrogation using quick dialogue to catch the viewer up to speed and go from there.