Jack Casey Out Of Sight Picture's Media Blog

My media used to answer this question will be via a blog post, and to answer this question we must compare our film The Captive with conventional gangster films, the genre we are aiming at, and i will use my 2 initial analysed films The Godfather and Layer Cake to make these comparisons;

Similarities:

Costume: In the Captive the 2 men are in formal smart suits while the woman is in a dress, in comparison in both Layer Cake and The Godfather men and women are both seen in this smart clothing the majority of the films, to promote the sense of money and wealthiness (Right)
Lighting: Our scene is filmed almost entirely in a dark container to add to the theme of mystery, danger and fear, and this is a theme that is evident throughout both Layer Cake and The Godfather also ( Below)
Location: We decided to use a warehouse as our setting as it would give the location a feeling of detachness from the outside world, a very secluded place far from anything else, Layer Cake also went with a warehouse theme, the one they used was a lot bigger, but as we wanted a more compact nervy feel where murder was actually going to take place rather than a meeting like in there's we wanted to use a small warehouse: (Layer Cake warehouse above right)
Props: We went for a gun and fake blood in our film both obvious examples of props associated with Gangster films, here is evidence of them being used in The Godfather (Left) and Layer Cake (Right):

Music: For The Captive we decided to use one main music piece which would build up suspension and cause tension, similar music was also used in:

Layer Cake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IUTmIy685k4

The similarity between ours and this piece is the slow tempo, which creates a sad tone however like ours, Layer Cake's builds up momentum near the end, we did this in relation to X walking into the warehouse to build up fear. However the difference being Layer Cake has a singer on top of there instrumental piece

The Godfather: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUUvgdjsIQk

Likewise to both Layer Cake and our film The Godfather's music is of a relatively slow tempo at the beggining using violens, but picks up pace.

Differences:

Props: A key theme to our film was the use of Glowsticks to give light in the dark container the use of UV light here was a risk as we had not seen these used in gangster films and felt it would be quite unique, but having recieved feedback from our surveys we believe it was a risk well taken and did actually fit well with the Gangster genre.
Production Company: I wouldnt say we used an entirely different Production Company, we used Universal Studios which has made a lot of horror/gangster based films like Jaws, Frankeinstein and Inglorious Basterds, while Layer Cake was Sony and Marv Films and The Godfather was Paramount Pictures. But we decided to go for a more well known Pictures company as it would probably supply us with a bigger audience and would give us a slightly more family film to get into the 15+ rated category, where as if we had just gone all out and the Pictures company alongside that maybe we would struggle for a 15 rating.