Evaluation

I used the internet to research crime films before I started planning mine, I found this very useful as I could find lots of different types of crime films, ratings, dates and pictures for them. I used google the most as this led me to finding more websites. It brought me to Wikipedia which had loads of information on each film, film descriptions, dates and a little bit about the type of film it was. Wikipedia also helped me to define the different types of crime films, this is where I found the pictures for analyzing crime film posters and where I checked to see if the firms id chosen were classed as ‘crime films’.
I found www.blogger.com easy to use, the layout was simple and so I got on with it well. I had slight problems with uploading my preliminary but after being shown how to upload it I was fine and uploaded my crime film without any help.
In my group we gave different parts to each of us, this meant that the person who was best at a particular skill would do that bit for our film. We all used the digital camera to see how it worked and so that we could say we’d tried but in the end we gave this job to Lauren. This worked well as Lauren didn't appear in the film. I found that the camera was quite easy to use however I struggled keeping it still so the tripod came in handy.
Again for editing everybody had a go but some of us found it easier than others. I edited all of my preliminary myself however I did find final cut hard to get used to, eventually I did start to learn with it and think that it looked well. However I didn't do as much editing as my other group members. I found that final cut was good for cutting parts out and piecing new bits together, for changing out film to black and white at parts and it was also good for slowing down parts. The only problem I had with final cut was that it wasn’t easy to use and I found it very hard to do things.
If I was to do my film again I would try to do more of the editing. I would ask for more help on how to use final cut rather than sitting back and watching. I think the filming of the film couldn’t have gone any better so I wouldn’t change that, all parts joined well, were filmed well and the camera worked well with us. I also found the internet easy and so I wouldn’t change anything about that as I got all the research that I needed.
Our crime was similar to other film noir films as it features a wife poisoning her husband for his money. She does this in a simple way by putting tablets in his drink. The filming of the film is also like a film noir as it brings in the black and white and the main characters in our film are both females, which is an obvious factor of a film noir to have ‘femme fetal’. However our film is a modern film noir so it differs slightly to other film noirs.
In our film we used lots of codes and conventions of a crime film. The film itself features a crime taking place- a murder of a husband and the storyline is of the mans sister trying to prove that the wife was responsible for his murder which again is crime related. The props used in the film were ‘criminal’ as he gets poisoned and so we had to use tablets and a bottle of alcohol.
In our film we portrayed characters differently, our male is the victim, which is unusual for a crime film to have a female as the criminal and the male as the victim as the male is usually seen as the ‘stronger and more dominant gender’. Our victim is not seen in the rest of the film as he is killed in the first three minutes, he’s seen as the weak and innocent party as he has no idea his murder is going to take place.

Crime genres

Crime Genres

There are lots of different types of crime films. A lot of crime films cross over into other genres, which then become harder to find conventions for. The three main types of crime films are the ‘Gangster’, ‘Detective’ and the ‘Film Noir’.

The gangster film would usually contain a ‘criminal/villain', lots of gangsters, guns, business men and money. Usually the film would be about the police or another gang chasing or fighting other top business men and their 'mobs'. It may also feature woman as girlfriends, strippers or victims, however they would not be the normal house wife type of woman. The story is usually told in the criminals view and follows his/her life.

I analysed the poster of True Romance, a film I have watched which ticks all the boxes for a gangster film. It involves the stripper female, the guns, the money and the chase.

Another type would be the detective, which to me is

rather boring as it’s a whole two hours of the police trying to chase and capture a criminal. It would usually feature such things as car-chase's, police stations, and your Sherlock- Holmes type of character. The story would be through the views of the goodies, and the

criminal would be the baddies. The closest film I have watched to a

detective film would be Star-sky and Hutch, which is a comedy

version of a detective, also known as a spoof. This contained all the things I thought a detective film would have, the police, the car

chase and the two main characters were the goodies trying to find the baddies.

The noir is the last of the types. It’s the oldest of the three and

started back in the 1940's - 1950s. It’s the typical Hollywood film. It’s

the hardest to find conventions for as it overlaps into other genres to make its own genre. This name ‘Noir’ came from the word ‘black’ in

French, which shows us that the films are dark and eerie. They came after the World War Two, where the world was a dark place and the films were dark themed and the contents were dark too. They were often action films and usually low budget.

Some people may see ‘To kill a mockingbird’ as a noir as it dates back to the decade after the noir came out. It has a dark theme to it as its racist and full of depression.

The crime genre is aimed mainly at men. A few of the newer gangster crime films are aimed at the teenage males,

such as Greenstreet or Football factory which features football hooliganism which hasn’t been seen as a crime for too many years.

A lot of the actors in these ‘hooligan’ films are young males however

in other crime films such as ‘The Usual Suspect’s or ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ would be aimed at the middle-aged to older male.

This is because of the content in the film and the crimes in which they feature in the film.

Location report

Satan Is A Lady Opening Scene

prelimanary task

Story Board

Film Poster