Analysis Of Similar Products

The Godfather, Part II (1974)
The Godfather, Part II (1974) of the Godfather trilogy continues the saga of the Corleone Family, serving as both a prologue and a sequel, extending over a period of 60 years and three generations. The script was again co-authored by director Francis Ford Coppola and Mario Puzo, the author of the popular novel about American organized crime. Many critics believe this film sequel, at a lengthy three hours and twenty minutes, is a superior improvement over the original film, although some of it is confusing and leaves questions unanswered.

The film is masterfully intercut back and forth between two parallel stories: the prologue story (about one-quarter of the entire film) to the sequel, contrasting the two eras and their protagonists.
The prologue portion follows the background story of the rise of youthful Don Vito Corleone (Robert DeNiro replacing Marlon Brando) to Mafia chief in the early 1900s in the Little Italy section of New York City. About fifteen minutes of the prologue portion is in Sicilian with English sub-titles. The major portion of the sequel begins in 1958 - about three years after the conclusion of the first film and follows the career of Corleone's son Michael (Al Pacino again) from his patriarchal prime to his decline a year later. The saga leads to the inexorable passage of 'sins' from the immigrant father to his modern-day son.

Similar themes from the original are carried over and arise in Part II: revenge, intrigue, betrayal, alliances, violence, the corruptive influences of power, and devoted loyalties to the family. Unlike the first film, the forbidden words "Mafia" and "Cosa Nostra" are each mentioned once - in one of the Senate Hearings scenes. The film contains fewer deaths, though - a total of 16. But the tragic film is more somber with Gordon Willis' un-nominated cinematography highlighted by sepia-toned, golden amber, and darkish tones.
The film was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won six: Best Picture (for producer/director Francis Ford Coppola), Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Robert DeNiro in a Sicilian-speaking role), Best Adapted Screenplay (co-authored by Mario Puzo and Francis Ford Coppola), Best Art Direction/Set Decoration, and Best Original Dramatic Score (Nino Rota and Carmine Coppola). It was a three Oscar win for Coppola. Five of the other six un-rewarded nominations were for acting roles: Best Actor (Al Pacino), Best Supporting Actor(s): (Michael Gazzo and Lee Strasberg), and Best Supporting Actress (Talia Shire). The Godfather, Part II was thefirst sequel in Academy history to win a Best Picture Oscar.

Draft Survey

We asked for age so we could come up with a age range. We asked for gender so we could see which sex was more interested in crime drama. We asked about expectations of an opening scene to a crime drama so we could get ideas on how to start the movie. We asked for their favourite actress/actor and director to get an insight of what type of crime drama we will create.

Audience Profile

Crime Drama Target Audience

-Crime drama target audience are usually aimed at both females and males

-The males interest the females as males stereotypically are involved in the crime and the female actresses attract the males as they find  the females attractive therefore stereotypically they would watch the film.

-The certificate is usually 15 therefore that is that is where the target audience age range begins from. Both females and males find crime dramas interesting as well aged around the age 40.

Gender

The audience should be both female and male. The females could be attracted due to male characters and the mnales could be attracted by the content(action).

Age Range

For this film I decided to have 15-30 year olds as the target audience as this range is quite wide however I have took into consideration the target audience for Thriller and Crime films.

Stereotypically people who like crime films, also like thrillers.

City of God - Opening Sequence Analysis

Editing Techniques (parallel and crosscutting)

City of God starts with a extreme close up of a very sharp blade scraping a rock in order to make it sharper, as this is happening the camera cuts to a blank screen repeatedly making it difficult for audience to see the blade but easy to hear (diegetic onscreen sound) the blade being sharpened, which gives audience suspense because they do not know what the blade is being sharpened for. As the scene continues many crosscutting is used, where many alternate shots of lines of action occurring simultaneously in different places. The crosscutting and close up of carrots being pealed and chickens being killed in order for them to be eaten, this shows us that this whole bunch of people who are preparing the chicken are very different to European culture as they don’t kill animals in preparation for their dinner, and they go out and buy theirs. Also crosscutting of close up shot of people with no shoes shows that this place the chicken is being prepared is sort of a poor place and maybe even a slum. The fact that these people are not going to supermarket for their chicken, and the fact that they have actual alive chickens shows that this community is separate from the things like shops etc. As the chicken and everything else is prepared, audience can hear an on screen diegetic sound from people drumming, the drumming is of a Brazilian style, therefore assuming the film is set in a slum in Brazil. A close up of a chicken wriggle themselves from a rope is shown and as the chicken gets out of rope and into a alleyway, the diegtic onscreen sound of the drumming suddenly stops and cuts to a extreme close up of a chickens blood on a plate, emphasising the theme of the film is got to do with blood and killings, symbolising that the chickens are just the start of the killings that is going to be made. After the blood shot, parallel editing is used, to show close of a dark man speaking in a foreign language saying “oh fuck the chicken got away, get it” then long shots of a gang is shown with guns, this shows that the man speaking is a group leader of a gang who is armed, emphasising again that this film theme is killing as every gang member has a gun. Also shows how the community is separate as every gang member has a gun, in countries such as England this will simply not happen because of the police, however this shows that the area is a slum and the community is separate from law, showing that lots of crime can happen. Then crosscutting is used between two scenes, one scene is a young adult who wants to be photographer, talking to his friend about how risky the shot he has to take to become a photographer is, and the gang leader and his gang chasing the chicken eventually to the middle of the road. As the gang leader is chasing the chicken someone comes in his way, he pushes the person down a pulls out a gun and threatens to kill that person, showing how this gang leader is in power of the whole community and can do what he wants, the camera shot used is a over the shoulder shot from behind the gang leader from a high angle whilst the victim is on the floor, the audience attention is captured as this shot shows how much power the gang leader has and how everyone is scared of him in the slum.

Camera Use

The photographer and gang leader meet each other on opposite side of the road and gang leader tells photographer to grab the chicken who is in the middle of the road. As photographer is trying to get the chicken the gang say “oh police”, a long shot of people running is used, however the gang leader orders his gang to “don’t run off” and they all come back with their guns pointed and ready to use at the police officers who is behind the photographer, the photographer realises that the guns are pointed from police at the gang and gang at the police and he is in the middle of all this and doesn’t know what to do and says “if I run I die and if I stay I die” then the film cuts to start of the film, showing that this is the end. This opening scene creates enigma as the audience wants to know why the gang and police is in a gang war and how photographer has got himself in this situation and why he is in danger of being killed if he takes a particular shot.

Characters Representations

Also establishing some of the central characters of the film, the photographer and gang leader. The gang leader creates an interest in audience as he isn’t the normal type of person, he is in fact a rebel who seems to be ruthless and horrible person who is in control of the whole slum and is even against the police, and nobody can stop him because of his big armed gang. Also the photographer creates interest for audience as he seems to be very quite calm, risk taking (willing to take a shot even if it would mean his life) and the fact that the character isn’t caught up in the gang violence shows he is protagonist and gang leader is antagonist. Both of these character are contrast each other, which also grabs audience attention to see why the photographer isn’t a bad person and why gang leader is. Most of the title sequence is done before the film starts in blue in a black background, the title sequence is very simple and as the film starts the rest of the title sequence is done in white in the bottom right hand side of the screen, making it hard to see, unless good attention is paid, this is because the film is very fast paced even from the start, and therefore doesn’t want to distract the audience from what is going on in the film and audience have to keep up with what is going on or they will miss what happened as the film is fast paced and many things can be missed out, that is why most of the title sequence is done before the movie start.

Preliminary Task

• 1.  Our scene had two people playing cards opposite one another at a table. We showed match on action when Hashims's character opened the door to enter the scene. We had him walk towards the door in a POV shot of him opening the door then switching to a wide shot from inside the room of the door swinging open. We also demonstrate at the point where Clayton's character draws a new card, cutting from a two shot of the players to an over the shoulder shot of the card in Clayton's hand. Moreover we used shot reverse shot for the card game itself. In the edit, we cut from an over the shoulder shot of Clayton's cards to the reverse shot of Hashim's cards.

• 2.  I was pleased with the shots we used I thought they appeared to flow seamlessly, especially the shot where Hashim's character used the POV situation with the door. 

• 3. The mistakes we made or what we could have picked up on is the use of continuity editing in certain parts of the video. For instance the last shot where Hashim swipes the cards of the table the shot before it had no connection or meaning in the building up of that situation. Also we should have used the tripod in some of the close up shots of Hashim and Clayton's faces as we used our hands and the shot was shaky.

• 4.  Hashim and Clayton had the roles of the two characters playing cards in the film. Me and Sakeriye took care of the camera shots and directing of the film.

• 5. We had problems with background noises, in some shots their are people in the background talking. We encountered some problems with the space we had to shoot the video but we still managed to adapt to the situation and hence go forward with the filming.