Aims and context
'No Redemption Without Blood'
- Opening scene from a Gritty, British, Crime film
- Intended for mainstream Cine-literate audiences
- Influences - Harry Brown (2009), London to Brighton (2006) and Casino Royale (2006)
- Target audience 18+ Gritty Crime fans Mainly male audience. This is due to explicit violence and language from the beginning. The film could possibly be released as a 15 rating.
- Apply Cinematography techniques commonly found in other gritty, British, crime film
- Explore key codes and conventions commonly found in British crime films, using genre specific mise en scene and lighting techniques.
- As Cameraman/Cinematographer, try to mimic the style of famous cinematographers such as Martin Ruhe
Reflective analysis No
Redemption Without Blood
The film sequence that my group has produced is the
opening scene to a British Crime thriller, called ‘No Redemption Without Blood’
which has taken influence from a number of films modern, british, crime films
Such as ‘London To Brighton’ and ‘Harry Brown’. My groups original intention
was to create a genre film which stuck rigidly to common conventions, however
while creating an extract from the film we decided to change the style to be
more challenging for our audience causing them to be more active. This means
that the demographic changed and decrease so instead of our film being
mainstream it now is more niche for independent cinemas and high brow film
festivals
Our group’s original
primary influence was ‘London to Brighton’ in terms of lighting, mood and
cinematography this was because of how well ‘London To Brighton’ creates
tension in certain scenes. We mainly focused on the cinematography and lighting
in the main climactic scene, which is lit only with car headlights, we adopted
this for the grand entrance of the character of The Chief in our production.
Furthermore much of that scene is shot with handheld cameras, which led us to
use this technique along with some extreme close ups to show characters
emotions, another common aspect employed in the grave digging scene in ‘London
To Brighton’.
Personally I felt that the
work of Martin Ruhe in both ‘Harry Brown’ and ‘Control’ is what influenced me
the most for the cinematography. After analysing ‘Harry Brown’ my group decided
to film in a similar modern noir style. Focusing on his work inspired us to put
the film in black and white, like in the film ‘Control’. Furthermore it meant
that when we broke the 4th wall it was more obvious to our audience with the
change to colour which helps make the film seem self-aware, also it is very
jarring which furthers how it challenges the audience. Ruhe's cinematography
style also inspired us to light the shots using a very small light source to
create a tension through low key lighting, causing high contrast and shadows.
Low-key lighting is a major part to the most dramatic and gripping scenes
across Ruhe's work, which is why as cinematographer I found it to be very
important to create the correct lighting effect for the scene, I also had to
consider how it would look in black and white and whether it would have the
correct impact on the audience. Moreover the interrogation scene in ‘Harry
Brown’ is what inspired our opening interview, which helps to kick off the narrative
with instant enigma codes of the missing mystery girl. I found that the close
ups in and camera angles in this scene in Harry Brown really helped to emphasis
the characters in the scene and how they react making it a very striking scene.
This inspired my group to replicate this in the way that we shot it and edited
it.
Our group also decided to
use experimental techniques to help challenge our audience. By using split
screen like in ‘Requiem For A Dream’ we were able to break standard conventions
of crime films to make a film better suited for a more active audience. The
split screen effect is used to show the difference in what is happening in two
different locations. Furthermore we took inspiration from David Fincher's work
in the way that we chopped in single frames of figures that people would not
notice fully, like the subliminal shots of Tyler Durden in Fight Club. We then
decided to take this idea further by introducing screen tests of the actors in
the film in homage to the work of Andy Warhol. This helped to distinguish the
film from reality making the audience reflect on what they are seeing.
Personally I feel that using Warhol inspired Screen Tests in our production
really helps to show the difference between the actor and character, but also could
show that in real life we all have to play a character. Hopefully a more active
audience will be able to decode this and appreciate the meaning behind our
experimental techniques. In my opinion No Redemption Without Blood would be a
cult movie because it seems to target a very exclusive demographic and has
taken influence from many different sources which cult movie fans would be able
to identify, which would gratify them as film lovers.
Another influence is
‘Casino Royale’ there is a scene where James Bond is tied up to a chair and
tortured, which is filmed in a neo noir style. This helped to inspire our scene
in the way that we chose to light the hostages tied up to the chairs. Also in
‘Casino Royale’ you can see sweat shining on Daniel Craig we also recreated
this in our own scene by spraying our actors with water. Light reflecting off
water is a common noir convention, often sweaty faces or wet streets. It is
typical to classic noir films such as ‘The Maltese Falcon’. Furthermore it is
noir films like ‘The Maltese Falcon’, which inspired the slapping of the
henchman in No Redemption Without Blood.
For the music in our film
sequence we took influence from Tarantino films because he often uses music
that doesn't necessarily fit the mood but still works well in the scene, this
is what inspired the choice in music for our film. One example of how Tarantino
does this is in Django Unchained with Who Did That To You by John Legend in the
scene where Django rides away from the slaves in the cage. The Style of the
song is not typical of the western film genre however in this scene it fits
well and helps to add to the mood of the scene. This is something I feel that
was achieved in the music selection for No redemption Without Blood.
Also my group liked
the non-diegetic sound used in Drive. Drive features dissonant drones to create
a build in tension in the atmosphere of many scenes, for example when The
Driver puts a bullet in Cook's mouth and threatens him with a hammer. We used
tense drones in our film to add drama to the scene and we used them when the
screen tests were introduced.
In my opinion what my group
created worked well as an opening scene despite the way that the aims and
contexts evolved. Its moved away from clichés by changing how we approached out
audience. However I also agree that our film is massively postmodern and draws
influence from a wide variety of sources. I felt that the film worked better
than our original intentions as it evolved and I am happy with the final
result. I feel that as Cinematographer I got some creative shots but I also
wish that some could have had a better cinematic mood. More time at our
original film location could have resulted in a more high quality production
but this helped to inspire my group to think more creatively and develop a more
challenging engaging film.
