History of the crime/mystery genre

The crime/mystery genre is a sub-genre of crime films, in which a investigator has to unravel a mystery, usually based around some kind of murder. The earliest mystery film was a 30 second film of the classic Sherlock Holmes, made in 1900 and registered in 1903 by Arthur Martin.

This is one of the very first examples of mystery films, despite Sherlock Holmes being unrecognizable, it was one of the first films to be based on a book or novel, most mystery films of this period were being based on novels such as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.

In the 1930's many films came out with a detective that used Denoument, which is were the detective pools together all the clues to discover who the real bad guy is, this time period was also a period of so-called Gentlemen detectives who don't use violence but intelligence to solve murders, they normally carry no weapons and have eccentric personality's, however this style of detective only survived until 40's as the relative success as films like 'The Kennel Murder Case' were very popular and successful. But the introduction of tough detectives who used more brute force made audiences more excited.

During the 40's and 50's the genre took a much darker tone due to the second world war. This lead to an increase in macho, tough guy detectives who were almost as bad as the bad guys they were meant to be catching, the genre began adding new crimes such as corruption, making them appeal more to the audiences as corruption was a major issue in the US at this time and tales of corrupt businesses during the second world war fuelled this idea.

Humphrey Bogart was one of the major actors and influencing figures of this genre, as he was able to fit into the cruel and violent world many of these films were based in, the clip above was from one of his films 'In a lonely place' this film was one of the first psycholgical films.

 

The 60's and 70's was were the period of 30's films were being made tributes, with many films going back to the old times of more classic detectives like Sherlock Holmes, but the lead film in this period was Chinatown by Roman Polanski, this film is considered as one of the best mystery films ever made and it won 9 awards. The film was also credited with providing more awareness of the water issues involving Los Angeles during the 1910's.



 

The 80's brought about several new versions of the mystery film as well as the reemergence of the film noir genre from the 40's, in a new style of film known as Neo-noir erotic thrillers, this added to the moody atmosphere with more sexuality being explored in the films and more and used a lot of sexually exolicit scenes, the best film of this genre was Sea of Love with Al Pacino. Other film styles that became popular in this time period was military and Police films, which were complex films based around military matters, cover-ups and conspiracies, some of these films include State of Play, The general's daughter and Bloodwork. These also led to the introduction of period piece films based around LA in the 40's and 50's, these often had some message about current problems. LA confidential was probably the best of these films because it won 2 academy awards and was nominated for 9.

 



 

Research and Planning Provisional Mark

You need to revisit research posts and explore further target audience, editing, mise en scene, locations, camera compostition, sound, light, branding, use of titles, genre indicators, key moments. Create an animatic using your storyboard materials and comments on its strengths. You need to evidence your music research and choices. Post on the history of your genre. Make sure you haven't posted something without commenting on it fully. 13/20

Actors interviews

This is our actor interviews we decided that we would ask each about what kind of films we liked from a variety of genre and who our favourite actors and directors are, this is to show who we enjoy to watch and what kind of films we enjoy, it is essentially a profile of our group. This suggests that christopher Nolan is our groups most popular Director as well as Action being our favourite genre.

Film Script

Detective 1:Albert Rendle
Detective 2: Thomas Popay
Witness: Luke Swaine
Officer: Sam Valente

Witness: please! Come quick, I’ve found a body by the bridge, I think he fell.

Cut

Detective 2:
you should really stop smoking you know.

Detective 1:
My family thinks so too, Maybe a new year’s resolution?

Officer enters scene

Detective 1:
Morning officer.

Officer:
Sir, the body’s over there in the corner, initial reports are here along with forensics reports,

, this looks like a weird one sir.

Detective 1:
Alright, I’ll take a look.

Cut

Detective 1:
What’s this?

Throws/catch cut

Detective 1:
What’s in there?

Detective 2:
Diamonds.

Detective 1:
Looks like robbery wasn’t the motive.

Cut

Detective 1:
What’s this? Huh, foreign licence.

Cut

Detective 2:
So what was the killer actually after then?

Cut

Detective 1:
I don’t know but I plan to find out, there’s a blood trail over there, looks like something was dripping the victim’s blood.

Cut

Detective 2:
Let’s see where this leads.

Cut

Detective 1:
What’s that? Looks like a briefcase or something.

Cut

Detective 2:
there it is

Cut

Detective 2: So what do you think happened?

Detective 1:
Well…

Narration of flashback begins

Detective 1:
The killer knew the victim would be there, so he waited for him and simply took him by surprise and pushed him off the bridge later throwing the case in the river.

Narration of flashback ends

Detective 2:
that makes sense, but what’s in the case?

Detective1:
Let’s find out.

Cut to opening of case

Detective 2:
Shit.

I think that this script is a good one because it explores the key things we wnat the audience to notice, such as the briefcase, the fact that nothing important was stolen. The script also leaves the audience in suspence for what will happen after the titles have past. I enjoyed filming with this script although some words in the script are missing, but it really doesn't effect the film in any way.

Timeline of AS media

6th September - Started AS level media coursework
First time we learned about the course and what kind of media product we would have to make, also set up the blog, learned about how to analyse opening 2 minutes.

11th October - Preliminary task completed
Learnt several filming techniques including shot reverse shot and Match on action, it was also our first use of the school cameras.

9th November - Inital filming shots and planning shot ideas
Produced ideas about how to use our location to the best we can, also decided what kind of shots we will use and how we are going to film.

17th November - First filming weekend
30 seconds of filming produced. Began editing in class over the week, also tried to come up with institution name and the font we will be using.

7th December - Final filming weekend
Produced about 2 minutes of footage and is currently being edited in class, we also produced our own non-digetic sound for use in the film.

9th December - Editing started
We began to use Adobe Premier Elements 10 to edit our footage.

14th February - Deadline for completing film

24th February - Evaluation of Project Begins

4th April - Evaluation of Project Ends

Costume research

In our film we are planning to use a number of different costumes and props. Here is a list of potential costumes and props we are planning to use:

This is the kind of costume we are planning for our main portagonist to wear, this is because it looks very out of the ordinary and makes him stand apart from the other detective, this makes the character stand out and draws the audiences attention to him.

We also plan to have a police officer in the scene, so we will be using a vest, white shirt and black shoes and trousers, this is to make out that this is an actual crime scene, and to add realism to the scene, we will not however have them wearing any kind of hat as we would be unable to use it for legal reasons.

We plan for the detectives sidekick to be more uniformed and more regulatory, this is to give the idea that he is good at his job but doesn't step beyond the bonds of the law, it is also to show he is a lot more professional with his job.

The antagonist we believe is going to be apart of some kind of mafia style crime organsiation, he also has the style of a Hitman in an expensive suit, this is to make him look professional and to make him look like he is the antagonist.

The victim shall be wearing some smart casual clothes because we do not know who he is, this is to add mystery to him because we don't know what his affilation is, so we don't know why he was murdered.

The innocent bystander who finds the body will be wearing casual clothes a hoodie and jeans, this is too make him look like he is not affiliated with anyone.

Make-up research

For our film we needed to add make-up to our corpse we had, for this we looked for several tutorials on the internet, and we eventually found one from the TV series The Walking Dead.

This tutorial helped us get our victims face looking like someone has just fallen of a bridge, and it worked very well despite the cold conditions we were filming in, it did however begin to peal off due to the cold, however by the time that happened we didn't need the corpse anymore.

 

We have decided to create our own tutorial on how to do this kind of makeup. In this we show how we made our dead guy look more realistic, the make up looked very realsitic and it was relatively easy to set up, the makeup also very easily comes off, only needing hot water to peel staight off.