Essex Boys case study. (Not done)

General information about the film:

• Release date: 14th July 2000
• Genre: Crime, Thriller
• Director: Terry Winsor 
• Rating on IMDB: 5.9/10 
• User comment: The user 'paully73' left a comment on the IMDB for this film saying "Don't mean to sound like The Sun ,but if you want to see a gritty,violent gangster movie - this is the film for you! Mainly , the story of a young lad unwittingly pulled into a situation above his head.Enough twists and turns with reasonable dialogue and performances to keep you glued till the end."
• Opening weekend earnings: £111,548 (UK)

                                  Whole movie above (annotation only done for opening scenes, up to 0:05:45). 


Storyline/Plot:

The film is based loosely around events in December 1995 that culminated in the murders of three drug dealers in Rettendon, Essex, UK. On 6th December Patrick Tate, Craig Rolfe and Tony Tucker, three drug dealers well known to the police, were lured to Workhouse Lane, Rettendon. There they were blasted to death with a shot gun while sitting in their Range Rover. They had been lured to their deaths on the pretext of a lucrative drugs deal. The three bodies were found the following morning, 7 December 1995.

You can tell form the plot of this film it is of the thriller genre. The murderers, guns and drugs are all generics that have been used in other thriller movies. So even from reading the plot of Essex Boys you can tell this film is going to build suspense through all of it's thriller generics.

Genre:

The genre of this film is a thriller which means it includes a lot of generics seen in other similar productions. This film also has the genre of crime making it slightly different to your conventional thriller movie. This genre is known for its dark lighting, suspense building elements and dark characters, which is exactly what this film provides. It uses generic locations, lighting, costume and sound which is what I will be talking about in this case study.

Lighting:

A large amount of very dark and dim lighting is used in the first scene. There is a minimal amount of non-ambient lighting coming from a single street light in the background of this scene. It produces just enough light so you can make our small details about the dirty and old lighting. The use of a single light uses a lighting technique called chiaroscuro (Italian for light-dark, chiaro means light and scuro means dark), this creates a strong contrast in the frame of the film which ensures the focus of the viewer is only on a single section of the screen.

A large amount of dark lighting is used through the whole opening of this film which sticks to the generics of a thriller movie. No other scenes are as dim as the first one, but there is no big change in lighting. There are no bright lights used to indicate any kind of joy, the director of Essex Boys wanted to show how gritty this film would be and one of the strongest ways he did it was through the murky lighting of the surrounding scenery.

Locations:

All the locations used in the opening of this film use a large amount of generics which other thriller films use. A large amount of the locations used are small and empty which brings a sense of claustrophobia to the film. This feeling allows the director to produce a sense of being trapped that helps to build suspense in the movie. The opposite of this is the scene in which Billy drive into the tunnel which has a vanishing point. To the audience this shows that they are almost travelling into another world. Examples of these loactions are:

The inside of the old car.

The dim garage

The tunnel (has a vanishing point)

 The scene when Billy sits in the car at the start of the film reminded me of the seen where Baby Doll, from Sucker Punch, is taken away in the car. The two screen shots show a slightly gritty car which is a metaphor for the darker characters in the film.

Baby Doll being taken to the Asylum in the film 'Sucker Punch'.

Characters:

Essex Boys main character is called Billy Reynolds and the man he is hired to drive around is called Jason Locke. Jason Locke is your typical "hard man" which means he fits in with genre of this movie very well. He automatically has a dark presence the first time you see him in the film. He is seen through a filthy car window which a metaphor for how dirty and gritty his character is. He is a generic bad guy for thriller films, he is feared, violent and has that certain quirk that shows he has some form of  problem (all used for other bad guys in other thriller films such as Kill Bill and Sucker Punch).

Costume:

There is a large amount of contast in the costume of Jason and Billy which is in fact a generic of thriller films. The bad guys tends to wear darker anf older clothing whilst the good guy wears something brighter and normally a lot newer. Essex Boys goes against conevention though, Jason wears something a lot brighter in the opening of the film and Billy wears soemthing slightly darker which is what is shown in this screenshot;

Thriller Planning (Early draft)

- Locations:

• Empty barn
• Burnt down house
• Empty field

- Flashback to build story.
- Day and night, either could work, but night time would work better for our plot. Also, depending on the weather, snow would look good.
- Black and white
- Chiaroscuro lighting (strong contrast)
- Two actors; interrogator and interrogatee
- Interrogation
- Two interrogator (male)
- Interrogatee (female)
- Classical music (contrast of elegant music to rough actions).
- Plot: She burnt down the house after taking something from the house. She is then caught and interrogated.

Title options:

• Voleur- 'Thief' in French
• Varas- 'Thief' in Finnish