Research Five

Another film I found during my research was 'The Devils Own' which is about an IRA gunman who draws an American family into the crossfire of terrorism. I found the opening scene of it very interesting in-particular, and also extremely useful to our project. It starts with two IRA men being tipped off that there is a suspicious car outside the house, in which there are three loyalist paramilitaries in. They begin to get ready for an attack, and quickly go to their gun stash where they take machine guns out and a balaclava. The main IRA man, played by Brad Pitt, then gives a quick briefing on what they will do before positioning themselves in preparation for the attack. Once the loyalists enter there is a huge gun fight, which results in the army arriving at the scene and meeting the same fate as the loyalists. This helped us to get an idea of how an attack would have been carried out and the hatred these two sides of the community had for each other. It also helped us to establish how carefully an attack on the 'enemy' must be planned, because if not it could result in the operation going wrong and the men being shot dead, which is what happened in this case. When writing our script we took this into account to ensure we made a realistic dialogue when planning the attack on each other (two rival paramilitaries). It also gave us the idea that we should include a back-up plan in the script, which is probably what the commanders would have done, incase the operation doesn't go to plan.

Music was used extremely effectively in this clip to build up suspense and danger. It begins with the sound of children playing in the street, and cars driving past. This gives the neighbourhood a normal, safe atmosphere. However, once the young boy sees the car, which is clearly suspicious and is filled with loyalists, intense and frightful music kicks in, letting the viewer automatically know there is danger on the way. As the IRA men then begin to prepare, a song comes on which is very Irish sounding, reminding the viewer of the mens' background and culture. The song choice was very smart as the lyrics say 'they tried to take my pride, but they only took my father from me', which is relevant because the main character got involved in the conflict due to seeing his father gunned down in front of him as a child. The music builds up gradually and suddenly becomes very upbeat as the gunfire begins, which symbolises the intensity of the situation.
Mise en Scene is very realistic in this movie as it portrays the time period very well. Costumes are extremely believable, and it helps when watching the movie in order to become drawn in. The IRA men are dressed very casually at the start before they hear of the warning, all wearing coats or leather jackets, which would have been very common at the time. However, once they hear there is a possible attack on its way, they all put on balaclavas and cover their faces. This is realistic as most paramilitaries wore these in order to hide their identity, but also to arguably strike fear into their victims. Props are also very realistic. There is a lot of boarded up shops, which would have been common due to the violence at the time, and also because of extortion from paramilitaries. There are also a lot of cars from the early 1990s which is when the movie is based, making the set very believable. There is also a burnt out car beside where the children are playing, which is very momentous because it would have been extremely common to see this during the troubles, due to the constant rioting which usually resulted in a car being stolen and burnt.
The target audience for this film would be people worldwide who are interested in the irish troubles and want to know what type of people are involved in it. It would also target people who would like to see what drives people from both sides to engage themselves in the violence, often it is revenge, which relates directly to our project as we plan to base it on revenge killings. Audience expectations would be to get a good insight into the violence-ridden northern ireland, and hopefully to understand if not sympathise with, why some people become involved in such a violent campaign. The type of movie I would imagine would distribute this type of film would be a large American production company, because it was a big movie, which had an extremely large budget, as well as some huge stars such as Brad Pitt and Harrison Ford.