Locations

Voiceovers and cahracter introductions in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels and Layer Cake

The first thing to take into account when comparing the way voiceovers are used in both of these films is the style of both films – Matthew Vaughn’s Layer Cake is a deliberately smooth, cool and stylish film that the director himself said was deliberately a detraction away from the gritty and grimy British gangster films that had previously dominated the British off chute of the genre. By no coincidence that is the exact same grimy British gangster film that Lock, Stock is grouped under. With its over exposed film and its over the top, hilariously ridiculous narrative, Guy Richey achieves in making a very different but at the same time very similar film to Layer Cake.

The narrators in both are also characters in the film. In Layer Cake the nameless main character, played by Daniel Craig, narrates the film, yet the only two instances of narration appear at the end and at the beginning of the film. This achieves an odd effect – it should give Craig’s character an almost omniscient status, but instead it gives him an almost fragile one: as an audience we start to wonder why, throughout the rest of the film, Craig isn't leading us step by step through the narrative. Ultimately this conjures a feeling of unease and vulnerability. However this may just be a inadvertent technique employed by Vaughn as, after all, it would detract a lot of the gradually building tension if his main character was going to reassure the audience of his mind state at every given moment.

In Lock, Stock on the other hand the narrator assumes a far smaller role in the film as the barman of the local pub and only has any interaction with the characters at two points in the entire film, yet somehow he knows their thoughts and feelings intimately. Though it could be said that there is a story in itself in that, I believe that Richey made this so simply to add the quirk of having the narrator a minor character as seen in – the admittedly incomparable – The Big Lebowski. However the fact that the narrator remains a character when he could very easily not be does mean that Richey can use his presence on screen to signify the end of particular plot developments – when the characters are around the omniscient narrator nothing that significant nor debilitating can ever really befall them.

Alan Ford as Alan, the narrator of Lock,
Stock and Two Smoking Barrels

However the content of both narrations are fairly similar in essence. Both of the narrators, regardless of roles within the film, talk to the audience on the level and seem to normalise both of the businesses explored in the films, namely the drug trade and petty (and extreme) thievery. Craig’s narration in fact makes us almost feel as though we’re involved in the operations. The most noticeable similarity is the style in which characters are introduced. Whereas in films in this genre without any voiceovers at all e.g. Pulp Fiction, characters are established mainly through their actions and dialogue which as a result has to be more or less immediate, in a film like this with voiceovers, the narrator can do all the talking, telling us the backstory and the general demeanour of the characters as we see with, just for two examples, Tom Hardy’s Clarky in Layer Cake and Dexter Fletcher as Soap in Lock, Stock. Yet that is not to say that the characters themselves have to do no work at all – it always helps if we can see an example of the character’s personality as we are being told about them and is this perhaps best exhibited by real life ex-criminal Lenny McLean in his role as Barry The Baptist in Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

Character, Costume and Props

Characters, Costume and Props

Treatment

We fade into a forest, illuminated by the cold mid winter dawn. A man is seen venturing through the woods. The leaves crunch beneath his feet, the snow gathers on his toes.
Twigs snap in the background; he thinks nothing of it.
Seconds pass, and he begins to dwell on the sound.
fearing a presence, he takes a brief look around, as if someone was there.
He reaches down to bury the contents of his pocket, wrapped in a small plastic bag.
In the background, a suited man wearing a venetian mask appears, just watching.
He stands up again, the venetian masked man in the distance behind him.
he looks around, noticing the man.
He promptly starts walking forward to leave the forest.
Everytime he turns to look around, the man is closer than before, but standing perfectly still, in the same position as ever.
we cut to a darkly lit scene of him sitting in a room, evidently trapped.
It begins alternating between him walking through the forest, slowly being caught up to, and him locked in the room.
The final scenes involve him stopping, with the masked man less than a metre away, staring at the back of his head.
It cuts to the dark room again, the man is sitting in the corner, clutching his knees, whilst the masked man is staring at him, looming over.
It ends as he looks up to the camera.

What do directors try to establish in the opening of thrillers?

In the opening of thriller films, directors can use a variety of different techniques to captivate the audience and draw them into the film. Though these methods vary, it is important to note that the aim is always to engage head on with the audience. By definition, thrillers feed off suspense and mystery and therefore this is what the director will often hope to establish in the opening few minutes. This can be done, as in Casino Royale, by dropping the audience in mid-way through a running case/narrative, or it can be done, in a TV series like Whitechapel, by dropping the viewer immediately into the story and at once giving them a dark, shadowy mystery to solve, in this particular case who the dark silhouette standing in the gate is and what relationship the teenager with the gashed throat has to them. Similarly Double Idemnity opens with a shocking revelation that traditionally would be found at the end of the film but instead is located at the start; this draws the audience in the same way a punch in the face would snatch up someone’s attention.

Arguably though, the most important thing to do in a story before it truly starts is the location. This is done extensively in LA Confidential where a roughly five minute exposition explains carefully both the physical and the moral setting of the film and, though it gives away nothing of the storyline – which doesn’t truly start until almost half an hour into the film – this opening skilfully sets the tone and, in this case at least, the tempo for the rest of the movie.

Yet the primary tools of a story are the characters it involves and oddly this is not always prioritised in the opening few minutes of the film, The Third Man, for example, spends a lot of time explaining about the lawlessness of post war Vienna and doesn’t get onto introducing the characters until relatively far in. In contrast to this, Se7en uses meticulous detail to establish the steely façade of central character Detective Somerset (of course as the film progresses we see far more of this character’s inner persona come through). David Fincher, the film’s director, goes about this very simply but very effectively, showing how ordered and logically placed everything in the detective’s apartment is and leaving it mainly up to the viewer to deduce what they can from this. Comparisons can be drawn between the routine opening scenes of Se7en and the scenes in Whitechapel that establish its own lead character.

Of course, as much as everything else, the tone is very important to set up in the opening stages of a movie. As I have already said, this is very successfully done in Se7en and LA Confidential, but maybe one of the best examples of tone setting is the murky and violent Essex Boys that uses everything from pale and grainy lights to ragged voices drowned out by the suburban hysteria that surrounds them and shots that don’t quite show you everything to establish that if there’s one thing this film isn't then it’s nice. Similarly in the much lighter Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, the film appears is over exposed, giving the picture a dull, almost sepia appearance, but at the same time almost cartoonish that coincides with the films comparatively light spirit and humour. Layer Cake, as oppose to this, makes its opening sequences look very cool, smooth and professional which sets the tone for the rest of the movie just as the grainy footage and over the top slow motion sequences do in Lock, Stock.

It might seem a little odd to say that thriller directors seek to establish the genre in the opening of thrillers, but this is because it is the easiest thing to establish. To make someone assume they're watching a thriller, all that really needs to be done is for someone to mention criminal activity and have a shot of a gun or a dead body. Of course, some classic thrillers, Rear Window springs to mind, doesn’t quite go about doing this in that way, but in that instance the tension is established by the claustrophobic camera work. However, normally the genre can be established just through a combination of everything else the director tries to establish in a thriller opening.

Themes, however, quite separate from storyline, are often much more easily established. The most common found in thrillers of this kind tend to corruption, crime, deceit, lust and alienation/isolation, all of which are present in a film like Se7en although only the crime and alienation are explored in the opening with the character of Somerset and dark city that he inhabits. In the game LA Noire, which is about as close to a film as a game can get, themes are prioritised in the surprisingly slow moving opening cut screen. It talks of the ideas of dreams – Hollywood – and the reputation that the city has and the reality that counter balances this, perhaps not impacting much on the plot, but definitely opening up a theme present throughout the rest of the game.

Thriller Mood Board

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How Has New Technology Changed the Film Industry?

To some extent a film is only as successful as the technology it is made with and the money with which it is funded. Quality becomes somewhat irrelevant when the budget is big enough, take the examples of Michael Bay's Transformer movies and a film like Submarine or Kill List. It doesn't matter that the latter two independent films are by far the superior to Bay's monstrosities, but the fact that the Transformer films were made with superior effects, an almost endless budget and a high profile director immediately guarantees the film success.
            The last decade especially has been revolutionary for film production with the introduction of truly massive special effects in pioneering effects driven films like Independence Day and the Lord of the Rings trilogy both of which were box office smash hits and reinvigorated the cinema experience. Films like Avatar, that spearheaded the revival of 3D, had the same effect, helping cinema climb out of the low it had been in at the start of the decade and the mid 90’s. However, perhaps it is not surprising that effects films are now the highest grossers. It is now very easy to watch a film from the comfort of your own home and as a result cinema – and films you view at the cinema – have become something of an occasion again. As Matthew Vaughn, director of such high profile cult films as Layer Cake and Kick Ass, says “I’m a big believer that if you're going to pay your six quid, you're entitled to see a movie”. What Vaughn is actually saying here is that only certain types of genres are truly deserving of a cinematic touch. For example, to use recent releases, films like Skyfall and Paranormal Activity 4 are going to be more of an experience to see in the cinema than a slow moving drama such as Anna Karenina or Tinker, Tailor, Soldier Spy. Of course there have been exceptions to this rule: independent films like Once and This Is England have enjoyed almost unbelievable levels of success and attention, but it’s wrong to sample these kinds of films and call them regular occurrences – it is still the high budget films that bring in the most profit.
            This change in the market has effectively separated films into one of two categories – you either have the huge budget films that are bursting with effects and an A-list cast, or you have small, independent films that instead rely on their script and their unique, quirky takes to pull in an audience. The middle ground where films like Memento, District 9 and Donnie Darko used to sit has effectively been destroyed by this polarisation of the industry.
            In addition to the obvious changes in audience taste, the film industry has changed too partly because of the temptation to experiment and try out new ways of filming and new, more ground breaking effects. In a way, films like Clash Of The Titans and various other action, fantasy and sci-fi have been created solely to showcase the development of effects – Avatar too if you apply the same ideas. Also it has to be said that it is more attractive to a cast and a director to make a huge budget film that perhaps sacrifices the script and authenticity for special effects and A-list directors as, after all, acting, like any profession, is still a job – money remaining the ultimate goal. It is this money driven circle that keeps this process going and makes films with a higher budget the most popular not just to see but also to act in.
            Yet production is not the only thing that has been affected by the changes in technology – distribution has also taken a game changing beating. With new technologies such as illegal downloads and streaming, it has become not only much more convenient but also much more common to illegally pirate a film instead of paying for it. People can now sometimes see films even before they are released. This threat from downloads has also changed the film industry: whereas before there would often be long waits for a DVD/VHS release of a film, the gap between cinema screening and physical release has shrunk down to often just a few months, if that.

Therefore, in conclusion new technologies have not only changed the film industry, but everything about it, from the actors involved in it to the date of its release.