2. ACTORS
• Many actors are directly influencing and inspiring our group with
regards to the type of media product we are creating. These actors
include Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Orson Welles amongst
other known actors.
• These actors have a great influence on our group through the way in
which they manage to portray good and/or bad, and through the way in
which, through their talent of acting, they manage to immerse the
audience in the film; they make the plot and character seem real, and
which helps the audience to become part of the film and, maybe, in
some ways, identifying with the characters.
3. • The delivery of Bogart’s lines in the Maltese Falcon (1941), a noir film,
makes him influential for us as he seamlessly manages to go from being
serious to more light-hearted. His facial expressions, which also range
from menacing to relatively emotionless, are also incredibly helpful in
developing the character and, through this, allowing the film to be more
real and the audience to become empathetic towards the characters.
• James Cagney’s ability to dominate the scene, both physically and
verbally, is a great influence on how we create our characters and plots.
Without even talking, Cagney, especially in Taxi (1932), manages to
establish a certain feeling amongst the audience, and can insinuate
feelings and intentions without actually making them known through
speech. This is an important part of acting which we may want to
emulate in our product.
• With a prior analysis of Citizen Kane (1941), Orson Welles portrays the
character of Charles Foster Kane in such a way as to make the character
directly comparable to real-life political figures. The way that he
dominates any scene, even if he does not take up most of the shot, is a
good example of what we may want to produce when we create our
characters.
5. DIRECTORS
• With regards to influential actors, Orson Welles, who directed Citizen Kane,
comes to mind as someone who we can look to when it comes to directing
how our trailer will work. Observing the camera work and ways in which
Welles placed characters in a shot is a good way to understand how we
many want to place characters and how we want to compose shots and
place shots within the sequence.
• John Huston is also an influencing director as his films, which include the
Maltese Falcon and the Asphalt Jungle, are good ways in which we can get a
better understanding of how we should produce our trailer. The fact that
the United States Library of Congress as preserved the Asphalt Jungle as
being “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” is a significantly
influencing factor in which John Huston is a big influence on our product.
