FILM - Research & Planning: The Western Genre

WHAT IS A WESTERN?

I have decided to make my genre of film a Western, for a few basic reasons. Firstly, I love them. I can't get enough - no matter when the film is made, the cowboy will always be cool.

But 'Western' is a very broad term, and perhaps not even technically a genre. You wouldn't call a movie set in Japan about samurai's an 'Eastern', nor a movie set in the North pole about explorers an 'arctic'.
The term western then, is an umbrella genre, one that is always mixed with another genre. You can get light hearted musical westerns such as 'Oklahoma!', which is ultimately very different from much more
serious action westerns such as 'High Plains Drifter'.

It seems strange to say that 'High Plains Drifter' and 'Oklahoma!' are the same genre.
They are completely different types of films - Oklahoma! described as 'fun and romance
for all the family' whilst the other is a revenge film: concerned with rape, murder and revenge.

The western genre I am concerned with is the 'spaghetti western' - my favourite type of western films. one that can be narrowed down to the decade in which it was made. At the end of the 50s, westerns were starting to go out of fashion. However, they inspired, along with a Japanese samurai film called Yojimbo, an Italian director called Sergio Leone, who created a new type of western - which to the rest of the world became to be known as the 'Spaghetti Western'.

Leone in action: he was known as a very stylised director, wanting things to be perfect matches of his own vision.

There are a few main reasons why I and the rest of the world enjoy Spaghetti Westerns. They were gritty and real, which made them captivating and gripping. They were shot in stunning locations in Spain and Italy. There was also a match made in heaven between Sergio Leone, the director, and Ennio Morricone, men who seem to entirely share the same vision, as the soundtrack almost couldn't be more fitting. In terms of the narrative, the films always built up to one final, tense duel between the main characters, motivated by revenge, and intensified by Morricone's music. Leone also had an eye for creating good characters - he perhaps single handedly made Eastwood a star by casting him as a rugged, quiet stranger, pitting him against the sharp, eagle eyed 'angle eyes' or the mad-Mexican 'El Indio'.

The famous 'man with no name trilogy' begins with 'A Fisftul of Dollars'...

...Mad Mexican 'El Indio' is pictured in my favourite film of all time, 'For a Few Dollars More'...

...Eastwood infront of the mind-blowing backdrop for 'The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly'.

Bearing this in mind, it will certainly be difficult to create a short spaghetti western (not least because, in terms of length, all of the spaghetti westerns were over 90 minutes). My main aim will be to create a short film that has a tense shoot out, use a convincing, captivating location and suggests motifs of revenge, added to a soundtrack that I will try and create myself.