Testing looks of film noir in pictures

Unfortunately I wasn't able to edit the pictures when we did this task, because Photoshop wasn't working at the time. So Sam (http://asmediastudiessamshepherd2013.blogspot.co.uk/) who I worked in a group with said I could use the pictures that he edited from his blog. I can only tell you how the pictures were edited from Sam's blog so I'm going to put it into my own words and explain how I think it was done.

 We looked at a lot of the conventions of film noir and how they used guns, cigarettes, red lipstick and the relationship between the fem fetal and the protagonist. We thought these would reflect best in the pictures. We also looked a lot of costume and what would look best for the pictures and it also reflected on what costumes we might use for our OTS. We looked a lot at long dresses and jackets that would fit the 1920's feel. Jackets were an important factor because we thought that on the women it could show the importance of a character and the relationship of two characters shown in the 4th picture.

A lot of the pictures are in black and white which is one the conventions of old film noir. Two of our pictures are black and white but also have a grain to them. The reason this was used was to make the pictures have an old feel to them, or taken on an old camera. The picture that has a red tone to it creates a different atmosphere. This could be used in more of a neo noir film but also have the conventions of a film noir, being the cigarettes and a zippo. The red tone gives the idea of blood and murder which is also a convention of film noir.

Continuity task

Continuity Task from Sam SheepDawg-OEight on Vimeo.

This is our completed Continuity task. Me, Sam B, Sam, Chris and Max all worked together on this piece. We all had our different roles for this to make sure it went correctly

I was the director for this which included making sure the shots looks alright. I also edited some of it.
Chris and Max were doing most of the camera work. We used both a tripod and handheld.
Sam B and Sam were the ones who acted in this because we thought it would be easier interesting how everyone would act in those different.

We followed a basic storyboard and script for our piece which in the end I thought came out quite well. We didn't have enough time to look at sound effects and music but I think it works quite well seeing as this was the first time most of us had to deal with continuity.

Certificate rating

This is the certificate for a 15. We looked at the BBFC (British Board of Film Classification) to decide what certificate our OTS is. We had a class discussion which is shown in another blog post. And you can see that the class decided that our piece is a 15 rather than an 18.


The reason we thought it might of been an 18 was because of the gore factor of our piece. We thought it may of been too graphic for the 15 certificate, however it didn't actually show the character getting shot but it did show the aftermath of it.




You can see where we got all the information from the BBFC website

http://www.bbfc.co.uk/

Basic animatic

This is our basic animatic for our OTS. It isn't the correct length but we wanted to do it just to see the shots we wanted to do for our final piece.


(This is only the first draft. We had to go back and add more pictures)
Animatic neo noir OTS from Georgia Smith on Vimeo.

We thought it would be a lot better to take pictures of the shots we were using rather than drawing them, because it was easier to look at and do. The animatic is only 40 seconds which will not be the actual length of the OTS, which should end up being abut 2 minutes. However we haven't really developed the script yet so we are going to look at that on friday and decide when sounds and speech is, which will indeed make the OTS a lot longer.

Our OTS is going to look a lot better than this, this was just a starting draft. We still have to look at colouring, sound, titles and the script. The reason there are not titles in the first 40 seconds of the animatic is because we haven't really looked at it. It is a bit dull in the animatic however in the actual piece there will be narration over the top of the walking sequence to build up to the action happening later on.

(WHERE NEW ANIMATIC WILL GO)

Animatic neo noir ots final final final from Georgia Smith on Vimeo.
This is our final animatic. It isn't very different from the first one, we needed to add more shots which we had forgotten in the first place.

Whole class group discussion

Because of the use of violene in our OTS, which included someone being shot in the back of the head, however it is not seen, but the aftermath of the shooting was shown on camera  we are struggling to find out what the ciftificate rating would be. We decided that having a whole class discusion would help us. Having a whole class discusion also will help us find out if our piece is too violent and if we should include the shot of the aftermath of the shooting.
Group disscussion from Georgia Smith on Vimeo. We decided that in the end the cetificate rating would be a 15 because the violence wasn't as bad as we thought and the swearing isn't as bad as we thought either.

Areas I need to cover for our Neo Noir OTS piece

4 areas to cover and look at


Health and safety

• Consider the actors health and safety
• The location where it is filmed e.g. roads, where the cars will go
• props used in the OTS. Can't be real at all. Use fake props e.g. guns, knives
• The dress code of the actors. Being sensible to wear outside and if the actor is comfortable to wear it and if it fits the conventions.
• While filming, looking at where the camera man is going, having that vision at night time and not banging into things

Ethics

• The rights and wrongs of the OTS
• The impact on the people watching, we need to consider what people will think when we are filming our piece and when they are actually watching the final OTS
• Responsibility 

Film classifications

• We need to consider the age cetfificate we will give our OTS
• Audience, we need to consider the audience for our OTS, we will be looking at the BBFC, which is seen in the bulletpoint below 
• Age Restrictions - BBFC -  http://www.bbfc.co.uk/

Copyright

• For our OTS we can not use copyrighted music, so we are going to create our own ringtone and underscore
• We can't use an idea that someone else has used, so the storyline and shots. We have to be original 

Props needed for Neo Noir OTS

We started to look at what props would be needed for our OTS. These are the items which are the most important for the piece.

• tripod
• camera
• cigarettes
• lighter
• old phone (that works)
• fake blood
• turkey mince (fake brains)

I find these are essential for our OTS of a neo noir film. All of these items are accessible from a a shop or the internet or being made like the blood. The gun can be borrowed from the school and the tripod can be borrowed from family members.

Locations we want to film at

My job for planning was to find locations in the Norwich which would fit the mise-en-scene of our neo noir OTS. Here are a few places we thought would work.

All of these places we thought fit the urban convention of a film noir. The reason these places fit is because they have an urban feel to them. Chapelfield gardens is where most of the story for the OTS takes place. The other locations are for the walking sequence, we feel that it was important to choose places that looked old and would create the atmosphere for the OTS.

"The opening sequence is considered one of the most innovative of its era" (DRAFT)

I think that this statement

Initial ideas

We looked at the start of our neo noir opening title sequence project. And sorted out a final idea for it. The storyboard was our first idea but we decided to change it to the blue writing because it was a lot simpler. Below are the first initial ideas for our opening title sequence. As you can see, we started the story board but didn't complete it because we were struggling doing the story.

Se7en conventions (DRAFT)

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/se7en/

^^^^ this is the opening sequence to Se7en.

We looked at the title sequence of 'Se7en' and were told to look at the conventions

Genre theory classwork

In one lesson we looked at genre and how they are linked together in a certain way. E.g. comedy-horror would be Scary Movie.
















In this lesson I learned a lot of things about genre that I never knew before. It made me realise there are lot more genre's than I knew already, which were the more generic ones, and learning that genres are actually connected making it a hybrid-genre.

Neo Noir

We looked at the idea of Neo Noir and how they are used in certain films/programmes. Neo Noir is the idea that a film used aspects and key conventions that would be used in an original film noir film.

We looked at three examples which use this, Red Riding Trilogy, Mulholland Drive and Blade Runner.

Red Riding Trilogy 

 Conventional
-dark colours
-guns
-smoking
-following the idea of starting from the end
-crime
-main character is a journalist
-narrative
-rain

Unconventional

-child abduction

-living area is rural

-the year of 1970's

-unconventional music at the start

-sepia glow

-set in Yorkshire

-features family

Mulholland Drive

 Conventional
-swing music
-gun
-smoke/mist
-1940's setting
-red lipstick
-typical femme fatale
-men in suits with guns
-American

Unconventional

-bright colours
-happy feel to the sequence at the start

Blade Runner

Conventional
-fog
-silhouette
-smoking
-dark colours
-gun
-urban setting
-set up of opening scene
-shadows
-american setting
-raining
-crime

Unconventional
-set in the future
-futuristic machines
-flying cars
-sci-fi
-multi-racial
-doesn't follow starting with the end idea
-electric music

Audience terms

Active - Does get involved with the film.

Passive - This is where the audience are not getting involved or engaged with the product.

Traditional - the audience will go see the film and buy the dvd afterwards, they would never buy a blue ray disc.

Hedonist - these audience members are drawn into different types of films. They may go see a film just out the blue because they feel like it.

Post-modernist - This is groundbreaking films. Films that can be streamed at home via Netflix or lovefilm.com at home, via a mobile or through the tv.

Difference between storyboards and animatics

A storyboard is a series of rough sketches which show the moments of how a film would work. The different camera angles and dialog.

 Here you can see someone has made a storyboard for 'Your Song' from the movie 'Moulin Rouge'. This shows the way that the director wants it to be shot. This is seen as a rough idea which could be changed .
































"The Quest" - an animatic from Callie Booth on Vimeo.



An animatic is a animated storyboard which shows the different shots but in an animated format. This is an animatic from Vimeo called 'The Quest'.

Research and Critical theory : understanding narrative theory

Linear & Non-linear


Linear

It follows the story in a chronological order and is made to make sense to the audience from start to finish. It is said that narratives are in a 'straight line' from start to finish.

Non- Linear 

Non-Linear stories lines are very common in video games. Non-linear means that the story doesn't go in order. It looks at flash backs which is where the character looks back in time. The story jumps from different scenes and ideas.

Some example of films like this are:

Non-linear examples -

• (500) Days of Summer
• Sin City
• Pulp Fiction
• Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind

Linear film examples -

• Grease
• Winnie the Pooh
• Scott Pilgrim vs the World
• The Lion King

Double Indemnity

1. The film 'Double Indemnity' was created in 1944 by Billy Wilder
2. The script was based on James M. Cain's 1943 novella of the same title, which originally appeared as an eight-part serial in Liberty magazine.
3. When 'Double Indemnity' opended on september 6th 1944 it was an  immediate hit with audiences
4. Fred MacMurray and  Barbara Stanwyck both starred in it as Walter Neff and Phyllis Dietrichson
5. Cain's agent sent copies of the novella to all the major studios and within days, MGM, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century-Fox, and Columbia were all competing to buy the rights for $25,000

Double Indemnity from Shadows on Vimeo.

Trailer for 'Double Indemnity'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double_Indemnity_(film)#Cast - most information was found here
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036775/

DOUBLE INDEMNITY from TODAY IS BORING on Vimeo.

Here is version which was recreated by a media group

Sweded film

Ted swede from Sam SheepDawg-OEight on Vimeo.

This was our sweded film. We decided in a group of four to recreate the movie 'Ted'. Because we didn't have a lot of time to plan our sweded film, we looked at the trailer for inspiration.



Unfortunately in the end we realized we needed to improve more on our sweded film, even though a sweded film is meant to look quite unfinished and bad, we actually needed to put more shots and development into it. The only reason it didn't come out as good as we hoped is because we only did it in an hour.

Definition of a sweded film

A sweded film are films created by amateurs who recreate well known movies. Normally these are recreated with a cheap-ish camcorder and limited resources so many of the props and costumes are made by the actors. A sweded film is normally really short in length and only highlights the main parts of the movie. These are normally made to entertain an audience.

An example that shows sweded films being made is a film called 'Be Kind Rewind' starring Jack Black and Mos Def. The story of 'Be Kind Rewind' is two men who work in a video store manage to erase all the movies on their video tapes and have to recreate all the film with minimal props and costumes and filmed on a very cheap camera. The films end up being more popular than the original films.

Be kind rewind from Mag beLey on Vimeo.

The opening sequence to 'Be Kind Rewind' ^^^^^^

Examples of Sweded films

Inception (Sweded) from Light House Studio on Vimeo.

Cast Away Swede from Brandon Giles on Vimeo.


Here are two examples of sweded films. It shows the conventions of a sweded film, like using props they have made and making the sound effects (which seem to only be in the Inception sweded film).

Conventions of an Opening Title Sequence

I believe that the conventions of an opening movie sequence are:

• A list of the main companies and distribution company that are involved with the movie
• A list of the production companies 
• The director
• A list of the main actors involved in the movie
• A list of the producers
• The main title of the movie
• It normally will set a atmosphere depending of that type of film it is
• It introduces the intended target audience to the the beginning of the story and the main actors involved

Reviews of 'Conventions of an opening sequence' slideshows

Conventions of an opening sequence from emiliefreddie

The conventions of an opening sequence slide show. There are 4 variations of the slide show explaining the conventions of opening title sequences.
I found that this presentation followed the idea of conventions in an opening sequence, because it listed out the types of ideas. However i feel like it lacked vital detail that it needed and a lot of the terms were missing which made the slideshow look a lot more unprofessional and incomplete. I feel like this slideshow doesn't specify its target audience well as it should because of the reasons above. The audience however would have been aimed at media students who were just starting media and would be looking at key terms or what they should be looking at in title sequences of movies. The purpose of the presentation is to show key terms and to help new media students. I do believe that the format of this presentation is somewhat successful whoever it lets it down from the way the presentation is made and the lack of detail it contained, also I feel for a presentation to be fully successful is to keep the intended target audience interested it has to be interesting for the reader, I feel like it should of included a lot more images or been set out a lot nicer and not so basic. I believe they covered most of the conventions but it was so basic that it wasn't good as I was hoping it would be.

Codes and conventions of opening sequences from kcasmedia

I felt like this slideshow had a lot more construction than the first one did. It explains codes and conventions of opening sequences of movies in a lot more detail but could still be expanded on more to give the intended audience more detail to work/research from. I feel like the person who created this slideshow has the correct idea of what the codes and conventions are of a movie title sequence is but I feel like it does lack in some basic information that would be useful. However it seems that it could of widened the type of title sequences, all it seems to look is title sequences of action movies. And if someone was to look at the slideshow and they were wanting a wide variety this wouldn't be good enough. The target seems to be for people that are doing things on action movies which would work if that was what was being learned. As I said the format is successful but it lacks basic detail.

An Analysis Of The Opening Sequence Of Vertigo from Media Studies

I feel like this is the most detailed out of all the presentations and displays all of the conventions that would be needed to be understood for a media student. However I find that it might be uninteresting for the intended target audience because presentations are meant to be short and sweet but detailed at the same time. This is all writing so I feel like it may be too much for the intended target audience. Most presentations include pictures of a lot of lose explanations of what the conventions are. I feel like this presentation is aimed at much more advanced media students. I feel like this presentation does cover all the important aspects of the conventions of an opening movie sequence.

Conventions of a thriller opening from zubairkhan93

This presentation is much like the first one. It is a lot less advanced than I believe it should be. This presentation only looks at one sort of convention and I feel like this would only be advised to people who are trying to do an opening sequence of a thriller movie. I feel like it doesn't have a lot of the information intended for a average media student. However there is not a lot more that can be said because I feel like this presentation is much like the first one so commenting would seem repetitive.