Preliminary set task

Continuity Task from Sam SheepDawg-OEight on Vimeo.

My Evaluation

http://velvetgee61.wix.com/violentdesiremedia

^^^^ link to my evaluation

I used to Wix to create a website for my evaluation of my Opening title sequence. I found it difficult to use but after a short process it was quite easy to use.

Final OTS

Final opening title sequence - VIOLENT DESIRE from Georgia Smith on Vimeo.



This is our final OTS piece, after having a lot of difficulties with audio and titles.

Rough draft and technical difficulties

I have done the first edit for our final OTS. Unfortunately when I was trying to edit it today none of the music or images I was planning on using were not working. So we have had to try and sort it out and going to complete editing it hopefully when we come back from half term.


First cut of Violent Desire from Georgia Smith on Vimeo.

The files we tried to use just wouldn't work and even when we tried to convent the sound clips it wouldn't work. No images would import into the file either. The end product will end up being a lot longer than this because of the voice over and sound effects that will be added it will make it longer. We attempted as much as we could in the time we had, luckily we have next week to sort out what we need to and hopefully it will be finished by then.

What We Still Need To Film And What We Have Shot So Far

So far we have filmed a few things for our OTS. The shots that we have completed so far can be seen below in a screenshots.

 We started looking at the shots that Jackson had to do of him walking around the city, we didn't realise the time and it got darker a lot quicker than we thought it was going to be. We decided in these shots we didn't want to show Jackson's face just yet.

Because it got dark we decided to go and film the more important parts in Chapelfield Gardens, this in the end became a bit complicated, because while we were filming it started raining and we had to stop. We didn't even look at certain shots because of this. So we are going back into the city next Tuesday to complete the filming of our OTS.

 Here is a list of things that we will need to film and also re-shoot next tuesday.

• We need to complete the walking sequence
• We need to film him leaving his house
• Also he needs to answer the phone (we need to look at how we are going to do this without showing the camera in the reflection of the phone)
• We have decided once again to change the storyboard slightly so that he doesn't drop his phone but instead he puts it away just before the gunshot sound effect
• When Jackson is walking up to the area in which he thinks he has been shot, Chris needs to come into the shot as well, which we didn't do the first time round
• We need to get an over the shoulder shot of Jackson looking at the female protagonist, we tried to shoot it last time but it went a little bit wrong
• We need to re-shoot the chest area in which Jackson thinks he has been shot
• Have a shot of Chris before he follows Jackson
• Jackson needs to watch the femme fetal walk away before he runs after her

Lighting for our OTS

I have the task of looking at lighting for our piece. We needed to create a temporal ellipsis though lighting. We will be doing by using daylight to nighttime.

We have planned to start filming during the evening about sunset which would be about 4 o clock, and continue filming until it gets dark and carry on filming. We want to do this to make it look like the main protagonist has travelled a far distance in a long time, we doing this this all over the city to make it look like he is walking to his job.



The Basics of Lighting for Film Noir from FilmmakerIQ.com on Vimeo.


This is a video that looks at the basics of lighting in a film noir. We are actually making more of a neo noir, which is a modern day film noir. We are going to be using lighting aspects of a film noir, like the street lamps which we will be using to create a 3 point lighting. We want to focus a lot on the look of of piece because we aren't a black and white filter on our OTS.

Costume ideas for our three main characters

These are a couple ideas we have for the look of the 3 main characters in our OTS.

Here are a couple of suggestions. The first one we looked at was the femme fetal cause she felt like quite an easy costume could be constructed.

We want to keep the look of the femme fetal quite modern but also have those conventions of an old film noir movie e.g. the red lipstick. A lot of black to make the character seem/feel very dark to the audience and also makes me seem anonymous. We looked at a lot of velvet and lace dresses because it is in trend right now and that is what we are trying to get across.




The next character I had a look at was the main protagonist.

The reason we want Joe to wear quite simple work like clothes is because it looks like he is about to work in a bar for the night, but quite a sophisticated bar. We also want this character to dress quite dark though which both other characters as well. We want the whole atmosphere for this piece to be dark.

This is what we want the third character want to look like because we want it to seem like he is the baddie in all of this. This is what we want Chris to wear. It can easily be constructed from clothes that he already has. That can also be like that for all the other characters. These are only suggestions for what we want the characters to look like.




















I am going add a post next week about the final costume ideas because we haven't completely decided on what our characters are going to look like. This is just some ideas. We want our characters to look a certain age which is why we have different suggestions for costumes. The female character will be the hardest for our piece because they have to look older but also not look so old its unrealistic that the person playing it doesn't look fake. We want the femme fetal to look about 18-20 years old.

The script for our OTS

This is the final draft of the script for out OTS. The script isn't very long because we don't need a lot of dialogue because we are focusing more on the emotion of the main protagonist and how we can shoot that. Our script isn't very long but it isn't meant to be very long.

When we wrote the script we included important moments which we felt were needed and you the ending especially. This is what we will be using for our final piece.

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