In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of Noir? Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media?
During the time which has been leading upto us making the final product we have looked at Noir and Neo Noir. The Noir's I have looked at are...Kiss Me Deadly (1955 Robert Aldrich), Out of The Past (1947 Jacques Tourneur) and Double Indemnity (1944 Billy Wilder). For Neo Noir I looked at Se7en (1995 David Fincher), Kill Bill Volume One (2003 Quentin Tarantino) And a few others. As you can see on my blog we looked into the openings of the Neo Noir's to help us make one for our product the group looked at different ones each so we could get a few ideas of them all and add them into our film. Also with researching the films helped us pick up extra information and storylines to what we might what to add into our film, the important bits like cinematography and characteristics. While looking at the openings of noir I noticed that Se7en(1995) opening is very good and creates and egnima straight from the start and I thought maybe we should try something like that to pull in the audience. While looking at these films we started to understand the use of narratives, characters and iconography. A femme fetale helped us in making our production also the beat down hero helped as well. Our Femme fetale needed to look modern and smart but also innocent in a way so you wouldn't or the beat down hero wouldn't expect her to betray him or others. The femme fetales in Noir are deadly characters and hurtful, they are they to get what they want and that is all, we needed to get our femme fetale's attitude correct and by looking and researching Noirs we could. With the beat down hero in Noir's their normally smart, in well paid jobs like a dectective, we needed to make our beat down hero look smart and clean. We also needed to make him seem not vulnerable compared to the femme fetale so it become a slight twist. Our story is about the femme fetale betraying the one that loves her for money and another lover, she abducts the beat down hero with some help beating him in till he give up and passes her what she wants. We developed some of the Noir factors but also challanged in our Noir the femme fatales other lover is a woman and in old Noir this wouldn't happen. From watching Noir's I learnt that many things in the cinematography is used to create atmosphere and tension, by low-key lighting, heavy use of music mostly Jazz. Our film is meant to be a neo noir, these are modern takes on noir films using some of the conventions.
We have developed the forms of noir by our character choices and how we showed our femme fetale and beat down hero. We also added in a lesbian character, which is completely different to earlier Noir's. This first came around in 'Bound' A neo noir in 1996, I think this was a great idea. We have traits of film noir and neo noir in our film and this proves that. Also the film is based on betrayal of a boyfriend as they steal money from him. Our film opening has many stylistics of a film noir, we have a close up of the diamond that is the main cause of the betrayal and also in the abandoned house we have the grim dark look about the scenes it also looks cold which was caused by us trying to make the set a little dark to make it more mysterious.
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
Our film represents different social groups more than some other films do, we have men and females but we also represnt different sexualities. Also alternative people, our femme fetale has bright blue hair which is different and also matches her social representation because the alternative group try and make a statement. I believe this also matched my character's personallity. She's the strongest character just like the female by her side however the only man in the film is 'Al' who comes across as weak this might turn the male audience away because of this but the whole story wouldn't of worked if the cast were all female, you wouldn't get the same story come across. I'm happy with our representation it's different to a lot of blockbuster films and shows the truth of the world about sexualities.
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Point one, we know our film isn't Holywood material and that it wouldn't become a great blockbuster compared to other films, we didn't have the money or the time. But our film might be picked up by small distributors, A distributor such as British Film Institute, who have distributed many other small British films. Also we looked into film festivals and noticed that there was one for Lesbian & Gay Film Festival, were our film could be shown because of the sexuallity of it. When looking into Neo noir we watched a film called Brick’ (2005, Rian Johnson) Which was distributed by Optimum Releasing, we looked into this more and noticed that they do small drama films and thought that this distributor would be a great one for us. Then TV channels come into mind such as channel 4 and BBC three because they are the channels that are mainly advertised for 16-28 year olds.
Who would be the audience for your media product?
Our audience was a hard one to decide on, we wanted something teenages could watch but also mid-twenties could watch. We drew up to people and female and a male and made them who we would think would watch the film. We called the Fred and Freddrina. We wanted the audience to be our ages because of the actors in the film, from this we planned that our audience should be age 15+ and that the British Board of Film Classification should rate it this. The BBFC are the people who place age certificates on Films, TV shows and Games. According to the BBFC age 15 films should not promote drug use however in our film we have a bit in the beginning where the femme fetale spikes the beat down hero's drink. But there is no other use of drug use in the film so hopefully our film could be classed as a 15. BBFC guidelines also say 'Violence may be strong but should not dwell on the infliction of pain or injury.' However there is no violence that can be seen in the film so it would be ok in our film to class it as a 15 and if it was sent to the BBFC they would hopefully class it the same. In our film social factors are more shown then class, you could say that the femme fetale was middle-class? The same as the beat down hero. However the females are represented badly comapared to the man because of what they do to him. So he is seen as being weak so I would say the gender is equal in ways. Because of the sexuallity in the film I think more males would watch the film because of the lesbians, I think this would turn women off. However I believe that men wouldn't like seeing another man being overpowered by two women and the women audience would. This equals this out as well. The good thing about the film is that you don't actually have to know what film noir is to enjoy the film you could watch it and get into it. If you did understand the noir factors you might appracieate the film a little more.
When we had finished we screened the film to our media class to see what they liked and disliked about it. They agreed about the audience and the BBFC certificate, the class mates were all the age we wanted the audience of our film to be. They replied to our questions and said that it had a clear narrative, and that they understood who the femme fetale was and the beat down hero. They also liked the egnima in the film opeing however they weren't to sure with what the femme fetale wanted so maybe we needed to make it clear at the beginning or got a few more shots into the film to make it clear. I was happy with the feedback we got.
How did you attract/address your audience?
In order to attract our audience we tried to use actors around the age of the audience, luckly our actors were age 18,19,20 so we had the middle age roughly of the age we were aiming at. We used lots of different types of people, Alternative being one of them to attract people into watching the film. We also used stock characters from Noirs like the femme fetale and the beat down hero, so anyone who knows about film noirs understand straight away and pick up on it. Our femme fetale and beat down hero were all muddled up in a crime like noirs are. We tried to keep the pace and the narrative fast and interesting to keep the audience involved with the film. Our noir was all about a diamond that our beat down hero had stolen for Eve our femme fetale, he felt bad and wanted to return it however Eve didn't want him to because she wanted to keep it for herself. The storyline is a typical Noir story, as we had planned so hard for it to be.
We also used different stylistics to keep the audience enterained this is where the fast past came into the whole situation before we edited the piece we all ready knew we were going to need a fast past piece to keep the audience entertained. Our use of our flashbacks was praised upon when we screened it. They liked how Al's eyes looked directley into the camera. We needed the enigma to keep ticking, sadly we didn't get enough shots when we were out shooting mainly because it was vert, very cold so it's a bit slower than it should be. When setting out the flashbacks we thought a bright light or cutting would make the shot seem a lot slower and then we'll lose the pace of the film. We made sure it was appealing to the audience and it would make them want to watch it more. This is were the music came into the picture, the music helped set the tension and let the audience know that it was a flashback it went good. We then went into a studio to make the titles and it was better than I thought we could do the enigma of the diamond draws the audience in at the very first sight you want to know more about that diamond and why it's there. Also the speaking over head makes the audience wonder what they guy is on about and that they should watch the film to find out what's happened. When screened out audience really liked the titles and this made us all happy.
What have you learnt about the technologies from the process of constructing this product?
We used a lot of technologies when creating our final product, all of them helped us a lot. When we need to do some research google was the best for it, that's where we got most of our information from for out film noir and what we needed to include in filming. The internet was one of the main things we used because of how useful it actually is. We used youtube when we needed to look up some film noir beginnings and things we wanted to relate our own film to like the Queens Nose and how we liked that opening. The biggest part was really Blogger.com we really needed this when we had to publish our work up with what we had done for Film noir. It was fun keeping an online blog it helped out so much, when other members in the group didn't understand they could just look around also there's no paper hanging around and it's already neat and tidy. On my blog I embeded videos, my films, music and pictures to help me get the point I needed to get across. It's not as boring as writing it all on paper and it kept me interested in keeping my blog up. Also DvD's like Se7en(1995) and Brick(2005) helped when they were in hand so I could pause them and take down some notes that were needed. My group also exchanges numbers and communticated on social networking sites when we needed each other. When filming we used Panasonic SD-HD 700 camera with a Velbon Tri-pod in order to film our opening, and a YOGA Super Cardiod Shotgun Microphone to capture the sound. In the bar scene we also used a light which was a 300W Ianiro Light. All this equipment helped us produce out final film if we hadn't of used it then we would of been in a lot of trouble as nothing would of been shot. When it came to editing our piece we used different computer programmes like Final cut proand Logic pro which helped us put our film together and edit it. We also had to use Adobe Soundbooth because our mic hadn't picked up some sound and we despratley needed to dub it so it sounded good. For our music we had used the internet to find some royalty free music and added them into our film. We also used programme Motion so we could set up our titles and make nice distribution companies.
This is what we made from using Motion. These programmes were very important they made our film look more professional without them it wouldn't of looked that good.
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?
Looking back at my preliminary task I believe I have improved a lot, there were some issues in our Preliminary with us shooting to many shots and the actors talking to fast, we also had a bad location for us to film in, there were many people around and they were very noisy and even though we had asked for them to be quiet poiletly they didn't. However compared to our final piece our locations were so much better we had enough room for what we wanted to do and they looked a hell of a lot better than a tiny class room and a noisy coridoor. The class room was dull and clean compared to the bar shot which was bright and looked like it was full of entertainment and the worn down house which looked like it was falling apart however had that sense of mysterious in it. In the preliminary the actors talked way to fast and in our final piece we had more actors more of a script and we spoke clearly and didn't rush it like the other one. Our titles were so much better as well we had a better looking opening in the final piece comapared to the the first exercise we had done they just looked plain. The titles added a little more of an effect on to the final piece because it looked more like a diary piece.
We planned more than we had ever done, in the prelimainary we didn't really plan on what we were going to do the same in the Exchange another exercise we had to do but there was a bit more planning in that compared to the preliminarly task. In the Exchange we just had to plan around two characters exchanging something no script just that. This was to help us get more famalliar to the cameras and shots also to help us learn new ways of the camera. For our final piece we had limited time to sort out or pre-production work, this put a bit more pressure on us because we knew that if this wasn't done we couldn't get on filming. We split up the work in the group to make it easier, I was the Art director I was in charge of sorting out locations and costumes out also sorting out the storyboard was my task. Courtney was the Director and had to decided on the shots and what shots we were going to take. Vicky was the producer who had to a lot of the writing such as the script and part of the synopsis and treatment. We all helped each other and in a way we worked together more than we worked individal.
In the final production we used a card camera comapred to tape, it was different for us but we learnt how to do it fast. I have learned a lot in the past year and I believe that we've taken it all in and it shows from our first exercise to our final one. When it was completely finished we screened it and I was happy with the out come.
In order to find out more about our audience and what they wanted from a film we created a questionnaire and asked some fellow college students to fill them out. We got a very good response and received some useful information.
We began by asking what genre of film each person had most recently watched and bar far this was Comedy. Only two people had most recently watched a Crime Thriller or Noir. We asked how many people actually knew of the genre Film Noir/Neo-Noir and everyone answered yes. However, there was a slight bias because we asked students that were studying in the area we were so they would have most likely all been Media students. Looking back we should have gone for a wider choice of people in order to get a real idea of how many people know about Noir. We also asked people for the most memorable scene they remember from a film. This was quite an important question as it gave us insight into the sort of things that impact on people and they remember for being well done. The answers ranged from films watched during child hood, such as the start of The Lion King, to recent films with impressive special effects, such as in the film Inception when the dimensions collapse into themselves. We learnt from this that there is no simple recipe for what people enjoy seeing, and what they take from a film. Not every film fits every person, which is why we have to decide who our ideal audience is.
Our ideal viewer would be someone into thriller/noir films who would actively decide to go see the film at the cinema. Alternatively, there would be regular cinema-goers who would watch the film if they had to pick one once arriving at the cinema. Our ideal viewer would be either gender, although a male may be more interested in the action side of the film and be less squeamish towards the violence included in the story. Our film would be rated a 15 and our ideal age range would be around 15-25, although this does not exclude other ages from seeing it as they too might enjoy it.
After researching into our audience and reading the answers from our questionnaires we feel we know a lot more about our target audience and how to approach them. Knowing this means we can shape our film opening to their needs and desires in order to make it a success.
In order to successfully create our group opening we had to work together. There was lot of pre-production work that had to be done and the best way of doing this in a productive amount of time would be for each of us to take on a specific role and do the paperwork related to that role. The four roles were:
Director
Producer
Editor
Art Director
However, our group was made up for three people meaning someone would have to take on two roles, or we would have to split one amongst all of us. In the end we decided that Courtney would be the Director, I would be the Art Director, Vicky would be the Producer and we would take on editorial roles as this was something that we would all be involved in anyway.
We had thirteen pre-production tasks to complete including allocating roles. This meant we each had three or four tasks to do on our own, as some tasks needed to be done as a group. These included the group target audience report and the treatment. For the treatment each of us wrote detailed notes on the section that related to our role and then we put them all together. As the Producer, I had to write the synopsis, script, decide on the production schedule and keep hold of all the pre-production work we had completed so that we knew it was safe. Courtney did the target audience questionnaire, the call sheets and along with Vicky and I picked the music. We spent a long time on this as a group, although originally it was going to be just one persons job. This is because we found it very hard to find the sound we wanted that was both free and without copyright. I drew the storyboard and filled in all the information on locations, props and costumes. I feel we all completed our tasks very well and this helped us as we had more time to think about filming instead of worrying that someone hadn't done their bit.
Now that we had all our footage all that was left to do was edit it together. The following is a brief description of what we did in the lessons following the shoot.
Post Film Lesson One
We began by looking over our footage and importing it into Final Cut Pro. We started to roughly edit the clips in order to create a basic time line of what we wanted it to look like. There were a few gaps left where we wanted titles or sound effects to go but apart from that we got a good chunk done this lesson. We were surprised how quickly it all came together, although of course it needed finer editing.
Post Film Lesson Two
We finished the basic edit in this lesson and began looking for music to add. We spent a long time on royalty free websites picking some downbeat jazz and an accurate siren sound effect. However, we found when we imported these into Final Cut Pro it rejected them and would not play them on our time line. We found out that we had to convert them to an .aiff file type instead of an .mp3. We used Adobe Soundbooth to do this. Once our music and sound effect was in place we listened to the completed audio and realised at some points it was hard to hear what the characters were saying. We thought recording their parts and dubbing them over would be easier that re-shooting the entire opening so went and recorded that at the end of the lesson. We used Logic Pro to edit the sound and imported it into Final Cut Pro. We began placing the sound in the time line.
Post Film Lesson Three
We perfected the dubbing in this lesson and whilst listening to the audio we realised some of the voice over we had recorded was a little quiet. We re-recorded this in the same way as we recorded the other voice over/dubbing and imported it into the time line. We tweaked the audio and added cross fades in order to get a smoother sound from clip to clip. We began adding titles and came up with the idea of filming the diamond glittering in the light and the titles on their own looked a little boring. We based this idea on the opening of the children's tv show The Queen's Nose. This can be seen below:
Post Film Lesson Four
We edited the diamond in the light sequence at the start of this lesson and refined the titles to be sure they looked exactly as we wanted them too. After going over the edit a few times to be sure we hadn't missed anything we exported the final opening as a Quick Time movie. We then screened it to the rest of the class and received feed back.
Post Film Lesson Five
This was our last lesson where we just tweaked a few things people had brought up at the screening. We created our company logos using Motion and Photoshop and added them to the start of the opening and took a few more screen caps to put on our blogs. For the second half of the lesson we talked as a group about how we would go about creating our group evaluation. We split the seven evaluation questions into groups and decided how would be best to explain them. We decided on creating two Prezis, two Xtranormal pieces and a video/audio to go with our opening in the style of a DVD extra. We split these amongst us all so that each group member would take charge of writing up the groups' answer to a certain evaluation question or questions. We arranged a way of communicating in case any one ran into trouble. We decided to film the video piece next week and edit it in time for the coursework deadline.
This is our storyboard and how we can keep track with what shoots we do and if there's anything we could add in to make it that little bit better when watching the film.
