Storyboard.

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.

Script for Opening.

This script has been written by the producer Vicky. We all tried to have an impact of how the script went.

Treatment for Opening.

The opening sequence will begin with a black screen. The ambient sounds of a restaurant will be heard and then Al will speak over it. The speech will give the impression of being diegetic, as it will fit in with the restaurant noises and sound as if it is part of a conversation. This will create an immediate enigma as the viewer is thrown straight into a situation but cannot actually see what is happening since the sound is contrapuntal. The scene will then change to a low angle point-of-view shot of a dirty room. The location is dark, secluded and quiet. Cutting suddenly from the black screen to this will shock the audience, as the room will not be pleasant to look at. The only sound will be diegetic, this will be the character breathing heavily to create a sense of danger. There will then be a cut in which will be a close up shot of Al’s hands tied up with rope. There will be blood on his hands, showing he has clearly been involved in a struggle. The diegetic heavy breathing will continue. The shot will then change again to a big close up of Al’s eyes as he tries to keep conscious. His eyes will be opening and closing, and later in editing we will make it so the image fades in and out in order to really exaggerate his struggle. Again, diegetic heavy breathing will be the only sound. The lighting for this shot and all the others win the abandoned house will be very dark and there will be a lot of shadows. This will really accentuate the horrible location, making the viewer feel very sorry for Al. The colours will be quite dull and dark, also adding to this feeling. These three shots will be quite fast, as they don’t contain much detail. Their main purpose is to let the audience know that this character is in trouble. The shot will completely fade out to lead onto a flashback, which will take place at a well-lit restaurant. The whole feel of this scene will contrast strongly with the scenes in the abandoned house, showing that this was a much happier time. It will be a mid shot of Al and Eve sitting at a table, they will be framed well in shot as they will both be on vertical thirds. They will both have drinks and the male character will be anxiously playing with his glass. The female character will be dressed in a sophisticated way, giving her the air of a confident femme fatale. The shot will not be very long, but it has to be long enough for the audience to grasp what is happening. The next shot will be back in the abandoned house so the lighting will go back to being very dark and shadowy. It will be a long shot, showing Al tied up on one side and Seth emerging from the shadows, later followed by Eve on the other side. This will establish to the audience everyone who is involved in Al’s situation. The actors will be framed on thirds on either side of the shot, in order to get the best composition possible. Half way through the shot we will begin to hear sirens, which will be diegetic, although we will have to add them in the editing. As well at this, the characters will be talking, which is also diegetic sound. After Eve and Seth depart, the final scene will be a close up of Al’s face as the sirens get louder and louder. We will be able to clearly see his is terrified. The noise will be diegetic, this will be the sirens and his breathing. This scene will be very short, and will just give the audience a hint of his feelings at the time. Then we will cut to the titles, which will mark the end of the opening sequence.

Overall the editing for our opening sequence will be quite quick and choppy to accentuate the danger Al is in (excluding the restaurant scene). The pace will be fast as we want to get all our shot in the allocated time, but they will have to be slow enough that the audience can grasp what is happening. We will only be using two locations, but they will be complete opposites. The abandoned house will be dark, eerie and make the viewer uncomfortable, whilst the restaurant will be light, friendly and make the viewer feel more at ease. The two locations will juxtapose each other in order to keep the viewer alert and on the edge of their seat as we switch between the two. Our characters are quite classic noir characters so we will be dressing them in that sort of style. For example Eve will be wearing a dress and heels in order to give the femme fatale feel. Since Al will have been through a rough time he won’t look as pristine as Eve, and in the abandoned house scenes he will have fake blood on him in order to enhance this. As well as fake blood we will need rope to tie his hands with, drinks for the restaurant scene and sugar to represent the drug Eve puts in Al’s drink. The majority of our sound will be diegetic, however, we will find an appropriate song to put with the titles, as these silent would be quite uninteresting to the viewer. This will be the only non-diegetic sound in our opening.

Our opening will be targeted at 15-25 year olds mainly as we are going for a 15 rating. We would probably be looking at males more than females, as males are more interested in the crime thriller genre. In terms of stylistics, our opening will be slick and fast, keeping the viewer entertained. Although there are signs of violence in terms of Al having blood all over his face, this is only suggested and not shown meaning it is still age appropriate. This is also something that was quite common in classic noir films, which ties in with our contemporary noir feel. We would want our film to be shown in places where our target audience can see it, so this would most likely be in cinemas nationwide. This would also mean it could reach out to any cinema going who just happened to be looking for a film to see and took a liking to it.

Synopsis for Opening.

Our aim is to create the introduction to a neo-noir film, which will be around two minutes long. We will do this in a group of three, made up of myself, Victoria Chetley and Courtney Smith. Vicky will be working as the producer, I will be the art director and Courtney the director. Me and Courtney will also feature in the film as actors, as well as another male who is yet to be decided.

Our film is based around a diamond. The female lead in our film, Eve, played by Me, desperately wants this diamond so concocts a clever plan to get it. She is the typical femme fatale, and uses men to get exactly what she wants. She happens upon the slightly downtrodden male lead, Al, played by Courtney. She begins a relationship with him, leading him to believe she loves him. Once he is under her spell, she persuades him to steal the diamond. However, although Al is in love with this woman, he suspects something of her. After a while he realises what he has done is wrong and tries to take the diamond back. He tells Eve this, meaning to save herself she must take drastic action as her fingerprints are all over the diamond as well as Al’s. She enlists the help of her lover, Seth, who she has been secretly seeing the whole time she has been with Al. She arranges to meet Al in a restaurant, where she tries to persuade him to keep the diamond. Again, he refuses, so she drugs him. With the help of Seth, she abducts Al and takes him to an abandoned house. She ties him up and taunts him, leading him to discover she never loved him and was with someone else the whole time. Unbeknown to the audience, Eve has called the police on him, and she reveals this when we hear sirens in the distance. She has given them information that links him to the crime, enough for them to be able to arrest and charge him. She then leaves Al tied up waiting to be found by the police, running away with the diamond, and Seth in tow.

However, as I have previously mentioned, we will be making only the introduction to the film. As our film is a neo noir, in true noir style we will have the end of the story at the beginning of the film and then the story will be told in flash backs. The opening scene will begin with a completely black screen with Al’s voice saying he wants to take the diamond back. We will then see Al tied up in the house, drifting in and out of consciousness. There is then a flashback of him and the Eve in the restaurant, and we see her spike his drink. It then goes back to the abandoned house where she reveals herself and speaks briefly before disappearing with Seth at the sound of the sirens.

The target audience for our film would be 15-25 year olds, as we would hope to market the film as a 15 rating. We believe it would be most appealing to young people as they are the sorts of people who really go for action and crime thrillers. It would also probably be more popular with males, although females could enjoy it too. This is because there would be a lot of action and some violence in the film.

Final Lesson.

This was our last lesson before we could go and shoot.
We mainly just made sure all the pre production was correct and ready so we could go shoot for nexted lesson. 

Lesson 3

After talking about our opening we finally came up with an idea that everyone liked and started to move on to our pre production stuff. At first we had to make up an Audience theory where set up a questionaire and asked people to fill it in, it was a bit bias as we mainly asked people in our media class. We then moved on to make ideas up about locations and who was going to be producer and director and who was going to be art director, we made our decisons and then started to think about where we could place our film opening, we came up with a few ideas we needed a bar like set but we had just found out that the student bar had been closed down so me and Vicky decided to ask if we could use the restaurant  at the college luckily they said yes and thats where we would shoot our first scence. Like the other projects everyone had set things to do, we all helped with the treatment and synopsis, also with the loacation sheet and the health and saftey sheet. We were giving things to do at home so we could bring them in next week and have one more group talk before we set out to shoot the opening of the film.

Lesson 2

In this Lesson we had planned to come up with an idea and started looking at locations and props that might be needed. At the end of the lesson we had to discuss the idea of our opening to the whole class. We took my main idea and tried to twist it a bit to make it more into what everyone wanted instead of what I wanted. We presented it to the class and the feedback we got helped us come up with nearly a final idea of what we were actually going to do. Still it was a bit difficult coming up with a rough idea and trying to persuade others to actually like our idea even though it was only rough and we didn't know ourselves what we were actually doing. The feedback we got was that we were drifting out of a Noir and into more of a psychological film and it would be good if we kinda of switched around the roles of the female and male. We took this advice on board and instead of moving on to the pre production stuff we took a bit longer on our opening.

Lesson one.

The first lesson of us talking about our ideas for the film Noir opening.
First we got into our little group as we found out that Kirsten had dropped out of Media meaning we were one down then all the other groups we did wonder how we were going to actually get on with out here because we needed at least two people to act and two to keep the camera and microphone up and make sure they were ok.
However we took it in and tried our best to explain to each other our ideas about each of our film openings. I went first and they kinda of liked the idea and then we decided to keep it all together and work on it a little bit more on the following week.

My idea for the film opening.

Well... My idea for our film opening.

I'm going to share this idea with the group when we get talking about it. There's this girl walking home after aruging with another one of her bits on the side. People know she plays guys but she would be our femme fetale, she's walking home when she's attacked when she decides to take a short cut home. She's knocked out not knowing where or what she's doing. The camera would be peering around so it makes it look like someones seen this but aren't stopping it, when this girl actually comes around we have a point of view shot from here gazing in and out. While doing this a voice over of hers comes along and tells us who she is and what she thinks has happened to her,  it goes into flash backs as well so we can actually see. The all of a sudden we come out of the flash back to where we hear footsteps, heavy ones where this guy comes in still the camera is of her point of view. She then asks out.. Who is it? Why am I here? Please, tell me... The guy apears from the shadows hold a bag with a brick like shape in. The camera is now a mid shot view where we can see both the charaters this would be following the 180 degree rule. She notices him and starts to panic, he tells her to hush her mouth and he explains his story about how she's broke his heart so now it's his turn to brake her skull. Before the end of the opening we go back to her point of view and all we can see is this guy about to hit her with the bag full of bricks and things.. The titles come in before we actually see him do anything.

The Exchange.

The Exchange went well although it could of gone a bit better. I was in a group with Victoria Chetley, Courtney Smith and Kirsten Day. Before we set out to do anything we all took part in getting the pre-production sheets that needed doing, we all worked as a group and put ideas in for the Treatment, synopsis and storyboard. We then had to fill in location and health and safety for where it was going to be set, again we all took it on together and decided where it was going to be so we had a fair idea of how everyone wanted to do it. I was very happy with the way we worked together as a group and made it so everyone could share their ideas across and we could adapt them into the making of our film.

I done some of the acting in the film and filled in the storyboard to get the rough idea of how the story was going to go and if we changed anything we could just simply write about it in here. Me and Courtney decided to act in the film while Kirsten and Vicky filmed it, if there was a bit when there was just one of us needed then the other would get to film so we all had a chance to film something. Everybody had something to do and we all tried to help where we could, instead of one of us bringing things in for the Mise-en-scene.

It was a very cold morning when we went out and shot the film and I was rather excited to see all of us their ready to head of. Our framing for shooting was rather good and the opening to the short film, the pan of Courtney was one of the best shots in the whole of the shoting which I was happy with as I done it and even though I didn't do much shooting, I was happy with that and the little I done it came out well. We tried to stay with a steady frame all the way in with the shooting however there is one piece where Vicky zoomed in and out to keep us all the frame, this weakened the film just that slightly and even though we tried to fixed it we didn't shoot enough to help ourselfs out. We should of shot more so we had enough footage just incase something like this did happen but sadly we didn't. When filming we tried to stay with the rule of thirds and the 180 degree line rule, I was rather happy that we did and that our technical skills when filming were actually quite good not including the zoom, which would of been good if we filmed our film as a fast pased film. Sadly this was Vicky's fault but the whole groups fault because we should of done it again and filmed more footage. There was also part of the master shot that went on for way to long when I was walking up the path to meet Courtney but we only noticed this when we got into editing the shoot. So we decided to try and put flashes back to Courtney waiting to make it seem that little bit faster comapred to just a plain boring shot of me walking down a path.  Also while we were editing we thought if we turned it into black and white and uped the contrast it would give it that little bit more of being closer to a film Noir.  We also picked some music which was Noir thriller kinda of music to go in so it gives the audience that feeling that something is going on.

We then showed the class our 'Exchange' and they gave us feed back on what they liked and what they didn't. We all knew that the zoom was going to come up and it did, also we knew about the master shot and how it was a bit too long however they liked how we cut it up with it going back to Courtney. Our audience was to make people who like Noir like this and from what the feedback from the class was I think we made that clear. They liked our location and said it was picked rather well, they like the smoke and the icicles that were hanging from the pipe. Also our costumes and how we made Courtney look shady and me like a femme fetale went very well and they noticed it. However we could of added that little bit more and made it a bit more dramatic and more like a thriller. Someone also said about having a close up of mine and Courtney's face we had it planned but I guess we just forgot about it as it was so cold outside, we could of gotten a close up of the exchange to make it more clear to the audience what they were actually exchanging over. Even though there were some faults with it I think we done rather well and I am very happy with the outcome because we are still getting use to the cameras and the skills that are needed to use one.