Evaluation feedback

Your evaluation is thorough and discusses relevant areas in depth including discussion of skills developed. You demonstrate an excellent understanding of issues and debates around key concepts and de-construct your own product effectively showing an excellent understanding of codes and conventions of your chosen genre.

16/20

Targets

To access the highest grades you need to present these answers creatively using digital technology such as the voice recorder or the green screen to produce a director's commentary. 

Final feedback

Charlie this is looking impressive and should allow you to gain a B in the coursework.  You now need to check to ensure that research and planning is thorough and organise your web-log so that it is ready to be marked. Ensure that all questions are answered fully.

Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

My media product has allowed me to learn a range of new abilities and techniques throughout the course and this essay will go into what those new abilities are and how I developed them.

Firstly, when I started the course we were dropped into the deep end and were told to film a Preliminary task. This allowed me to gather an understanding about camera shot types. Through this I learned about shots such as the close up, extreme close up, over the shoulder, wide shot, long shot, EST shot, mid shot and the shot-reverse-shot (reverse shot). The preliminary task allowed me to experiment with theses shots which would later help me when creating my final product. Another thing my Preliminary task taught me was a very brief attempt at editing. Once we finished filming we began to edit our production using Adobe Premier Elements. This was the first time I used this software and acted as a helpful introduction to editing. Without this I would of been much further behind once I started to edit my film noir.

Secondly, I learned how to properly storyboard my project whilst planning my final project. During the planning stages of my production I story-boarded my film and tried to ensure that Is stuck to it whilst filming. Because I knew I would use it a s a constant reference whilst filming I wanted to give it enough detail that anyone could use the camera and film the scene as I knew I wouldn't always be behind the camera. One limitation of this however is the poor detail in the drawings. As drawing is not my strongest attribute I feel that the quality of the drawn images in the storyboard were not sufficient. It took 4 tries before finally creating a storyboard I was happy with. However, despite this story boarding proved to be an extremely useful tool in my media product and also future products outside of media.

Another key skill I developed through use of media skills was the ability to produce a professional looking script. This skill was developed through constant rewrites of my final production and looking at other official scripts such as Ben Affleck's The Town. When writing the scripts I learned about stage notes, similar to that of theatre and also about the Interior/Exterior of scenes and why it's important to note this down. I developed these skills and put them into use whilst planning my film noir as well as any other outside projects. Because of these techniques I was able to produce a script that gave the other people in my group a better understanding of what I wanted to produce, then as a group we worked on improvements to produce the script we used.

Time structure and organisation were big parts in the planning and production of my film. Personally I feel that this course has motivated me to be more organised towards my projects. I've learned that organisation is key to a product you're happy with, and that you must always plan ahead. An example of this is when we had to do re-shoots for our production so late into the course. we had to make time we didn't have to do this, but once we sat down and organised what we could we produced the final product we have now. However this being said we still had our weaknesses concerning this. For example, the voice over recording took 6 hours to do properly as our efforts constantly kept failing or I didn't feel that the quality was good enough. It was only supposed to take 1 hour, this shows that it was wrong for us to go to the recording studio without any prior knowledge or research and that in future we need to plan for something like this. All in all I felt that organisation was our biggest strength, however the recording studio and the idea to learn about things prior to using them was our biggest weakness.

Continuity editing is an essential skill you need when producing a film. Without continuity the story doesn't flow, the audience gets confused and it comes out as a messy product. The preliminary task was the first instance of us learning about this. We learned about the 180 degrees rule where you cannot change the position of the camera further than 180 degrees otherwise the shot will not have continuity and will confuse the audience. Storyboarding helped expand this skill because when you're storyboarding you imagine how your film is going to play out and you have a certain way you want things to go. So when I was storyboarding I was trying to make sure that every shot followed cohesively and in an aesthetically pleasing way. I feel like the first scene of our noir is a great example of this, where the camera follows his movement and doesn't look too stop motion/start-and-stop and flows well. Like in the scene where he walks from his room into the bathroom and the shot changes from outside the door to inside as he closes it. It's a relatively small detail but I feel that it works well. A weakness of this is the later scenes, I found that the scenes involving Lisa and Uncle Maroni were a lot more stop motion/start-and-stop esque and felt more choppy, I feel like this was again due to lack of organisation and them being re-shoots.

Genre conventions were something I had completely unheard of before the course, now that it's over I'm always intrigued about each genres common conventions and their institutions. We learned about this fairly early on in the course where we produced small essays for film openings such as David Lynch's Blue Velvet, John Woo's Mission Impossible and David Finchers Se7en. These taught us all about the different conventions for each genre and how we could use them for our product. The film I focused mostly on was Se7ven, as David Fincher is one of my favourite modern directors and I felt that his tone in his neo-noir would fit perfectly for the ideas I had in mind when producing the script.

Film institutions were also something I had a very basic knowledge of prior to the course. Through the research I did for this course I learned all about different institutions that produced different films when they were popular. I already had a basic understanding of Spaghetti Westerns but I never knew how many were produced and that I had only seen Sergio Leones tirlogy, there is so much out there that I never knew about. I found that they were so widely produced due to their popularity and their ability to make money. There was only really seven sub genres for Westerns:

• The Union Pacific Story
• The Ranch Soy
• The Empire Story
• The Revenge Story
• The Cavalry Story
• The Outlaw Story
• The Marshall Story

The reason there were only these key story types were because the institutions that produced these films knew what the audience wanted to they could put a western on to show what they expect. There was very little serious creativity or originality. The same story is with Warner Bros. and their film noir, they produced several similar films because they wanted audiences to know what to expect, so they wouldn't be disappointed. This knowledge gave me a  better understanding about film and cinema and made us want to produce something that challenged these conventions. However in the final version of our product I feel that we didn't succeed to greatly on this task. We challenged some minor conventions such as the location and back story but apart from that there wasn't anything completely obvious that challenge these conventions.

Overall I feel that I have learned a great deal of knowledge from this course. Knowledge that I hope to put to further use in my own projects. From the preliminary task to this evaluation
I feel that this course has taught me a lot about piecing a project together and using teamwork to help create the best outcome you want. As stated above the course has also helped teach me a decent understanding of Mac computers, Adobe After Effects and Premier Elements, Recording Studios and the handy cams provided.

I hope you have enjoyed viewing my journey as much as I have taking it.

Feedback

Some excellent work on the web-log which is a testament to your enthusiasm and work ethic.  Aim to complete any outstanding planning documentation and evaluation answers over half-term.

What have you Learned about Technologies from the Process of Constructing this Product?

When we first began our product we were tasked with following through with a Preliminary Task. This was our first AS level introduction to filming with the Sony Handycam and the first chance to use the tools such as the tripod. Throughout the Preliminary Task we learned about the features of the Sony Handycam and how to use it efficiently. For example during filming we learned about the Zoom function and how to use it appropriately as well as selecting appropriate media through the media browser on the camera. Before this I only had a basic knowledge of video recorders so the preliminary task was a useful starter for me in preparation for the main product. I also had no experience with tripods before this so I had to learn about how to position them appropriately and make sure everything was to be shot at a straight angle to make sure nothing seemed obscure. Concerning actual video editing I had to learn about clip management, which is trimming clips, inserting them to the timeline and using transitions.

An essential technology I had to learn about was using the Apple Mac Computers. This was a process that was continuous from the start to now, writing the evaluation. Each lesson and each session with the Macs provided new challenges that I had to overcome and learn. At the beginning I was hesitant to use them and struggled to tolerate the mouse sensitivity and just how different they were from PCs which is always been the way I've been taught. However after setting up the Blog I quickly learned about how similar some aspects are such as using the internet and the Documents system, this means that my past experience with PCs helped me overcome some of the early challenges I had with the Macs.

I do however, see why Macs are used for these types of products, I.e archetypes and other media based jobs. Apple endorsed them as an aesthetically pleasing device that looks professional and informal. Apple have made millions on look alone, as well as technology. I agree that the look and feel of a Mac is much more professional than that of a PC. The user interface, once conquered is a lot more slimline and nicer than the Windows UI. As well as this they also offer software not available, or not yet ported to PC such as Garage Band which played a vital role in creating the music for our final product.

However the editing process was a whole new challenge. Editing the Preliminary Task was a basic start to editing compared to our final product. For the Preliminary Task we just had to edit simple shots and place them on the timeline, which was an easy skill to learn. However with the final product we had to import a lot more videos, rename them all, import images and make sure nothing was corrupted, import audio and finally create titles. Each of these I will talk about individually however as an overview for the editing process it was difficult to learn. I have never used the software before so to learn all of this I had to follow tutorials that I found on YouTube, as well as getting advice from my teacher. The software we used was Adobe Premier Elements and now I feel confident using it due to this project.

Importing the videos was a similar task to other aspects done before, such as uploading an image to social networks such as Facebook or uploading a video on YouTube, so importing them was not as difficult as the other challenges however it was still new as I had to learn about the Mac directory and documents to know where I had kept my footage. We would frequently get missing files during editing for both the Preliminary Task and the final product, to combat this I learned that if you either re-import the clip, or just double click the file so you can preview it, the clip restores itself on the timeline. This was a helpful tool that I had to learn and overcome myself. The titles I had to create was the biggest leap from anything I had done before, on other software such as Camtasia or Movie Maker, adding titles to your media is a lot simpler, however when wanting to create a new title on Adobe Premier Elements a whole new window opens and allows you much more customisation with the title you wish to create, I found this easy to learn except from actually placing the title into the project, it wasn't until I asked for help that I learnt that each title is placed in your library with the rest of your media. The audio had to be the biggest challenge I've faced so far for my project, some parts of my film were too loud, some were too quiet and I felt like I had very little customisation between the clips, the music, the sound effects and the voice over. Without tutorial or help I pushed myself and learned about Audio channels, and placed key parts on separate channels so that at the Audio Mixer tab I had complete customisation over how loud each section would be.

 

Importing, creating and using the Audio in our final product was another challenge I had to overcome. I had never used the Garage Band software before this project, and similar to using the Macs I was hesitant however, using it I found that it was similar to software I used at GCSE, such as Ejay studio. I created loops of Jazz music and saved it as an MP3 so there would be no compatibility issues when importing it into Premier Elements. I also learned about vido-mp3 conversion sites such as listentoyoutube.com which allows you to convert YouTube videos into MP3, I did this for the alarm buzzer sound effect as the download link the uploader provided was broken. 

At the beginning of our final product you will see three titles, the Warner Bros. institution logo, and two made up production company logos that I created on an editing software known as Gimp 2. I used this software to create the two logos, through video tutorials on Vimeo I learned how to manipulate the images through cropping. selecting, pasting, transforming, cloning and other features such as text manipulation and effects. I used all of these tools and ideas to edit preexisting images to fit what I wanted.     

The Warner Bros. Intro was downloaded from a YouTube video, I needed to find away to download it as I felt that Warner Bros. would be the key distributor to a Film Noir. Through help in the comments section I learned about a site similar to the MP3 conversion site, where it converts the YouTube video into an MP4 which is compatible with Adobe Premier Elements. 

                                         

I also used social technology for my final project. I uploaded the first cut of our film, and the final cut to YouTube for other to watch and comment on, as well as sharing the project on Facebook and Twitter.

The biggest challenge was voice recording the opening narration. This was the most time consuming and most concerning trial and error. The first time I recorded the narration was just after filming the opening scenes, after many tries the first actor did it perfectly. However trouble arose once we learned that the voiceover I recorded was not in a compatible format for Adobe Premier elements, and the voice actor could not do it again due to time constraints. The second attempt was at a recording studio that is at our college. It took us an hour to set up everything and we required help numerous times. In the end nothing recorded and we had run out of time, in the recording room as well as for the project. The third time I had to get another actor (who is also in our film, we had to ask him to do an accent to disguise his identity) to do it and this time it was in our own free time and we had a teacher to help, everything was fine except for exporting it. We tried exporting it six times before it finally worked. Because of this experience I asked about what I did wrong and learned all about how to use the studio properly and learned from mine, and others mistakes.

Finally, the main technology we have used from the beginning to the end was Blogger, an online service which allows users to keep an online diary which we used for coursework. Every essay, work note or just general effort towards our final product and the things we were doing for AS Media has been recorded into the Blog. This is an ongoing experience that we learn more about each time we use it, for example even though I am at the end of the course I did not know about being able to edit the blog using HTML or that Gifs will display properly when viewing the Blog until last week. 

What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Warner Bros. would most likely be the distributing studio and institution for my media product. Warner Bros. during the Golden Age of Hollywood were large distributors of Film Noir. This was a particular genre that sold well with audiences. The films they distributed would follow the same conventions and have a similar plot, the audience was essentially watching the same film with different actors. However this was done because the audience knew what they were in for and (if they liked the genre) would be getting there moneys worth. This is the key reason why the films are similar, why they all have strict codes and conventions such as a rough detective and a femme fatale, because Warner Bros. had the "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" mentality, which has been replicated by Marvel Studios today. They release their superhero films in stages resulting in a few films a year.

Warner Bros. was one of the key five studios during the late 1920's. This was due to their success with The Jazz Singer and The Singing Fool allowing them to invest in a string of theatres that gave them enough income to become a mainstay in Hollywood. Most studios adhered to one genre film such as slapstick or musical, or for Warner Bros: Film Noir. Employees also usually stuck with one studio for long periods of time for instance, Cedric Gibbons and Herbert Stothart always worked on MGM films, Alfred Newman worked at Twentieth Century Fox for twenty years, Cecil B. DeMille's films were almost all made at Paramount. Throughout this period Warner Bros. tried to make as much money with their trademark film noirs without spending as much as other studios. For example they would use the dark setting and background to hide things that were not apart of the films universe, such as backdrops and props. This is also why they use a lot of close up shots and tight shots, this was to try not to show the set too much and show that it wasn't all that great. Another example of this is the smoke used on set, for this Warner Bros. used dry ice to give the effect of smoke.
 

An example of the dark background, with the camera focusing on the main character

 As well as the "If it isn't broke, don't fix it" idea big studios such as Warner Bros. had other systems, such as the Star System when they cast a certain star in a role and hope that he or she is popular enough to draw a crowd. This still happens today with films such as John Wick with Keanu Reeves and the upcoming Suicide Squad movie with Will Smith, Margot Robbie and Tom Hardy, or the Expendables series where they have little plot but are made with a huge amount of 1980's action film stars and seeing those big names would make fans want to see it. Hence the Star System. Warner Bros. did this with huge names such as Robert Mitchum, Jane Greer and Rita Haywort.

Whilst this allowed for the big five studios to strive, due to the great depression many soon fell victim to divestiture by the early 60's. Meaning that the golden age of Hollywood was over, whilst Warner Bros and MCM still remained, there was an influx in smaller studios because of this.

A film with similar conventions of film noir with a few changes and a modern twist was Nightcrawler, a recent film (2014) directed by Dan Gilroy and distributed by the small time Open Road films. It is considered a neo noir and stars Jake Gylenhall. The film follows a socially inept man as he searches for his calling in life, no matter what it is. As it turns out being a on-the-field news reporter of recent events is it. He isn't afraid to get close, he has no regards for other peoples emotions and is heavily linked with the Femme Fatale Rene Russo. In description the film doesn't sound like a typical film noir, this is because it's a Neo-Noir with similar conventions of a film noir but with a more modern take. Nightcrawler made over $32,000,000 domestically and $38,000,000 worldwide as of January 2015. The film is mostly set at night and follows a man willing to do whatever he takes to reach his goal, whilst being manipulated by, and whilst he manipulates, the femme fatale.

This shows that these films are still popular to this day as it has been getting positive reviews and was a financial success as the budget was only $8,000,000 and also with Jake Gylenhall in the starring role it also links to the star power system as mentioned before.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8kYDQan8bw (Trailer)

Coursework feedback

Clear grasp of the codes and conventions of the film noir genre. This group filmed together and then produced two separate edits to ensure all group members took a full part. Charlie took the initiative and led all activities until separated to ensure others in the group edited a version. Appropriate music for the genre has been added and is an effective way to begin the film with institutional credits allying it to Warner Brothers historical film noir output.   Charlie creates his own production company logos to go with this showing an awareness of film industry processes.  Some of the early shots are dark but editing covers this and uses the dark to advantage with white titles overlaid with credits so meaning is clearer compared to the other group linked with this footage.  A sensitivity toward editing is clearer in this version showing superior editing skills. Sound is attended to in the use of an alarm to signify the start of the voice-over which clearly indicates the opening of the film. A range of shots are used as the detective dresses using a full range of shot types and clear continuity. The voice-over establishes the narrative with an accent further establishing character and showing an awareness of generic conventions. Use of costume and props is appropriate and considered. The final sequence is less secure in framing and use of the camera but does not detract from the proficiency of technical skill which approaches the top end of level 3

How does your Media Product represent Particular Social Groups?

The primary audience for our film was aimed at adults, as the genre typically follows that. We tried to show this off during the voice over using older language and slang than that of what a typical teenager would use, vocabulary such as 'Shindig' and 'hoity-toity' this is language that an older audience would be much more familiar with this vocabulary. Also most films that are aimed at teenagers that are made today usually are made for an audience with little attention spans, films such as Michael Bay directed films or most modern horror films such as Ouija where there is a jump scare every 15 minutes. I wanted to make our film dialogue heavy so it would attract a more adult audience. However this is also a downfall the film, as a key part of the film is not heard due to background noise which, when we did test runs caused confusion. However when we showed our film to a teenage audience, most didn't follow the plot until a second viewing however when shown to an adult audience they understood the plot on the first viewing, this leads me to believe that we achieved our goal of trying to make it for an adult audience.

However if this type of film was to be shown in cinemas it would have less of a fighting chance than say a horror film as the cinema is usually shown as mainly being a teenage hobby so for example, if a group of teenagers went to the cinema, the vast majority would be able to see a 15 rated horror rather than a more adult film. Another reason for this isn't just age, films that are story heavy are better seen in lower numbered groups as cinema for teenagers is more of a social thing so if they all go see a horror film they don't have to concentrate as much and can talk to their friends without upsetting people or miss any 'good' parts of the film.

Teenagers are considered to be the main consumers of cinema. Media institutions try to advertise their film to teenagers by certain key conventions that most teenage-films have. For example the first one is usually a young cast, and mostly attractive. The male gaze theory by Laura Mulvey plays an important part when targeting these young audiences, they usually add a young attractive female to lure in the male audience. However with film genres that are popular amongst teenagers it usually doesn't matter as most institutions know that teenagers will go see horror films, especially around Halloween time, no matter if they're good or bad (see Ouija, Annabelle).

For our target audience however things may be done a little differently, institutions may still use the male gaze idea but as the adult audience is much less prominent in cinema studios may try to push films to be rated 15 rather than 18 as they know 18 is a risk and they may not make as much money. An example of this is Dredd (2012) the director pushed the studios to allow it to be an 18 rated due to it's comic book origin which is gritty and violent, however this would be their hubris as Dredd did very poorly in the box office and many suspect that this was because of the age rating restricting younger audiences to go see it, and older audiences thinking that it was just another generic comic book film. So for our film we didn't want anything like that, we wanted it to have the gritty style like Dredd, but not the public generalizing about its genre, another film that was a neo-noir but also verged on super heroism is Sin City due to its Comic Book/Graphic Novel origins, so we tried to stay away from that style/genre all together and targeted the audiences of classic films such as Roman Polanksi's Chinatown or David Lynch's Wild at Heart.

This was our primary audience target, this is the YouGov audience profile for people who liked the film China Town. If our product was being produced by a studio, we would have to expand the borders on the genre and make it more modern so it would pick up a greater audience.

Finally the way our film represents these social groups we have been talking about is different for each character. The femme fatale is shown as frail and weak, however the last shot shows that she's more than meets the eye showing a modern take on women in our society, that they aren't weak or feeble. This is a common character characteristic in films, more so in modern films. It's a trait we wanted to keep because it's vital to the conventions of film noir, as well as it reflects what society is like today.

The detective in our film noir represents police in a good light, showing that the police are hard working and determined, no matter what the situation is. In the recent years the police have been all over the spotlight with riots such as the Birmingham riots or the Ferguson riots. There has been countless reports on the police officers who have died trying to stop them or have been seriously injured. I feel that our Detective, with his opening narration reflects how the police are in today's society whilst still keeping with the codes and conventions of film noir. I feel that it still has the classic look, and characteristics such as the language and the smoking but he talks about how determined he is to get the 'bad guy' no matter who that is, he just wants justice. Although this is not every police officer everywhere, as it's just a stereotye, however it is how the media presents them whether it's in news reports as mentioned above or other films such as Don Siegel's Dirty Harry or John Mctiernan's Die Hard.

In what ways does your Media Product Use, Develop or Challenge forms and Conventions of Real Media Products?

This is the first main shot of our film, it's a particularly long shot and will be the shot where the titles appear.

This shot follows a still shot of the alarm going off before the detective turns it off by hitting it. This is a closeup shot and shows that the detective isn't the nicest/gentlest of people.

 This shot followed a tracking shot where the detective stumbled through the dark hallway, this screen shot shows the end of that where he goes from the dark, into the light. This is a metaphor for him persevering as it's a common convention in noir that good overcomes bad.

It it's a common convention of noir that the detective smokes, we wanted to implement this without having our actor have to smoke so we came up with this shot to plant the idea that he smokes. I had the idea to have still shot of the cigarette in the ash tray so you can see the smoke.

This shot is the final shot of the detective, to any other person he looks ready and able like any other police man whereas the audience has seen his morning routine showing that he's anything but ready for the challenges that face him.

This shot cuts straight from dark which, as mentioned before, is a running theme of the film. This establishing shot is also the first key shot of the second half of our film.

This shot is taken inspiration from David Fincher as one of his traits are tracking shots of the main character. I thought this would be a great edition however, the dolly we used proved to be ineffective as it caused a lot of camera shake. It would of been easier to use a camera stabilizer or hand held.

This shot pans over from Reece to Jimmy and Liv, I did this to show the  audience the positioning of where everyone is, so the dialogue makes more sense. This is followed by a close up of Jimmy. This is a key shot, it's a medium-two shot of the characters Tony and Lisa, it's the first instance of dialogue that isn't the voice over.

This is the first shot of conflict. This shows the kind of person that tony is and is a more effective medium two shot than the previous.

Developing Conventions

The main goal with our media product was to follow the codes and conventions set by Warner Bros and the film noirs they produced. We wanted to follow the codes and conventions seen in classic film noirs such as Double Indemnity and The Maltese Falcon. These conventions including have a femme fatale with hidden intentions, an aged and rough detective whose close on the case and the villain who thinks he has everything under control. Each of these conventions we made sure we implemented these charcters into the script. As shown in a previous blog posts the character Lisa Maroni (Our Femme Fatale, played by Liv Taylor) was originally a man. We didn't even think about the character being a femme fatale, we wanted someone for Tony Maroni (our villain) to attack and show the audience how powerful he is, in the end we changed the character to a female and made her a femme fatale rather than a weak character for Tony to show his power. I've talked about Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity and her introductory scene but that scene was a huge inspiration on our final scene with our femme fatale. Using a low angle shot is how we showed the audience that she's more than meets the eye, she's dangerous, she has a hidden power that could be a game changer, she's a true femme fatale. 

The original shot of Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity

Our Homage To Barbara Stanwyck

The voice over at the beginning of our opening is another common convention of film noir. When we began to script our opening scene I focused on the voice over. The first thing I did was create a basic script in the tone of modern day, then I slowly began changing it creating names for the characters tat fit the speech and the speech only. Soon after I added language that I heard from other film noirs and thrillers such as Roman Polanski's Chinatown or Robert Aldrich's Kiss Me Deadly. Vocabulary such as "Shindig." To give the narrator help (voiced by James Denton) I typed it as it sounded so that he could truly give the right sounding performance.

Click Here To View The Voice Over In Script Form

Another convention that we followed was the light Jazz music playing in the background. I originally intended for actual music to be played, especially for the opening  scene I wanted to have "I don't want to set the world on fire" by the Ink Spots (1941) however I felt that copying someone else's music may cause problems later so we decided to create our own music using the Garage Band software. Using this we created the looped Jazz Rhythms you hear throughout the opening film. And also the sound effects such as footsteps and the 'shock-sound-effect' you hear at the end when the camera pans to the Femme Fatale. With film noir being popular throughout the 40's and 50's the music that was popular was what was played, and it was Jazz and it worked incredibly well. Depending on the music used Jazz could make a moment more tense, or a woman more alluring or mysterious or a gunshot scarier, creating tension throughout the audience. We wanted to do something similar to this however we wanted the music to be played as a transitional tool rather than to create tension and set the mood, we felt that dialogue would do that and the Jazz music would instead just act as a homage to the music played in original film noirs, whilst still using it appropriate that it follows the codes and conventions of the genre.

Challenging Conventions

We challenged conventions by using a different style lighting. Instead of using dark background and a light spotlight on what was important we had more open areas and characters walking from plain darkness into brightly lit rooms. It was originally going to be in black and white to give it more of a 1940's vibe, however when adding the effect we found that  it conflicted with our lighting style and made it more difficult to see what was going which distracted audience from the dialogue, which is key as our opening is a dialogue heavy extract. There is no Quentin Tarantino-esque conversation exchange, everything said in our opening is vital to understanding what is happening.

Walking from Darkness, into Light

Another way we challenged the genre was including more tracking shots and moving shots in this film whereas typical film noirs typically did not have many of them. I took this idea from the great director David Fincher who always includes tracking shots in his films. When watching a Fincher film, to me the tracking shot gave the audience a main focus while still showing the world around them. A great example of this is in his Fight Club (1999) where The Narrator is walking ahead and the camera tracks him but as Tyler Durden walks past it tracks him instead, this would later make more sense as you learn they are the same person. We tried to create this feeling and by doing so hope that we challenged the conventions of film noir as they wouldn't usually have them.

Fight Club Tracking shot/first appearance of Tyler

Frontal Tracking Shot

Over the shoulder/Back Tracking shot

Last Minute Changes - Semi Evaluation/Conclusion

This is the first cut of our film, with a bit more editing it was going to the final cut. However as director I wasn't happy with the overall quality of the final parts. The camera jumped to much, people were out the shot and the sound was of poor quality. I felt that no amount of editing could make it seem as good as we wanted. We made the decision together to re-shoot the last shots from the tracking shots to the final femme fatale shot. However we agreed that this time I would be behind the camera rather than acting to give a helping hand and make sure everything is how it should be. However this put us in a difficult position and meant that people had to be recast and our previous femme fatale was too busy to reprise her role for the re-shoots so we had to recast two characters. Awkwardly the only person available to fit the role of Tony Maroni was James Denton who also did the voice over for our detective. We had to make sure that the voice sounded differently so no one would notice. I tested the voice on three people and no one noticed that they were the same person so I consider it a success. Our new Femme fatale was also able to film more shots allowing for a variety of camera angles instead of just still shots that, on paper looked decent but in practice did not.

Our final cut of the film is shown below and as a group I can safely say we are much happier with this version and the re-shoots. although they set us back and became quite stressful, it was definitely worth it in the end. We had created the cut that all of us hoped for when first penning the storyboard and script.

Thank you for witnessing my creative journey and I hope you enjoy watching what we've enjoyed making, thank you.

Final Cut