Our Foley Sounds

After my previous post, we did in fact try to recreate as many as the sounds that we found from the extract of the film 'Priest' that we possibly could. The technological device that we used for this was Matthew's iPhone 6. We recorded as many of the sounds as we could, obviously using the foley technique to naturally recreate them ourselves. After this, we then uploaded all of them to google drive, and from here transferred them into iMovie, where we spent time editing them and adding titles to explain exactly what the sound was meant to represent. The list of sounds we attempted as before is shown below, and the iMovie that we eventually uploaded to vimeo which contains all of the sounds that we foleyed can also be seen below,

   Foley Sounds from Josh Coe on Vimeo.

Reflection:
Overall, this task was extremely useful for us as a group. The analysis of sound throughout an extract allowed us to understand the importance of it, and the recreation gave us some experience of making foley sounds ourselves. We were all able to talk about our ideas on how to recreate sounds ourselves, and we all gained a full understanding on how precise the records must be, and the importance eliminating and background sound. The fact that we then uploaded them to iMovie and edited it to add titles gave especially me and Heather further experience on using iMovie as we have not studied Media before. Our next steps now are to think about what sounds we will need to include in our production, and split up our tasks for further research into Film Noir's.

Foley Sound

To make us more aware of the use of sounds in films, and to help us realise the large variety of sounds that are needed in our final piece, as a class we watched an extract from a film called 'Priest', which is a fantasy horror film from 2011. At first we watched it with no sound, and listed ideas of the sounds that we expected to hear throughout it. We then watched it with sound, and compared it to the list that we had already made, adding the ones we hadn't noticed or expected. This list can be seen below:

Now, we will attempt to recreate the sounds that we have listed, using the 'foley' technique, which means to naturally create the sounds ourselves, and edit them in a way to make them actually sound like what they are. 

Reflection: 

For our group, this was a useful task and will continue to be as we recreate the sounds. From this, we are learnt about the importance of sound effects in films, and how they are emphasised in different ways to have a different effect on the audience and enhance the production itself. In terms of our final piece, this made it clear to us how important the use of sound is, and made us think about how we are going to incorporate foley sounds into our Film Noir.

Research of Opening Title Sequence

Now that we have looked at different variations of narrative structures as well as knowing our genre, it was time to do some research about Film Noir's. To do this, we each picked a classic Film Noir and analysed the opening title sequence, noting down the conventions. The website I used to do this, is called Art of the Title. Here, I found a large variety of different opening title sequences, and by looking up Film Noir's, I was able to find 'Fallen Angel' from 1945, which is a classic Noir.
The website to Art of the Title with the Fallen Angel opening title sequence can be accessed by clicking the link below:
Fallen Angel Opening Title Sequence

After watching the opening title sequence of the Film Noir 'Fallen Angel', there are some clear conventions that are unique to a Noir.
In terms of camera, and the way each shot is composed, its very basic. Noir's are different in the way that the opening titles last for one or two minutes, and whilst they are being shown very little is happening in and around the scene. For Fallen Angel, it follows exactly this because for the whole duration of the opening sequence the camera doesn't actually move, and instead editing is used to display each title. The camera is placed at the front of what appears to be a bus, which is travelling along a main road. The road signs that it goes past are enhanced and edited in a way that titles are visible on them. An example of this can be seen in the screenshot below:
As you can see here, the shot is composed very simply because the camera doesn't move. The titles are edited onto the road signs, and made easy to read for an audience. This carries out throughout the whole opening title sequence, so in terms of camera, the shot used is very simple, and the editing around it allows us to read the titles on the upcoming road signs.


The sound used throughout the titles of Fallen Angel is very typical Noir style. Just by listening to the soundtrack, it gives us an old classic feel, which we will have to try and recreate to match the soundtrack convention for our production. The music in Noir's is generally composed using saxophones, pianos, and trumpets. This soundtrack is played throughout all of the opening title sequence, and fits well with the titles. The soundtrack also helps to create an atmosphere so early in the film.
Very little can be analysed in terms of mise-en-scene, because there is so little happening in the titles. As mentioned before, the camera is placed still at the front of a bus, so all we can see is the road in front. The whole clip and film is in black and white, which is obviously edited in. Film Noir's are always traditionally in black and white, so we will ensure that our production follows this convention.

Reflection:
We each analysed an opening title sequence of a Film Noir, and all did a blog post on it. This was a big step for us in terms of our research, because we were able to analyse each others posts and talk as a group about the conventions we found, and how we plan to match them. The conventions that I've talked about above, were similar to what Matthew and Heather found. This was good because it showed that we all had a good understanding on how identify the conventions of a Film Noir, as well as knowing exactly what they are. We all learnt from this that splitting the tasks between us is good and can be very useful in terms of research, especially in this case because we got triple the amount of research and three different classic Film Noir's analysed. Our next steps are to look out the ways to recreate sounds, and possibly start further planning with out production and look at locations we could possibly film at.