In Depth Research of Opening Title Sequence

I previously did some research on an opening title sequence of a Film Noir. Having filmed and partly edited our piece, we've decided that we should do some more in depth research on the opening title sequence of a Film Noir. The post I previously did is here.

With this research, I'm going to analyse the same title sequence as I previously looked at before. However, this time I plan to analyse each part of the opening title sequence, and look at how the opening credits are shown to give us an idea an how we are going to edit them onto ours. The Film Noir I am analysing as before is the film 'Fallen Angel' from 1945. I've decided to show this as an Emaze presentation so that it is easier to view. The presentation can be seen below.


Reflection:
I think that this analysis of an opening title sequence of a Film Noir will be very useful to us when we are editing our piece because we will be able to use this Emaze presentation I have made to look at each title shown in a Film Noir. To make this better as a whole, I'd of liked to made the writing a little easier to read, but I am still new to the software of Emaze so am very pleased I've managed to create a full presentation and embed it on my blog successfully.

Production Log

This production log covers the last week of our media work. Last Thursday was the 21st January, and me Matthew and Heather all met up to get as much filming done as we possibly could. We waited until around 7 o'clock that night so it was dark, which meant we could create shadows using lights to give our piece a film noir feel. We spent around 2 hours filming, using a street and an alley way that was fairly local to us all. After our filming process, the next day was Friday the 22nd, and we uploaded all of the footage we'd filmed the day before onto a Mac in our media classroom. Once it was all on there, we put it onto iMovie and edited the clips so they were in order. We added a black and white filter over it and added the soundtrack that Matthew had previously found. However, after putting our clips in order, we soon realised that there were scenes we were missing, and certain aspects of the film that didn't quite make sense. To fix this, we plan to meet up once more to film again to fill these gaps, and we've set a date for Wednesday 3rd February. We also saw that there was another aspect of the film we wanted to include, so we have filmed it and added it to our unfinished film on iMovie. The filming today (27th January) was done in a drama room. We pulled a thin curtain across the room and turned all of the lights out; then we used an iPhone for a torch light on one side of the curtain with me and Heather, and then a camera on the other side that was operated by Matthew. This made mine and Heather figures look like silhouettes, we we felt looked really good and added a further film noir type of convention to our production.
Overall, we felt that our filming process went fairly well, considering how low the temperature was that night. Despite the cold, Heather kept her character as the femme fatal by wearing her red dress, and I kept the character of the everyman wearing a suit. The actual filming was good, and we did a lot of takes of each scene to give us different camera angles to consider when editing. To improve our filming, we would of liked to have gotten it all completely done, because despite the fact that on the night we thought we'd done it all, when we actually went back through the clips there was stuff missing, which means we have to set a date to film again.

Production Log - Actors

After discussions within our group about what are next steps are to be, we've decided that it could benefit our grade if we looked at the possibility of hiring professional actors. This would also help stick to our conventions of a Film Noir because the actors need to look somewhat older than teenagers because in classic Film Noir's they are always older. The website we found to hire actors is called Star Now, and can be accessed by clicking the words 'Star Now' below:
Star Now
However, after looking on Star Now we discovered that in order to fill out the forms necessary to hire professional actors you have to be over the age of 18.
This is a set back for us because we really wanted actors to play the roles of our characters for us, but after further discussions together, we've decided that we will play the roles ourselves. Heather will play the femme fatal, whilst I will play the everyman. Although this isn't exactly what we wanted, we are glad we have been able to fix the problem.
Our Film Noir has failed to meet one of the conventions because of the age of our characters, so it has now became a Neo Noir because of this. We will still do our best to match all of the other conventions of a Film Noir, but overall the genre has shifted slightly.

Reflection:
This was a major setback for us, but we managed to find a solution quickly to help fix this problem. From this, we all learnt that we have to expect the worst, and plan ahead in case anything wrong does happen. In this case, we weren't expecting something like this to happen but we managed to work our way round out. To fix this problem further, we could have looked at other possible websites for hiring actors, but we anticipated that the same issue would appear on each one because of our age, so we decided that taking the responsibility of acting on ourselves would be the better thing to do.

Narrative Synopsis - Credit to Matthew

Whilst one of my roles was to research locations, one of Matthew's was to take all of the ideas we had discussed and put them into practise by creating a synopsis for our production. His post in relation to this is below:

Reflection:
This is an example of how dividing up the tasks was good for us because it meant that whilst I was carrying out research on possible locations, Matthew was working on our narrative which meant our planning time was moving forward quicker. Matthew did a good job here, and the synopsis he has created outlines exactly what happens in our film so that we are all aware of the plot. To improve, there could have been more detail used and perhaps a name for our character other than the 'femme fatal'. Having said this, I think that the synopsis created is very good and will help us move forward as a group and into the next stages of planning.

Location Research

It was now time for us to allocate roles for each other in terms of research. One of my roles was to look at the typical locations that Film Noir's were produced in, and try to match these locations with actual ones local to us for our filming.
First, I looked online to find some pictures of where a Film Noir would usually be filmed, and the typical image I found is the one you can see below. As you can see from this picture, it is dark which matches a convention that Film Noir's are almost always filmed during the night. The location itself is very urban, as Noir's always are. You can see the tall buildings that could possibly be flats, along with the long dark alley ways which are only lit up by street lamps, which makes the alley look misty. The street lamps also create shadows, which is another convention used frequently in Noir's. From a quick research into location, I got a full understanding of the type of place to search for locally to film our Noir. I will attempt to keep the locations urban, and incorporate other conventions by finding street lamps that give off shadows in the night with long dark alley ways.

After having a clear understanding on the locations that Film Noir's are typically filmed at, I decided to look around my local are to attempt to find certain places that could be an option for us when it comes to deciding on a location to film. The pictures you can see below are taken from each end of the same road. Out of all the places that I looked locally to me, this road stood out to me, and matches the conventions I've identified in the picture above. The road features street lamps which create a type of mist, along with some tall houses that gives the area an urban feel. There is also an alley way along this road that I was unable to get a picture of because it was too dark to physically see down it, however this could be used for a possible photo shoot during the day. When thinking about filming, this road would work with it because the main elements of filming could be done under the street lamps so the characters are visible, and the mystery can be created when they walk away and fade into the darkness. This is why the street lamps are vital, to help give our piece a sense of mystery. These locations that I found are only possible locations, and may or may not turn out to be what we actually decide to go for. I simply wanted to do some research into locations, and try and find a few myself so as a group we had some options as well as an understanding on the conventions.

Reflection:
As a whole, I think I performed this task well, and gave our group an understanding of Film Noir locations. Allocating roles to each other for research was a very good move because it meant we all had things to be getting on with, and could feedback to each other what we'd found. From this task we learnt the Film Noir locations, and now have some ideas about where we'd like to film. We also learnt the importance of communication between as a group, to ensure we were all aware of exactly what our task was when it came to research. To do this particular task better, I would of liked to have found even more possible locations to give us an even wider option when it came to picking a place to film. Having said this, I think that the research I did do will be very useful in the upcoming plan to film.

Narrative Starting Ideas

Our task for Media is to recreate an opening title sequence of a particular chosen genre. For my final piece, I am working with Matthew and Heather, and we have started to plan a narrative for our production and discussed different ideas for a story. We started by talking about a genre, and landed on the idea of recreating a Film Noir as much as we can. To do this, we will need to have a full understanding of the conventions that a Film Noir has, and attempt to recreate these into our production. Soon, we will allocate roles to each of us to ensure that we have that full understanding of this particular genre of film. Research will have to be done on things such as sound, so that we know what the soundtracks generally are, not to mention the way the dialogue is embedded. We will also need to research typical camera angles used, and the way that these films were edited, and how, not to mention the mise-en-scene, such as costumes and location. Another aspect of research will be the audience of a Film Noir; with an understanding of who these films were generally aimed at, we will have a good idea on the way we need to adapt our production to suit this particular type of audience. As a starting point, we talked as a group about possible ideas for our film and also about how many characters we would plan to have and what the general idea would be. From this, we were then able to write out a general synopsis of the narrative that we want our story to follow. Obviously this is just a starting idea so we will undoubtedly build on this idea and develop it in different ways.

'Micky is staring in the mirror with a gun... Flashback:

He was a successful person, but he had a big secret.

He employs an assistant (femme-fatal) who finds out his secret but agrees to keep quiet by blackmailing Micky.

Leaves him broke.

In his anger he kills her.'

Reflection:

In terms of planning, this was a good starting point for us. We were able to pitch all of our possible ideas across to each other, and adapt each one as a group. This was also good because now that we have picked our genre (Film Noir), and created a general synopsis, we can move on to research and future planning for filming our production.

This task also had some negative aspects, which allowed each of us to learn what we need to do to improve as a group. The discussion we had about out genre and narrative took a long time, and we were quite indecisive at times about deciding exactly what direction we wanted our production to go in. With future discussions, we plan to try and be more decisive about the decisions we make, which will allow us to work faster and develop ideas quicker. If we had landed on a genre and narrative quicker, we could have adapted our piece further and perhaps starting thinking about other things such as a location for our filming, or what equipment we would use. Having said this, the synopsis above is a good starting point, and we are all happy with the ideas we have.