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.

Researching Sound

Another aspect of research I carried out was sound. I focused more on soundtracks, and in film sounds to see what conventions we will have to stick with for our Noir.

SoundTrack:
To understand the sound throughout a Film Noir, I first looked at the actual soundtracks that feature throughout the films. I used a website called All Music, which contained dozens of Film Noir soundtracks, and gave me and idea of the typical sounds throughout. The website for All Music and be accessed by the link below:
Film Noir sounds on All Music
















From this, I was able to listen to the way the soundtracks are composed, and their general sound to give me some sort of idea of what we need to create for our final piece.
After looking on the website, it is clear to see that the genre's of Film Noir soundtracks are 'jazz' and 'electronic'. They seem to be played on old pianos, and violins. This means that for our final piece we will need to either recreate a piece of music like this ourselves, or find some music that is copyright free to embed into our production.

In Film Sounds:
In terms of in film sounds, I focused on one thing; voiceovers. I used a website called Vimeo to watch some openings to Film Noir's and see exactly how voiceovers are used. The link to Vimeo is below:
Film Noir's on Vimeo











From researching this, it became clear to see that each Noir had a voiceover at the start which explained the narrative. Because Film Noir's always traditionally start with the end of the film, the voiceover gives the audience an insight of exactly whats happened before to create this situation in the first place. This means that obviously we will try to match this convention to start our Noir at the end, and have a voiceover explaining exactly what has happened to create this situation.


Reflection:
Although this was only a brief piece of research, it was still vital for our group because it allowed us to understand the typical soundtracks used, and the way a voiceover is embed into a Noir to create the story line. Obviously to improve this task I could've done more in depth research, but I just wanted to gain some brief knowledge so that we have an idea on the sounds used. We may come back to this and do some more in depth research later on to gain us even more of an understanding. I learnt about the soundtracks used in Noir's from this research, and I now feel more confident with the knowledge of the conventions we must match.

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.