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.

In Depth Sound Research - Credit to Matthew

Although I did some brief research of sound, Matthew decided to do some more in depth research of it for our final piece. The post I previously did on sound can be accessed by clicking the link below:
Previous post on sound
The more in depth work that Matthew carried out can be seen below, in a screenshot form of his blog post.

Reflection:
Having Matthew carry out this extra research on sound was very useful for us as a group because it meant that we could refer to this post when editing to read about the enhanced effects of layers of sounds that can be added for a Film Noir. As you can see from the screenshot, a lot of the work is in blue meaning it wasn't Matthews words, so an improvement could be to make the work more independent to him. Having said this, the way he converted what he'd heard into a blog post was very good, and he gave credit to other people where due. Our next steps are to use the research with our editing, and refer back to it regularly to ensure our understanding of sound stays up to scratch.

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.

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.

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.