OUR OTS: THE VULNERABLE

Evaluation

rachel savage AS media evaluation; Film Noir 2012 on Prezi

Talking about our target audience

Feedback

We presented our film noir to three students, two of whom are in our class, and received their feedback (we made sure to get at least one male opinion since he was a part of our target audience). The feedback in the areas of the titles, costumes, story line, transitions, sound, and use of the camera were positive but all of the comments mentioned the unsteadiness of the camera in certain points of our OTS. We did use a tripod but the unsteadiness came from when we tried to tilt and pan. The movements were not smooth enough and occasionally jolted slightly. 

23/4/12

Today was basically finishing editing our OTS and expanding my evaluation, we did actually manage to complete our OTS and overall I am really pleased with how it turned out. Me and Katherine also made a video answering one of the evaluation questions 'Who would be the audience for your media product?' We both felt like this was the best question to answer as we felt this was the question we knew least about and had less information on. This will be included in our evaluations. Also we asked the other students in our class and not from our class to watch our OTS and give us feedback on our sheet with multiple questions that will be uploaded this week.

The deadline for our blogs is on Wednesday the 25th of April.

Youtube documentaries

 

I searched online and found this documentary from 1992 talking about the history and generic conventions that make a film noir.

Nine frame structure analysis of a film opening

I found the full film 'Kiss Me Deadly' from 1955 online, because our OTS is meant to be 2 minutes long I decided to look at the first 2 minutes of this film noir and analyse screen shots that I take.

Right at the beginning of this noir the company credits 'United Artists' appears with grand music, already just from this title you can tell it's going to be a black and white film.

Straight after the titles finish the screen goes black, woman's legs start to run across the screen with heavy breathing as the black slowly fades into a road. Already you start to wonder, who is this woman? Why is she running? Where is she?

The camera then quickly shows a shot of the woman's face, from this we have to assume that she is the femme fatale. However still not answering our questions but adding more tension and mystery.

The camera then shows the woman that we can only guess as the femme fatale from a extra long shot (ELS). This shows us where she is but still not answering how she got there or why she's running.

As she proceeds to run the shot then skips to a extra long shot of a car heading in the other direction toward the woman. This adds further questions, why is there a car in the middle of nowhere? Who is driving it? The woman stands in front of the car forcing it to stop and swerve in to the side of the road, the woman then approaches the car.

After the woman approaches the car the camera shows a close up of the man sitting in the car, we can only assume that he is now the anti hero of the story due to the way he's dressed, the smart car he drives and his sly attitude towards the woman.

 An over the shoulder shot is used to show who the femme fatale is talking to, and the anti hero's reactions that what she has to say, however due to being out of breath all the femme fatale can do is pant heavily. He has no choice but to say "Get in."

As the femme fatale walks around and enters the car a narration is played over the top with the woman's voice, unfortunately due to the films age and quality of the video I'm unable to figure out what is she's saying.

The last scene of the 2 minutes shows the opening credits, the camera shows a point of view shot where it feels like we are looking out from the front window screen. The credits slowly appear from the top of the screen and don't stop until they disappear in a calm movement, you notice that on the screen shot the writing is backwards, this is because the writing is coming down and so we read the bottom words first. Even though this OTS was quit dramatic in we had no idea what was going on, we think that the woman is now safe with this man and so there is less tension.

I really like this OTS, because we have no idea why the femme fatale was in the middle of nowhere or why she had no shoes etc, and from this point on the story can be unravelled with flashbacks and stories creating us on edge throughout the film noir due to the leaving us in suspense at the beginning.

                                               (The full movie 'Kiss Me Deadly' from 1955)

Katherine's post about 'The Sound Within Our OTS'

http://katherinewarnes.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/sound-within-our-ots.html

Storyboard Animatic

Editing problems

Katherine spent an afternoon re-fixing and re-editing the OTS, another problem then arose when she tried to save what she had done. It was not allowing the OTS to save because it 'did not have permission' and then the program  proceeded to suddenly close down, causing all the work she'd just completed to be erased. 

After a few days the problem has finally been sorted and we now have to rush to do what should have been done a week ago.

Here is an animated example of a film noir, it has key aspects of a noir but is not conventional.
The main difference of this to a conventional noir is that this is animated, however it still has film noir characteristics. The main character is a detective, however this clip shows him in a humorous way whereas a traditional film noir wouldn't. The majority of scenes are very dark with little lighting, however it's not black and white. At the end of the clip the old woman and detective are sitting around a circle table, there is a light shinning on the top which reminds me of a poker table that could be used in a film noir. The narrative of this short film is about crime but the twist is that the crime is in the detectives imagination, this could be used in a noir but without it being humorous.
 Unlike this short clip we'd plan for our film noir to be more traditional.

OTS Planning

• Frame one - Shot focuses on the corner of a table where you see a pool of blood, slowly dripping down.
• Frame two - The shot then cuts to the lower leg of the table where we can see a puddle of blood that has been formed by the droplets. In the background an arm is seen laying across the floor.
• Frame three - From a low angle, the corpse's body is shown. A woman in heels steps over it.
• Frame four - The corpse is lying in the corner of the frame while the centered woman walks towards an open door, pulling her coat off a chair in the process. The light from the doorway creates bold silhouettes.
• Frame five - A side profile of the woman is seen. The camera tracks her from that angle while she walks along a brick wall at night. Her breath can be seen against the cold weather.
• Frame six - A low angle shot of the woman walking down the street from behind. Only her shoes are visible but in the background the feet of someone can be seen standing under a street lamp.
• Frame seven - Side profile as the woman approaches the man (who has a clearly larger build than her), hugging him. 
• Frame eight - During the hug, the man slowly pulls out a knife from his sleeve and that is where it ends.

Most cenes will be set at night, we will edit the lighting to be very dark and the objects in this opening title sequence will only just be visible through the heavy contrasting. We aim to quickly build up tension in our 'OTS' which will be the only thing that is unlike usual film noirs since they tend to be more slow-paced. 

Language

In our film noir we wanted to find the best font for our OTS, at the moment the typography we have is 'Times New Roman' with the style 'Typewriter'. However it doesn't match that of what would be in a real film noir, the letters slowly get typed on the screen rather then quick and dramatic even though in our opening the scenes are quick with each scene being dramatic (eg showing the corpse and blood soaked hands) Each of our names  appear over two scenes,  however only mine, Katherine's and Kristy's names are in the OTS we've yet to add the actors that were involved. We also noticed that the recent text that we added for our names wasn't the same as the text in the middle of our OTS to show time passing.
To fix these problems we first decided to change the typography, but in doing that we came across a problem, the typography we originally picked would still appear even after applying the new typography (Apple Li Gothic medium) , even after asking the teacher we still couldn't figure out the problem. The other problem we found that instead of having the motion 'Typwriter' where the our names came on screen slowly the movement 'Wipe' was chosen. Though we still couldn't use this because the original font that wasn't wanted would still appear.

I did research in fonts and attempted to find different examples used in film noirs, and through looking found this opening from a film noir called 'Crime Wave' from 1954.

 The writing  in the OTS of this film is similar to ours at the moment, the writing is bold and plain white. The writing appears slowly while still being in sync with the background music. However the difference between our OTS and this OTS, is that in this the opening is only of a car driving along and so there isn't any tension building. Whereas ours involves quick sharp scenes with a dramatic story, and so to go with our OTS we will need titles that appear quickly to contribute to tension building.

Production meeting 16/4/12

Today we were finishing editing. Kirsty will look at whether our ots works as a title sequence well with the general conventions etc..I will be writing about the language for our ots and Katherine is looking at the sound, as it would be easier if she is creating the piano piece for our ots.
This was because we found that our OTS really didn't need that much editing or work, that we could only think of small jobs. However we did notice a few things that could be improved like clips were too long or scenes needed to be darker to fit in with the rest of the scenes, which all got fixed during the lesson.

Production meeting 28/3/12

Today we are continuing to edit our ots, and we are putting in another clip so it flows better, as watching it back we felt it jumped a bit when I was walking down the alleyway, as we filmed it from different angles, so we were thinking carefully about continuity and how the audience can understand it

Production Meeting - 19/03/12

We had filmed the daytime scenes on saturday so me an Kathrine were putting them in basic order ready for editing and converting scenes to black and white, while Kirsty uploaded photographs taken at the filming site (props, production and actors)

Actors and Costume

                                                            Lizzie was our femme fatale.

She wore a long black 1950's style dress, this was the type of glamorous dress that the femme fatale would be wearing.

We didn't actually use this coat in the end due to having to cut out the scenes because we decided on a different type of clothing as the scene was inside.

The scene when this jumper was used was on the sofa when the femme fatale and anti hero are hugging, we felt this was more appropriate then the coat.

                                                   Jack (Lizzies boyfriend) played our anti hero.

For the majority of Jacks scenes he wears the tie and shirt set but also with a blazer added for scenes outside.

For the scene of Lizzie and Jack hugging on the sofa we also made Jack wear a big jumper, this sets the seen of been comfortable. This is good because it asks more questions as to why there was a murder when there's a happy couple?

 

Kirsty played our dead body, she wore this simple coat which doesn't attract attention from what is happening in the scene.

Photos during filming

This is where he (Jack the anti hero) is being thrown to the ground, we filmed it from different angles so it would flow better with the rest of the ots.

We created the blood for our ots by using chocolate sauce, we used chocolate sauce because of it's thick texture. Since our OTS is in black and white it then makes the chocolate sauce more believable.

In this photo I am applying the chocolate sauce to my hands, we chose me to do this because I was the only one wearing red nail polish. In film noirs femme fatales traditionally have red nails, Kathrine then filmed my hands as I layed them close to the floor and scrunched my fingers. We tryed to get the look of the femme fatales hands after she's killed Kirsty.

I stood against the wall and held my hands up above my face, this is how we filmed the blood running down her hands. However after look back and the footage we found the you could see my face clearly, and since my hands were meant to be Lizzies you weren't allowed my face shown, you couldn't cut down the clip because my face was clearly shown at the back the whole time and so overall we couldn't use the footage.

We wanted to create natural lighting and not make it too obvious that we were using lights to create different lighting effects. By using small tourches from far away we created lighting for this part of the ots.

Going back to our chocolate sauce idea.

Tools we used for creating light in our ots

What we could have used for the murder weapon

Setup for filming outside, because we needed darker lighting

Sound attempt

In one of our lessons we had to take a video camera and go around the school trying to find ways of foleying sounds for our OTS. We filmed a dripping tap for blood, scrapped a chair across the floor at different speeds for the femme fatale nudging a chair when running away from the scene and we also filmed Kathrine playing a piano piece that we would plan to use instead of dialogue through our OTS. However we didn't have heels to record, and we'd yet to record a swiping noise for a coat being pulled off a chair, breathing and a rustling noise for when the femme fatale hugs the anti hero. It became apparent to us through filming sounds that without the film complete there was no way of us matching up the sounds we created with the OTS. We have decided to leave sounds until the film is finished and edited so we know the appropriate times when we need certain sounds.  

Mini essay on copyright Infringement

Copyright infringement is a violation of the rights secured by a copyright, there are suggested procedures to follow in the event that your work is infringed. A copyright is a legal device that gives the creator of a literary, artistic, musical, or other creative work the right to publish and sell that work. Copyright owners have the right to control their work, including the right to receive payment for that reproduction. An author may grant or sell those rights to others, including publishers or recording companies. Violation of a copyright is called infringement.
For example for our final piece Katherine wanted to play a song that she knew on the piano for the soundtrack, however after telling the teacher our idea shen then told us we couldn't due to it being copyright.

Essay on Ambience

In media and filmmaking, ambiance is the atmosphere created through sound, consisting of the sounds of a chosen location. Every location will have subtle sounds created by its environment, these sounds include wildlife, rain, running water, thunder, leaves rustling, footsteps, cars going by, machinery noise, music, speech, etc. If ambient sound doesn't fit with the film, the audience will feel confused, so it generally doesn't contradict with what is being shown, and would be seen as asynchronous or contrapuntal sound.

 I looked on youtube and found an example of spooky ambience, the youtube user created this piece by
taking audio from 4 separate ambient songs by 'Mannheim Steamroller' and edited them together into one along with some of their own original audio. It creates a creepy atmosphere, what I like the most about this piece is that all the noises aren't recognisable but that sense of not knowing what a sound is when you can't see it is unsettling. My favourite part is the groaning, hearing a person in discomfort that you can't see is also unsettling.

fim titles.

http://annyas.com/screenshots/film-noir/

This website is great for examples of film noir titles.

Foleying

Foleying is a sounds effect technique for synchronous or live effects. They are laid manually, and not cut in to film. It amplifies sounds that would not be easily heard otherwise in original filming. Sounds are added in post-production. For example, metal tubes are filled with metal trays, empty soda cans, knives, forks, broken staple guns etc, to create sounds from comedy crashes to adding presence to something as serious as a car crash. The purpose of this is to make the quality of sound better. This video gives more examples;
 


SoundWorks Collection: Gary Hecker - Veteran Foley Artist from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

Locations

Each of these pictures are examples from the internet of traditional locations you'd find in a film noir, most of our OTS is based outside. We will in an alley way like in the example above, we think we have found a place near by in catton where we can film.

Basic Synopsis Of Our Opening Title Sequence

A happy couple runs into trouble when the woman commits a murder. After calling the police out of guilt, she flees the scene, passing her boyfriend at the door who is oblivious to the situation. He freezes when he sees the body but is brought to reality when he is slammed to the ground and handcuffed by the police. He decides then to get revenge for being wrongly accused.

After his release some years later, he manipulates a girl to kill his girlfriend and then decided to erase the evidence by killing the girl.

Filming - 17/3/12

Today me and Kirsty went round Kathrines house to film our OTS, we had our two actors (Lizzie and jack) who would play the main roles of the femme fatale and anti hero. We managed to get all the scenes with Jack done before he had to leave, however we didn't get all of Lizzie's finished.We didn't have the right props like hand cuffs and a gun that would be provided for us later, with this added to the fact that it would need to be dark to shoot anymore of our film noir OTS we decided to leave the rest of the filming for next week. Next tuesday we all plan to meet at Kathrines house again and film the rest of the scenes that couldn't have been done today, but meet later so we could film when it's dark outside.

Continuity task

Continuity task from Rachel Savage on Vimeo.

Our task was to create a small 2 minute video of a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchange a couple of lines of dialouge. We had to make sure we included;
The 180-degree rule:

The 180 degree rule is one which means that two people in a scene should always keep the same left and right relationship to one another, so that the audience watching doesn't get confused. The picture above shows that if the camera crosses the line connecting the two characters together, it is called crossing the line, this is called a reverse shot - and it means that the two characters are seen on opposite sides of the shot than before.

Match on action: 

This is when the camera follows the steps, movements and action that the character makes and then cuts it from one action to the next but making it a different angle or camera keeping sure that it is giving continuation to the scene.

Shot reverse shot:

a shot that views the action from the opposite side of the previous shot, as during a conversation between two actors, giving the effect of looking from one actor to the other.

 

I filmed this task; This continuity task was a success in we managed to make a creative story and script, and managed to demonstrate shots during filming. However in the editing there are issues, at the beginning when Luke walks through the door the scene jumps and shows him half way through the door even though in the scene before it shows him going completely through the door. The scene straight after Charlie is drawing on the desk and that goes on for about 5 seconds, this could be shortened down. The next shot shows Luke walking to the table and almost putting his hands on the table and it jumps to all of a sudden to him with his hands on the table, it isn't a smooth transition. However I think the over the shoulder shots at the very end during the conversation worked really well, they are long enough with the characters in the same position the whole time.

Film noir fan-site

http://film-noir.gemzies.com/

OTS prezi.

Opening title sequence plan. on Prezi

Here is a presentation talking about the plan for our opening title sequence. This includes title, narrative, characters, target audience, mise en scene, camera and composition, sound and editing.

Our storyboard

Kathrine drew the story board for our OTS because she was the strongest drawer, while she did this I wrote the storyboard out in words so we know the scene clearer and what we'd need to make the scene.

Camera angles

Canted Angle

Low Angle

High Angle

Eyeline Match

Marking Criteria for Research and Planning

Research and Planning must be presented in digital format. Where candidates have worked as a group, the research may be presented collectively, but each candidate should give a clear indication of their role in any group research and planning and teachers are asked to differentiate the contributions of individuals within the group in arriving at a mark, justifying individual marks on the assessment sheet. As part of the moderation sample, the moderator will expect to see full evidence of the research and planning informing the construction process in order to support assessment.
Level 1 0–7 marks
-Planning and research evidence will be incomplete.
-There is minimal research into similar products and a potential target audience.
-There is minimal work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.
-There is minimal organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.
-Time management may be very poor.
-There is minimal skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the presentation.
-There are minimal communication skills.
-There is minimal care in the presentation of the research and planning. 
Level 2 8–11 marks
-Planning and research evidence may be incomplete.
-There is basic research into similar products and a potential target audience.
-There is basic work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.
-There is basic organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.
-Time management may not be good.
-There is basic skill in the use of digital technology or ICT in the presentation.
-There are basic communication skills.
-There is a basic level of care in the presentation of the research and planning

Exam Criteria

Level 1- 0-23 marks: Work for the main task is possibly incomplete.There is minimal evidence in work of the creative use of any relevant technical skills such as:
-producing material appropriate for the target audience and task
-using titles appropriately according to institutional conventions
-using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set
-shooting material appropriate to the task set, including controlled use of the camera, attention to framing, variety of shot distance and close attention to mise-en-scene
-using editing do that meaning is apparent to the viewer and making selective and appropriate use of shot transitions and other effects

Level 2- 24-35 marks: There is evidence of a basic level of ability in the creative use of some of the following technical skills:
-producing material appropriate for the target audience and task
-using titles appropriately according to institutional conventions
-using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set
-shooting material appropriate to the task set, including controlled use of the camera, attention to framing, variety of shot distance and close attention to mise-en-scene
-using editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer and making selective and appropriate use of shot transitions and other effects

Level 3- 36-47 marks: There is evidence of proficiency in the creative use of many of the following technical skills:
-producing material appropriate for the target audience and task
-using titles appropriately according to institutional conventions
using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set
-shooting material appropriate to the task set, including controlled use of the camera, attention to framing, variety of shot distance and close attention to mise-en-scene
-using editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer and making selective and appropriate use of shot transitions and other effects

Level 4 16–20 marks
Planning and research evidence will be complete and detailed;
There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience;
There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props;
There is excellent work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding;
There is an excellent level of care in the presentation of the research and planning;
Time management is excellent.
Marking Criteria for the Evaluation
Candidates will evaluate their work digitally. Where candidates have worked in a group, the evaluation may be presented individually or collectively but the teacher must allocate a mark according to the contribution/level of understanding demonstrated by the individual candidate. Each candidate should give a clear indication of their role in any group evaluation.
The questions that must be addressed in the evaluation are:
In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
How does your media product represent particular social groups?
What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?
Who would be the audience for your media product?
How did you attract/address your audience?
What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?
Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to the full product?

Film noir lighting - our own attempt

In this shot the light is at a low angle to the right side of my body, the light is mostly on my face and so no significant shadows were created. If the light was held up abit more and tilted, then my shadow would probably show.

In this shot i'm looking straight forward to the camera, the light is at a low angle beside me but also looking straight at the camera. The light is so bright that it then takes centre of attetion, I myself am made into a shadow. If the camera was closer to the camera, then I could have been made into a silhouette.

In this shot, the camera is higher due to it being lifted higher towards my face. This unlike the first picture actually creates a shadow behind me you can see the outline of my hat and head on the wall. This in my opinion was the most successful attempt at lighting for a film noir. If this picture was edited to make it black and white and changed my clothes it would be much more believable. But the main point is that in out OTS this kind of lighting is the most effective.

In this picture the light was also lifted higher from the floor, however it was further away from me.Because the light was at a higher level and higher angle a shadow is created. This shot is good if you need a scene with mid shot.

This picture has a much darker background to the rest and so as a result no shadow was created. This shot is still effecteive if you have a scene which is possibly more sinful.

Film noir is a style of film making characterised by elements such as femme fatales and heroes, lighting effects, frequent use of flashbacks and plots. This phenomenon occurs when the lighting for the shot is directed at the camera from behind the subject, causing the figure, in the foreground to appear in semi-darkness or as silhouettes, or highlighted; with back lighting, the subject is separated from the background.

We decided to attempt creating our own film noir inspired lighting pictures, using myself as the subject. We found a small dark room in the school with lights that we could use at different angles to create different effects. They went well because each light placement created a new look, however they were all in similar places and so the effects weren't changed dramatically. We decided to bring a prop, the hat is intially the kind of hat that you would familiary see in a film noir.

Shot types.

2 Shot -  
Two-shots are composed when two people are in the scene and interacting. A two-shot is a good way to show a conversation. From the introduction you might cut to an over the shoulder shot of one person talking or a close-up of the other person reacting to what is being said. 
 

Over Shoulder - The over the shoulder shot reveals one subject as seen from over the shoulder of another subject. It simulates a view of the subject as seen from the second person's eyes. This shot is often used in conversations between two people where the dirtector wants to focus on the person speaking. Usually these shots are head shots.

CU - Close Up  
The close up shot is used to reveal detail. If you are shooting just the head and shoulders of a subject this is a close up. 

ECU - Extreme Closeup- 
The extreme close up is used to reveal very small details in the scene. It might be used to reveal horror in a subject (extreme close up of the subject's mouth as she/he screams). It might also be used in a mystery to show some detail that the detective picks up on or to show some small clue. 

MS - Mid Shot The medium shot is from just below the waist to above the head. There is more headroom than in the bust shot. This show is used if the person is animated with their hand movements, etc.

MCU - Medium close up
Remember in this shot to not cut ther person off at the knees. With this shot, you can still see expression on the persons face, while getting more information from what is going on around the person.

LS - Long Shot  
This shot is useful for someone that is walking or moving.

ELS - Extra Long Shot 
 Also known as the Establish shot, this gives the viewer some perspective as to where the subject is. This is very important if the subject is moving to new locations or times. It lets the viewer know where the video is taking place.

Weather Shot
The subject is the weather. Can be used for other purposes, e.g. background for graphics.
In this type of shot the subject is the weather. The sky takes up at least 2/3 of the frame. This type of shot is common in television programs where the weather is of particular interest, e.g. sports shows.
Although the usual purpose of this shot is to show the weather, it is also useful as an establishing shot, for setting the general mood or for overlaying graphics.
A weather shot doesn't have to show the sky. Other shots often used to illustrate weather include:

• Puddles, drain spouts or any example of rainwater flow.
• Trees or anything else blowing in the wind.
• People sunbathing.
• Snowmen, snowball fights, snow sledding, etc.

CA (Cutaway)
A shot of something other than the subject.
A cutaway is a shot that's usually of something other than the current action. It could be a different subject (eg. this cat when the main subject is its owner), a close up of a different part of the subject (eg. the subject's hands), or just about anything else.
The cutaway is used as a "buffer" between shots (to help the editing process), or to add interest/information.

CI (cut-in shot)

Like a cutaway, but specifically refers to showing some part of the subject in detail.
Can be used purely as an edit point, or to emphasise emotion etc. For example, hand movements can show enthusiasm, agitation, nervousness, etc.


WS wide shot
In the wide shot, the subject takes up the full frame. In this case, the boy's feet are almost at the bottom of frame and his head is almost at the top. Obviously the subject doesn't take up the whole width and height of the frame, since this is as close as we can get without losing any part of him. The small amount of room above and below the subject can be thought of as safety room — you don't want to be cutting the top of the head off. It would also look uncomfortable if his feet and head were exactly at the top and bottom of frame.

Extreme wide shot 

the extreme wide shot, the view is so far from the subject that s/he isn't even visible. The point of this shot is to show the subject's surroundings.
The EWS is often used as an "establishing shot" - the first shot of a new scene, designed to show the audience where the action is taking place.
It is also useful in scenes where the action is very spread out. For example, in a war movie an extreme wide shot can show the scale of the action.