4. Who would be the audience for your media product

Our film opening would attract two different audiences. The main would be the audience that is interested in film noir crime thrillers. There are codes and conventions within our film opening that represent similar messages and values within this hybrid genre.

3. What kind of media institution might distribute your media product and why?

Choosing an institution that would distribute our film opening begs research into film institutions, such as Universal or Lionsgate. I would choose the film studio United Artists as the institution, because, ultimately, they started out as an institution whose aims were to raise awareness of independent filmmakers, distributing some lesser known films. With backing from a-list Hollywood names, such as Douglas Fairbanks and D.W Griffith, it’s unsurprising that they managed to release films such as ‘The Sweet Smell of Success’, a popular classic Film Noir. Again, a small focus on Film Noir releases supports the idea that this would be a useful institution to approach about distribution.

1. In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media projects?

Our two minute film opening was based on the Film Noir genre of 1940s and 50s American films, and the development of this into Neo Noir in contemporary cinema. Therefore, we attempted to adhere to the conventions of Film Noir mostly through mise-en-scene, focusing on location, lighting and costume. It's set in a small apartment room, a stereotypical location for a murder, considering this genre, the crime thriller with the style of Noir. The audiences expectations of this are that the murder in the apartment would be filled with clues. However, as this is the opening two minutes to our film, we felt that it would be more unrealistic if we were to fill the sequence with explicit clues. As a result of this, we leave the scene ambiguous. The location uses the ideology that apartments can be quite cold, emotionally distant places that are used by individuals as a shield from their feelings. We achieved low-key lighting by placing a lamp behind the camera constantly and using others around the room. This uses conventional lighting seen in Film Noir. The protagonist, a private detective, wears dark clothing; black trench coat, grey trousers, shirt and tie. This is the stereotypical costume of a Film Noir protagonist, such as Sam Spade or Walter Neff, conforming to the dress of a detective from a typical crime thriller. Film Noir began as cheap, low budget films which had elements of surrealism in them. We attempted to create elements of surrealism though our combination of modern and old fashioned props and furniture. A 1940s style telephone is the predominant prop here which feels out of place and the furniture in the room has no fixed period of time it comes from, the indeterminable nature of it surreal in itself.

In terms of camera work that conforms to the conventions of Film Noir, we used a number of panning shots to keep focus on the detective as well as static shots. As he moves about the room, we used cross-fades to execute smooth transitions and connote the passing of time. The detective manoeuvring within the camera signifies his control in the scene; the camera is still, subjecting him, but he holds power throughout the scene.

The use of a narrative voice over is conventional of Film Noir, such as Double Indemnity, presenting insight for the audience into the mind of the protagonist. As we only included non-diegetic sound, we also used the song 'Hello Skinny' – The Residents, a band known for their unique sound, always seen to be ahead of the curve, in a similar way to to Film Noir, which had darker ideas and themes, than the 1940s would allow. Although only using a looped clip, the music itself is fairly surreal and we felt the jazz aspect really reflected the period Film Noir hales from.

2. How does your media product represent particular social groups

The protagonist in our piece is a stereotypical representation of a detective. A careless, brash alpha male, the Film Noir detective uses words instead of violence to make their point. Similar to the Western hero, he is alone, coming from and going nowhere. His clothes speak for his professionalism and occupation; shirt and tie + trenchcoat. They connote reliability and authority and through slow, mid shots and low angled shots, he is given power and dominance through the scene. The smoking and drinking are stereotypical traits of a 1940s detective and in this way the protagonist plays to type.Audiences expectations are that the detective will be precise, considerate and execute tact in a room with a murder victim, but he is none of these; he walks around, regardless of spoiling evidence, touching objects  in the room, such as the telephone prop. In this way, he is a counter type, not representing the social group of a stereotypical detective.

Editing Suite; Using Final Cut



In this shot, we were using the video filters, namely the colour corrector, to turn down the saturation, fiddle with the blacks and whites, to get the film into black and white. Although this is't  convention as such of film noir, mostly because they were made during the 1940s and 50s when colour was just coming into films, it still seen as a hallmark of film noir.




Here I took a screen grab of the way in which we used effects on Final Cut; we played around with the speed, to address conventions of Neo Noir films, which use slow-motion and fast-forward a lot 



Screenshots for our film opening

We kept our title's fairly conventional within the undrstanding of FIlm Noir - plain white font, big but not imposing



The detective is in the foreground of this, with the telephone just behind him. This places it as an object of focus, wihtout drawing away attention to the protagonist.




A low angled shot gives the protagonist power and control throughout the scene



Props

 As film noir specifically comes from 1940s and 50s films, we decided to use a telephone that looked like it heralded from that era. Thi was also because of our attempt to create surrelism in the style of neo noir

This has the aesthetic appeal of a typical etective's trench coat, similar to Humphrey Bogart's iconic image, wearing a long trench coat and fedora

Feedback

Today we were given feedback, a form of audience response, on what was good and how to improve what wasn't as good. We heard pretty much what we were expecting to hear. Firstly, the sequence is too long; it's meant to be around 02.00 and ours was closer to 03.55. Not good really. We felt that this was where our opening was weakest, in its structure, and so we made use of the cross-fade on Final Cut to edit out a lot of footage and make it look like time is passing more quickly. It actually works better like this, giving it a much faster pace and a more stylistic, noir feeling (Film noir is, after all, a style, not a genre. A style that has formed it's own sub-group of films perhaps). Secondly, we were told to remove some of the dark saturation from some frames, as they needed to be a little bit lighter. This was fairly simple and required a few minutes in the editing suite, using the colour corrector to change the black's and white's in the video.

Editing

We began editing our reshot footage today. It all looks good in black and white, and we managed to cut it together fairly quickly, but neatly; we used multiple cross-fade transitions to connote the passing of time. This works quite effectively as it is a convention of contemporary cinema in telling the passing of time. We also used fade-dissolves  to connote the change in a sequence in the scene. Hopefully, once we're done with the first edit, we can get some feedback on ways to improve. Also, once we've added the voice over and the looped soundtrack, it Will actually start to fall into place

Music - Skinny was born in a bath tub....

The music that Charlie and I chose to use for the piece is from this song 'Hello Skinny' - The Residents. The bit of music that we're using starts at 00.20 and ends at 00.50. Because of this, we have to loop the piece of music in order for it to last the full length of the film opening, which is around 02.00.

music

at the moment we're looking for music to go with the film opening. I'm studying music that is used for the opening's of old film noir's, such as the big sleep or the maltese falcon whereas charlie is looking at modern interpretations of this style. hopefully we can find something a bit in the middle that sounds right for the piece. we don't want the music to overpower the actual scene, so we have to find something that will be quiet enough not to be heard over anything. we don't want a music video.

Voiceover

Both Charlie and I decided, after hearing our dreadful American accents, that we could get someone from outside the group to be our voice actor, especially as the protagonist never speaks in the film opening. The use of non-diegetic sound only makes it possible for us to do this. After searching around for someone who could pull off a reasonable American accent, we settled on Joe Johnstone. We'll get set to recording the voiceover as quickly as possibly, so that we can break it down into parts and block these appropriately with the correct part of the visuals.

Principal photography and reshoots

with all principle photography done, we have to do reshoots now as there is a massive radiator in te way in a lot of the shots. how we didn't realise this i don't knoooooow...

Film Opening Reshoots

When we reshot our principal photography, there were a couple of big changes that we had to be aware of;

Firstly, Marcus, our lead actor, wasn't available much and at the time we wanted to reshoot, had to go to Scotland. Bearing this in mind, we decided I should act in it as we couldn't find anyone else in time and I just wanted to get it done. So with all the new footage, comes me!

Secondly, the lighting that we used changed drastically, because of the lighting being so poor in our first load of footage, after converting it to black and white. After getting in the editing suite again, we'll be able to tell how different the lighting is in black and white

Lastly, we decided that we didn't want any diegetic sound for the opening; everything is put in during post-production. This includes the telephone ringing and the conversation, which we tried differently to begin with, but which slowed the scene down drastically. The use of non diegetic voiceover manages to keep the opening within the time frame also, not allowing much footage without non diegetic sound.

We managed to get the reshoots done over the course of two evenings, both spent in Charlie's converted garage. As it had the atmosphere and aesthetic appeal that we were looking for, we confined it to the one room, not wishing to broaden our choice of locations within such a small scene of a film. The opening two minutes is, after all, not the resolution but the exposition. Using Joe Heath as our dead body, we corrected a few of the mistakes that we made during our first shoot; covered the radiator with a blanket, hid the crates of Carlsberg in the fridge and kept a lamp constantly behind the camera to spread much more light in the direction the camera is facing. This helped with some of the more trivial, but annoying, prblems of the piece.