Today I managed to get my opening scene mostly edited and even started to add effects. I am very happy with the scene and plan to finish off the editing as soon as possible so I can have a solid opening. I need to creat the title sequence then film the other two scenes. The last scene will now be shot at college as I can use the light during the day so I will have to change the story to her going into work instead of coming home. That is simple enough as it will not change mucha nd the sequence will still make sense.

I can hopefully start shooting the other parts soon.

Progress!

I have found the technique that I need to use for my piece and have tested it on my old footage. It didn't work too well because of the lighting so I am hoping now that I have the new footage it will work better.

I re-filmed my opening scene and I am in the process of editing it together. Hopefully my other scene will be filmed soon as well so I can begin the proper editing and adding effects.

I am very happy with the new footage, it is well lit in a stylised way and the new camera angle I tried after a suggestion from my teacher makes the shots look a lot more professional and standoffish.

Tomorrow I will bring in my storyboard to follow so I can begin laying out my inital sequence as it will be shown, I will then have an idea of how much footage I have and how much time I still need to make up in the other scenes. It is a bit difficult to shoot the outdoor scenes because winter has taken all the natural light away when I leave college to do the location shoot. This is posing a problem so I may have to restructure my second scene after the credits to make the filming more convinient as I cannot have dim lighting again!

Tomorrow I'm going to discuss changes with my teacher and get his opinion and then continue my editing. All seems to be going well and filming should be complete before Christmas.

Mistakes.

Unfortunately the footage that I filmed a week or so again was too darkly light to be used so needs to be done again using more lights for the black and white to be effective. I have been shown how I can make the sequence look darker without having it be grainy and under contrased so hard to make out. I have also been able to borrow a tripod off of a friend so that I can film without hand held as the hand shake was very annoying on the camera and ruined the footage making it look less professional more home movie. I plan to film some more some time in the next two weeks so that I can start editing it. Hopefully second time will work better and I have learnt from the mistakes made on the first time filming of the footage.

What I've gotten done.

I managed to get the first scene filmed and hopefully it will all be salvagable footage that I can use so I can start testing my editing technique. I have also completed my animatic of the storyboard.



I am going to try and start editing my footage on Tuesday.

The Fun Begins.

I have finished my storyboard and I am begining to make it into an animatic with the effects and the music included to get a sense of the timing. I have also been researching how to do the editing technique I want to use on Adobe Premier. I have found these.



and



I have begun filming tonight and have the footage for the first scene already recorded. I will hopefully get the thrid scene done later on in the week and then the second scene later on in the month. I am happy with the footage filmed and will be able to have a test edit when I am back at college.

I have also wrote my screenplay for the sequence I am filming.

INT. ANA’S ROOM. NIGHT.

A hand holding a gun comes onto screen. The gun fires.

ANA
(voice over)
It’s hot as hell. One of those sticky summer nights. Never pictured it as my last. The dame filling my room with the sweet smell of Virginia Slims is the Mayors number one squeeze and the force behind my abrupt departure. She had pins as deadly as the heat she packed and was the most ruthless broad ever to stand at the Mayors side. As soon as I put my finger on what was happening she put her finger on the trigger. I’ve done some dumb things. I never thought finding the ‘Black Lace Killer’ was going to be one of them but, I guess I was wrong. Mother always told me New York was a dangerous place; she didn’t know the half of it. Corruption runs through this city like raw sewage in underground pipes, bringing with it the cloying scent of decay. You turn the wrong corner in this city and it could be your last. Tell the truth, you’re dead as soon as it leaves your lips. And just before I bit the big one, all I could think was ‘You’ve come a long way, baby’.’

EXT. STREETS. NIGHT.

A view through the window of a car moving through town.

EXT. CRANBROOK AVENUE. NIGHT.

ANA has just got out of her car. She begins walking down the street. She pulls out her mobile phone and calls her boss DOLPH.

ANA
(urgently)
Dolph, it’s Ana. Call me back, it’s urgent!

ANA puts the phone away and turns her head as if hearing a noise. She ignores it and continues walking at a faster pace. She turns her head again sure she heard someone behind her.

ANA
(voice over)
I was being followed.

She begins walking again even quicker.

POLICE OFFICER
(shouting)
STOP!

ANA begins running now.

ANA
(voice over)
I wasn’t naïve enough to stop, with what I know the police are the last people I could trust.

ANA has reached the corner to get to the back entrance of her house. She runs around the corner and pulls keys from her bag as she does so.

ANA
(voice over)
I needed to get out of there.

ANA fumbles with the keys. She opens the gate and locks the gate again.

I have begun storyboarding and I'm close to completing the storyboard. I'm also in the process of writting out the scene structure so I know how it should run narratively. I have also begun scripting my piece using the hardboiled language and I am begingin to layout the screeplay version as I continue writing.

Aims and Context

I am creating a short opening sequence for a film. My target audience is late teen to middle aged, both genders (although crime/comic films are more aimed at males this one has a lead female role which will appeal to women) and who are interested in crime films, classic film noir or comic style films.
The genre is based around film noir, which has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, and has very set stylistic aspects. I am going for a neo-noir genre, that is close to the style of ‘Sin City’ by Robert Rodrigruez following their style on the use of isolated colour editing.
I aim to use my previous learning from FM1 about cinematography to combine the basic elements and conventions of the film noir genre and the comic book genre without making the sequence look like two styles put together.
I am directing the piece so have been researching some film noir directors such as; Alfred Hitchcock, Otto Preminger and Billy Wilder to get inspiration from their styles of directing.

I have started decided the structure of my scene also and I am going to begin stroyboarding my piece soon.

Storyline

I have written my storyline for the full piece.



Anabella Hart is a big time journalist working in New York. She is assigned the breaking main page story in the newspaper she works for and delves straight into the story with a keen sense and excited passion, a string of murders involving women being strangled and then shot in the heart. Women are terrified of the ‘Black Lace Killer’ so nicknamed as he covers his victims face in a veil of black lace. During her research she discovers a mass crime cover up involving bent cops and even more corrupt government officials, the mayor is trying to keep his son’s secrets covered up but at the expense of the publics safety. She plans to ‘blow the whole thing wide open’ but before she is chased down by two cops determined not to let the story get out. A hit has been put out on her, one with a hefty reward and now every seedy, money grubbing criminal is after Ana to stop her from leaking valuable information and shaming the mayor. Shaken by a near fatal experience where Ana only just escaped a gun yielding criminal by hiding in a crowded restaurant and sneaking out through the window, she decides to get some professional help. Dead set on getting the truth out she finds a private investigator to protect her while helping her get the facts out. Jackson is a heavy drinker with a past in the police forces who was fired for not following lead on a drugs smuggling cover up after which he decided to become a private eye. When he hears Ana’s case he instantly wants to help bring down those who took his job and his life from him. The second attempt to kill Ana is while the pair are at Jaks’ favourite bar. Jaks spots a man following Ana into the toilets and follows him in. The man has a gun and is about to shoot Ana when Jaks attacks him and ends up drowning him in the toilet. Jaks decides that they need to stay under cover as much as possible, so they end up spending a week in a hotel room under the names Mr and Mrs James while they look further into the case, one that is heating up now that the body count has gone up to five. Ana has located a witness and sets up a meeting that Jaks insists on going to alone and leaves an edgy Ana in the hotel room. While she’s on her own she is assassinated by the Mayors female bodyguard. When Jaks gets back he finds a dead Ana on the bed with black lace covering her face. Assuming that she was killed as a cover up Jaks goes after the mayor’s son and confronts him. Jaks end up killing the son. The police show up at that moment and charge Jackson as the ‘Black Lace Killer’ and take him into custody, he is charged with seven counts of murder and sentenced to the chair. He dies, the killings stop and no one is any the wiser.

I have also experimented on photoshop to see what the sin city effect should look like. I came up with these four example images of the isolated colour technique I plan to use in my piece.

Genre

The creative project we are doing involves producing a short film or and extract from a full film which is between 3-5 mins. I have to write a script, produce a storyboard, organise a shooting shedule and allocate roles within my piece.

I have chosen to do an from the full film instead of a short film as I think it is easier to write a storyline for a long film then just chose a scene to do from it. I will be doing an opening sequence of a film which will come before the credits.

I have choes my genre which is Film Noir, and from there I have decided to look at neo-noir and I am using 'Sin City' as my visual inspiration but trying to keep classic Film Noir in the storyline. I have done some research on film noir to find the conventions of the genre so I can use some of them within my film sequence. I found one website that helped a lot with finding the conventions and character descriptions for my chosen genre. (http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html)

I also used two other websites to help me find the typical pulp/hardboiled language used in film noir as I think using this type of speech will help give the sequence an authentic noir feel. The two websites I used are (www.miskatonic.org/slang.html & http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A563898)

Some of the conventions I plan to use are dim lighting, venitian blinds, femme fatales and smoking/smoke in my sequence. I also plan to use the narration technique by having a voice over through the sequence and no deigetic dialogue and use the typical suspemsful jazz and orchastral music assosiated with noir.

The storytype could be described as the Quest and Overcoming the monster because the main character is on a quest to get the truth out in order to overcome the city's lies. I am taking these as my basic layout for the storyline but will be following the traditional convention of Film Noir and making sure the film does not have a happy ending.

My audience is most likely 16 to 40 year olds as it has the classic noir feel which will appeal to the older audience, but is a modern reinvention with a comic book edge which will appeal to a younger audience along with the violent storyline. The film is aimed at both gender becuase although it has a comic book feel and is a crime story which is generally more of a male favoured genre the lead is a strong female which will appeal to women as well as men.

I wrote an essay on my genre;
Film Noir- Genre conventions

Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Classic Film Noir developed during and after World War II taking advantage of the post-war ambience of pessimism. The term Film Noir was first applied to movies by French critic Nino Frank and was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the era. A lot of Film Noir attitude is derived from Hardboiled fiction which portrays crime and violence in an unsentimental way. These stories were often published in pulp magazines, or pulp fiction which were cheap magazines widely published from the 1920’s through 1950’s.

The main themes of a film noir are; alienation, melancholy, disillusionment, moral corruption, guilt and desperation. The heroes of these pieces are often anti-heroes and even corrupt and villainous characters including hard-boiled detectives, gangsters, lone wolves, sociopaths, crooks or just plain Joes. Distinctively they were cynical, obsessive (sexual or otherwise), brooding, sinister, sardonic, disillusioned, frightened and insecure loners (usually men), struggling to survive - and in the end, ultimately losing. Stories are often twisting and non-linear with complex narratives typically told with foreboding background music, flashbacks, razor-sharp witty dialogue often done in a confessional first person voice over narration. Film Noir generally showed the darker side of humanity. There were rarely happy or optimistic endings in noirs.

Female characters in Film Noir are often one of two types; the trustworthy, loving woman or the gorgeous yet predatory femme fatale. Pursuing the wishes of the traitorous femme fatale would lead the hero into committing some crime coupled with twisted love. Femme fatale literally means "killer (or deadly) woman."

Film Noir was marked for using expressionistic lighting, deep focus camera work, jarring editing, skewed camera angles, cigarette smoke, venetian blind, claustrophobic spaces and gloomy appearances. Exteriors were often urban night scenes with deep shadows, wet asphalt, dark alleyways, rain-slicked or mean streets, flashing neon lights, and low key lighting. Story locations were often in murky and dark streets, dimly-lit and low-rent apartments and hotel rooms of big cities, or abandoned warehouses.

Film noirs have recently been released in the modern era and have been refashioned for present-day sensibilities. Most neo-noirs attempted to re-establish the moods and themes of classic noirs. Unlike classic noirs, neo-noir films are aware of modern circumstances and technology. Modern themes employed in these films include identity crises, memory issues and subjectivity, and technological problems and their social ramifications.

Classic Noir films;
Rebecca (1940, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston)
Laura (1944, Otto Preminger)
Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)
Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)
In a lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955, Robert Aldrich)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander MacKendrick)
Touch Of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)

Neo-noir films;
Cape fear (1962, J. Lee Thompson)
The Long goodbye (1973, Robert Altman)
Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)
Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)
Black Widow (1987, Bob Rafelson)
Basic Instinct (1992, Paul Verhoeven)
Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)
Sin City (2005, Robert Rodrigruez)
The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan)

The stylistics of my idea are inspired most by the film Sin City in that I plan to use the comic style isolated colour editing that keeps the film black and white with one or two colours highlighted only, i.e. red blood or blonde hair.