This course work task was to produce a two minute long film opening sequence with the focus on the theme of film noir, this production piece had to be an opening sequence to a film. In order to make this piece successful, we had to use certain conventions that fit the film noir genre; therefore we researched the convections of mainstream film noir films.
What we have used to make our film similar to features of film noir is the character roles, however in film noir the main character becomes entangled with the femme fatale character and is put in danger by her, we decided to switch the roles around and have the main character a female and she gets the guy in the end. We decided to have a role reversal to subvert the usual conventions but still have similar techniques to the film noir genre. Another factor which was similar to film noir was the type of music we used, throughout the sequence we had a score, the type of music we used was very old fashioned and wasn’t modern music this contributed to the older side of the film, like in film noir which is based in the 1940’s the music just adds that final touch to make it sound old fashioned. We decided to mirror film noir in the colour scheme we used, this was the black and white colour scheme, this is because typical film noir was low budget and in black and white, so imitating this again contributes to the film noir genre. Other films that used black and white for example Sin City, trying to emphasise the fact it’s suppose to be film noir. However in our film we decided to change the contrast to make it a little bit darker, this was to support the enigma created. To make our film more like film noir we added a letter box to our film, although at first it was just an experiment to see what it looked like, we decided to add it throughout as it made the screen smaller, showing less of the setting and of the characters which creates mystery if you can’t fully see them. Instead of using a voice over, which is what most film noir films have, we decided to continue with the score and to just add subtitles where there would be dialogue, “she wants to see you now” not only does the audience have no idea who the characters are talking about but the fact they cannot hear her voice contributes to the enigmatic feel and again isn’t giving to much about her character away. Also by not using a voice over it again challenges one of the conventions of film noir film as they typically had a voice over.
Our film doesn’t really represent any particular social groups however in the way the characters are dressed, to put them across as a certain type of person. In our sequence we have 2 main characters a female character carrying the note and the male character retrieving the note. The female character is dressed head to toe in black. But to show she is a woman, she is wearing tights with heels therefore the audience are aware that she is female also we see the back of her head to show she has long blonde hair, just to make sure the audience definitely know she is a woman. As the male character is also dressed in head to toe in black clothing, however to show he is a male, he is wearing black trousers with black shoes. The reason we decided to dress them both in black was so that the audience didn’t know anything about these characters, age, facial features or lifestyle, the only thing they were able to get from this film is what sex they are. This creates a lot of enigma, if the audience don’t know anything about the characters.
Due to our film being low budget and produced by amateurs, it is less likely to be shown on any of the big 4 TV companies, however if our film was produced professionally with a larger budget it would be more likely to be shown on film four or thriller movie channels, due how the film is made. As the style of our film is like a crime detective thriller and typically these are the types of films that would be shown on film four or thriller movie channels. The audience would most likely be those of who are interested in a crime murder mystery thriller so by using the convection of those films, though not the high budget ones such as ‘sin city’ we found that our film was appropriate for this audience. There is no specific age, sex or lifestyle that would sway more to this film as in sin city it attracted a more broad audience so with similar conventions to it our film could potentially do the same due it being a modern day film noir.
I have learnt about so many new techniques by creating this product. Such as a more advance knowledge in using Imovie for example different transitions, how to go through it frame by frame, how to add music and adjust different levels of the sound and how to change the colour itself and also Garage band, although we didn’t create our own music we did give it a shot and learnt different ways to create different sounds but just decided to research some older music and use that instead. But with Imovie we learnt how to cut the music and repeat specific parts to be in synch with the movie itself, also changing different parts of the film such as the colour scheme. So all this practice has given us a more advanced knowledge on using this type of software.
The actual framing of the film itself didn’t have a huge amount of different shots, we decided to stick to simple yet effective shots such as long takes of the long shots to establish the setting and with the positioning of the character in the centre slowly moving further away give the impression that time is precious and if not sorted out it will all disappear. The editing included was a lot of long takes so the editing wasn’t as sharp however when doing the match on action the editing was done very well and looked very smooth when watching the through, the reason we used match on action was to show a wider range of shots and techniques otherwise our production would be very boring throughout. With the use of fade out in the middle of our production at the end of the woman walking was used to show that time had passes and to make it all fit in otherwise it didn’t look right and with the music in synch with the movement the fade out comes in at the right time. Again with the fade out at the end it is used to show that time is passing by and to show it has come to a close.
We picked the pier to create the mystery with the decision of the railings and the barriers and the rusty metal gave it an old touch as we are unable to change anything around, the only thing we could control was when people walked by we had to stop to make sure there was no interference. When it comes to the lighting again there wasn’t much more we could do but accept the current weather decisions ad try and use them to our advantage. When filming it was slightly brighter than we expected but it was still cloudy so we continued filming and when editing we were able to change the brightness and contrast to make it duller to give it that sense of darkness and isolation. There wasn’t much we could control, but what we could we linked it with the uncontrollable such as the weather to make everything fit in, for example the dull day is linked with the costume as it means we had to wear a coat as it was cold and dull.
Since doing our preliminary task we have learnt a lot on creating video footage. We have learnt to control and take advantages of different factors, such as setting we decided to go outside and take a risk on the weather even though it worked in our favour. I have definitely learnt new camera skills, such as repeating each part several times so that we get the best choice and have lots of options when editing and also in case some of it goes wrong. I learnt that a tripod is definitely necessary no matter what; this will benefit our film, as our shots will be much smoother and not so amateur like. I have learnt that a lot more time needs to be spent on editing, as our preliminary task was only short it didn’t require much editing, however this piece on the other hand, needed much more work done on it and took up a lot of our time. So by doing the preliminary task it has given us an insight as to what to expect when doing this piece of coursework and has definitely benefited us, as our coursework wouldn’t be half of what it is now as we would have been unaware what to expect so the preliminary task was a stepping stone on what to do next.