For our film studies practical coursework my group decided to focus on the noir, more specifically the neo-noir genre that has been used in films like "Brick" Rian Johnson, 2005. The choosing of this genre affected many group decisions like the cinematography and sound, the music had to be slow and melancholy. My part of the project, as director, was affected by the neo-noir genre with things such as keeping the pace of the movie constant and instructing the actor to portray the correct emotions and not be too overly dramatic in shots like the one below when he has been shot. My specific area of micro responsibility was to guide the actor in what we wanted him to achieve and to see the "big picture" as director and make sure that the other members of the group's micro elements fitted together as a whole film. The group worked very well together, we all felt comfortable to make our own suggestions and that they would be listened to and considered, such as when we made and re-made our story board. Most aspects of the film we agreed on so there were no significant disputes and any minor ones were easily resolved by compromise on all parts, an example of this is with the decision to not have the music building up as the film progressed. We had originally thought this would help create tension but after editing the footage we agreed that the music suited the atmosphere and pace better if it stayed slow and pensive throughout the film. All through the process of making our film extract the group changed lots of little things, such as the music as previously mentioned, and the angles of some of the shots whilst filming, I wanted to see if the shot looked better from different angles so we tried a few. A big adaptation we had to make during production was the voice over, originally we had asked to record the deputy head teacher making a speech to our character but after the recording failed twice we felt it would be easier to ask Ram (Cinematographer) to say the lines rather then bother the deputy head a third time. This worked fine in the film extract and didn't really change anything at all in the way the film extract was perceived. I was aiming as the director to make the audience curious and tense whilst watching our film extract and also to care about the character and his fate. I think this was achieved by the ambiguous content of the dialogue, leaving the audience uncertain as to the circumstances surrounding this boy. By working with the actor I also hope that our character was portrayed correctly and the audience is intrigued by his fate and is also concerned about the boy as well. I think the setting worked nicely as well because school type buildings always seem somewhat surreal and creepy when other students have left and it's dark outside because of an almost subconscious feeling of it being a forbidden place to be, I think that this, when coupled with the lighting and saturation applied to the film extract makes the atmosphere mysterious and eerie which is very appropriate to the genre and the desired audience reaction of being inquisitive and on-edge. As director I was not needed for anything particularly technical and therefore my technical abilities did not hinder the production in any way. The small amount of technical work I did do, I was capable of, and the groups technical ability was high so everything we wanted in the film extract was there on that front. Nicola (Editor) successfully spliced together two shots we filmed to create match on action of our actor walking down the hallway, Rachel (Sound Editor) created a praiseworthy piece of music to go with our film extract and Ram handled the filming nicely. The feedback we received was positive about the range of shots we used, our point of view shot at the end, the setting and the lack of props drawing attention to the character which makes me think they liked the simplicity of film. We also had positive feedback about the pace of the film, the voice over and the music, which I think is what made the atmosphere of the film so successful. Something we could improve on which was pointed out in the feedback was the continuity, we filmed on two separate days and therefore the time of day outside didn't quite match the time of day inside, this could easily be avoided in future films by paying more attention to the time of filming. Another thing we could improve on is giving more explanation in the extract as some people got confused by the ambiguity of our film. Overall I am very proud of our film extract and believe the group worked well in all aspects to make a good piece of work. I had a lot of fun making this and I learned a lot about transferring film ideas from paper to screen and all that it involves.
The genre for sequence was neo-noir and we wanted the sound used to create an atmosphere and suspense. The sound throughout our sequence is a calm melody. To begin with we wanted a calm melody leading into a tension buliding melody. I looked at the fight scene in Twilight for this because they use tension buliding music at the beginning of the scene which then flows into a calmer melody. This helped me to understand how to combine the different melodies for our sequence,
However after quicktiming it and watching it back we felt that the tension melody was too much se we decided to carry on with the calmness till the end, which I made combineing two different melodies. This fitted much better.
When it was time to choose the music used we all had our say in it because we all took into consideration what everybody wanted and thought. It was hard trying to find a piece of music that fitted well, so in the end I chose two pieces and combined them, which I felt worked really well. When the Protaginist is getting 'lectured' by the teacher we did orginally record the depty head teacher but twhen we uploaded the sound onto the computer it was too quiet and we couldn't make it louder, so we asked her to record it again but when we uploaded it, it hadn't recorded, so instead of asking her a 3rd time we asked our cinematographer, Ram Kaur, to record herself saying the 'potential speech' because she said it clearer than the rest of us. When James walks out of the room and carries on walking down the corrider, we have Ram's voice carrying on talking over the top, but it gets quieter then picks back up again because we wanted it to give the impression that he has had enough and has other important things on his mind, so he blurs her out, its almost as if he is in a daydream. Although first-person narration was a popular device among the writers, it put the viewer into the mind of the protagonist in that way the viewer could experience in a more intimate way the angst of the character. I felt that this still worked successfully because you can tell that the character has had enough, by his body language and that the voice over keeps blurring out. I was specifically pleased with the part where James is outside and walking and he can hear footsteps behind him, the sound of heels. We filmed this part by holding the camera at foot level and the person holding the camera was wearing the heels and so when it came to edit the sound this part was very simple to do because the cameras microphone picked the sound up of the heels very well. For this part we looked at the scene from 'Brick' where Brendon is running away from some guy with a knife, this was very helpful for me. I was also really pleased with the music we used, because although we wanted a sound which would create a bulided up tension, the calm melody I chose, I felt worked really well because it still gives an eerie effect to the sequence because you don't know what is going on so there is always the suspense effect. There is a huge importance of sound in the cinema because it helps generate responses in the audience. For example, if the music is happy, then the audience will feel more settled, to music that is slowly building up becasue the audience expect something bad/scary to happen. I felt that in the end our sequences was successful, however I would probably change the ending, so y0u can actually hear a gun-shot sound instead of just guessing what happened to him, because when other people were viewing our sequence they were slightly confused about what happened to the 'Protaganist' because there was no gun-shot sound, but all in all I am pleased with how the sound on our sequence turned out.
We had chosen the genre of neo-noir as we had recently seen a number of films in this genre and so we had quite a few good ideas that we thought of that were in this style. It influenced the way that we filmed the sequence as we had to constantly think how the shots would be edited to gether at the end and would create the Neo-Noir feel we were after. In our group we had all pitched in with the idea that we had finally come up with. However we did have a first idea that was like the one that we had filmed, however we had just changed a few of the main ideas as to where it will be set and the rough outline of the opening film. As for the character I had helped come up with what he will be doing and what he should wear, also I had thought of some of the minor but still important shots that we could film. In our first idea we had planned to set the scene in a classroom with a young boy sitting in the room and there would be cut shots of him to the clock that would have been in the room, but never seeing his face. This changed to him walking alone down a hall and out into the open, then you would hear footsteps in the background and then he would be shot. Later on in the film you would go back into time and find out what had happened to cause him to be shot and under what circumstances. When James is walking down the corridor, we filmed a front shot and then filmed a back shot of him walking down the corridor and outside. When it came to editing I did match on action cutting and tried to match his speed of walking together, so it cuts from front to back smoothly. I feel that I had done this successfully and it works very well and gives the right tone to the beginning of the sequence. We decided to keep the camera close to James so that he filed the whole shot, as with the back shots the gap between James and the camera gives the sensation of you following him through to outside. Through the second half of our sequence you see James going outside and the colour of the image changes, this was because of the time of day that we filmed. I had to use the colour corrector on the images to make them darker so it looked like night. However in doing this it doesn’t look that realistic, but still you get the idea that it is suppose to be getting dark. One Neo-Noir film that had influenced us to go down this path was Brick,(Rian Johnson, 2005). This film is edited in such a way that it has both fast and slow editing but still effective, the editing also leaves the viewer wanting to know more and keeps them hooked to the story line. In Brick there are quick shots all from different camera angles which to helps with keeping the audience interested with what is going on through the film, there are cuts from close-ups to mid shots, long shots then back to close-ups. This gives the unique look of a noir film and what I had tried to achieve. The rate of editing in this Noir film is fast paced and always shows interest in the main character. There is one scene that influenced our scene of walking down the corridor, it is of Brendan running through the school and having lots of different shots following him. I thought that this was a good idea as it gives the editor a chance to pick what camera angles to put where and in which order. We had gotten some class feedback on what people thought and whether it could have been improved. Most of our feedback was positive; the feedback was centered on micro areas. For Mise-en-scene people thought: fairly simple and fewer props draws attention to the character, setting was an easy option, however it works as it is about school, Times of day change from night to midday. Cinematography, Good range of shots and camera angles, Point of view shots used well, Good range of shots. Editing, the pace of the film was good and the varied length of the shots was effective, Saturation applied was nice. Sound, the sound captures the emotion of the boy well, the voice over throughout was good, though gunshot sound would have been good.
For the film extract assignment our group focused on the genre of film noir; we narrowed down this broad genre to the more modern neo- noir. Our chosen genre had a lot of influence with the choices we made as a group and me as my role of cinematographer. The main aspects that were affected by our genre choice were the type of shots we used, the editing and music. The shot types we used were very “pretty” to look at, and had an artistic flare to them. This was influenced by films like “Brick” Rian Johnson, 2005 (photo on right) and “Control” Anton Corbijin, 2007 (photo on left.)
As a group we were all involved in developing the narrative to make it a stronger, in depth piece. Using my role as cinematographer I was able to apply the main convention of neo noir, being that the type of shots are very stylish and classic looking.
I am very pleased at how well we all worked as a group, there were no conflicts and we all agreed with each other and helped develop each member’s ideas. The narrative was very easy to develop, as it is a fairly simple storyline. Our protagonist was very easy to build on, as he was a generic character type of neo- noir films. In our group, the genre didn’t really need as much developing, as we stuck to the conventions of a neo- noir film. We made our character to be a troubled teen, who has gotten mixed up in the wrong crowd. This is shown through the fact that he’s sitting outside the head teachers office, and is being “told off” and informed on his true potential. In our sequence, we see him being followed, and finally shot. In the extract we never find out if the protagonist lives or dies, but for the rest of the film, it would be a flashback into his life a week before he got shot. Showing the audience how and why he got into the situation he’s in now. This gives an audience the opportunity to sympathise with our protagonist, or to turn against him.
Throughout the planning and filming process we changed our plans a lot, even to the extent of changing our narrative. At first our narrative was too generic and very unoriginal in the way that it had been done before, several times. Our previous idea was to still have our protagonist to get shot, but this time he would be in detention, and we would show close ups of the clock, and emphasise the loud ticking noise. After looking over our synopsis again and being advised by our teacher we decided to change the narrative to something a lot stronger. Although we had drawn up a storyboard, we also tested out several different shots to see if they fit. We decided that it was better to have more footage than less; in the end we didn’t use these extra shots. Apart from the obvious change in narrative and storyline we didn’t make any other adjustments.
Being cinematographer I aimed to make the audience see that our extract was evidently a neo- noir based film. To do this I tried using really stylish shots, ones that would look attractive even as a still image. I used a lot of inspiration from other neo- noir films, “Brick” in particular, as the whole of our group had seen it, so it was easy to make links. I also wanted the moving shots to look modern and classy almost. The most successful moving shot, was the pan, which we had to film as I was moving backwards. To do this, I sat on a wheelchair, whilst another member of my group moved backward, whilst our protagonist walked forward. After a few attempts the shot was very triumphant. At this point of the sequence we didn’t want the audience to relate the protagonist in any way, so at points we purposely cut his head from the shot, only seeing his torso. This helped disassociate himself from any stereotype he may have been related to.
The feedback we received was not as constructive as we’d have liked, but still very complimentary and appreciated. We definitely had a problem with what time we’d film, as when we shot first, it was very dark outside, whereas when we shot second time, it was light. Our editor tried her hardest to de-saturate using the colour corrector on final cut express; which made the shot darker, but not as dark as previously, without losing our protagonist.
The fact that alongside Film studies I also study two other media orientated subjects which involve a lot of technical use, it was very easy for me as a cinematographer to use the camera, and all its functions to the best of its ability. The use of the camera, and my technical knowledge hindered our sequence in no way.
Overall I’m very pleased with our final piece, and I think as a group we worked very well. Not only creating a successful film extract but enjoying ourselves whilst doing so.
I like these shots because they are where i learned that actions that look unnatural in real life seem natural on film. i asked James to make his doodles more exaggerated in the shot which, whilst looking eccentric off camera, looked standard on camera. The same happened with the speed of James' steps when entering the office, on camera, his normal speed looked rushed and hasty. I asked him to slow his pace, which looked odd in real life but looked and matched the pace of the film much better.
This opening clip from Juno is similar to ours with the lone protagonist walking somewhere with non-diagetic sound, both clips make the audience curious about the character's destination and the circumstances surrounding them. the music is very different in our clip making it darker whereas the Juno clip has a much lighter atmosphere which is also helped by the animation. the atmospheres of the two clips match the two very different endings, one ending in pregnancy, the other, death.
The editing for this clip is interesting for me because there are a lot of close-ups, to mid shots and long shots, this makes this clip interesting and makes the audience tense and wounder what could happen to him next.
