Before we could produce a neo-noir we needed to know what interestets our target audience. so we compliled some questionaires to see what our target audience would like to see in a neo-noir.
Sex: Male Female
Sex: 16-20 20+
Do you enjoy violent thriller films i.e. “kill Bill”? Yes No
How often do you watch a movie? Daily/Weekly/Monthly/Yearly
Do you like to have a narrative twist to keep you on your toes? Yes No
Do you prefer a happy ending? Yes No
Do now what a Film Noir is? Yes No
If yes, have you watched if so please specify.
Do you enjoy neo-noir? Yes No
If yes specify which ones you have seen.
Wednesday, 5 May 2010
The Exchange Brief
Our next task we were asked to complete was another filming exercise. This time we were asked to take what video, editing and production skills we had learnt from the preliminary exercise and produce another video; this time our brief was: to produce a film of two people exchanging an object. But this time there would be no dialogue unlike the first. But we were allowed to put in a piece of music to help build suspense for the viewer. this would be a trial run at a neo-noir film opening and any mistakes made in this piece would help educate us on our final neo-noir piece of work.
3 Film Openings
Kill Bill - Kill bill opens with very scared heavy breathing diagetic sound. Then a bland and white shot of a woman that appears to have been beaten up appears. In the background you can hear the sound of approaching footsteps. As she tries to compose her breathing the shoot cuts to a tracking close-up of the boots walking down a wooden floor the women charter then looks just off camera to which the audience presumes is the person who has just walked up to her. The character then speaks in a gruffly man voice. And goes to wipe some blood off the face of the woman. Clearly lettered on the face towel is the word Bill. The woman character appears to not want the character to touch her and refuses to speak. Her breathing gets heavier again. The male character then exchanges a few more lines of dialogue before the woman character says “Bill, it’s your ba...by” at which point a loud gunshot is heard and blood splatters across the floor from a headshot at the woman. There are no titles in the scene to tell you any companies or the film title or actors. But the very basic shoots straight away built a massive amount of suspense and present the viewer with a huge enigma for the film.
Shooter – Shooter starts from an extreme long shot and the camera dollies in. As if mounted to a helicopter it then tracks a river downstream at a slow pace the main actors name appears followed by a customises film title. Then various names appear on screen for producers, actors etc. The camera cuts across a meander and looks like it’s going to crash into a cliff but it then tracks up the cliff to the top and very slowly continues forward. Were it focuses on a camouflaged sniper rifle. The shot then cuts 180* to were the camera was where we see the two snipers disguised as bushes. At this point there has been oricestrical music which dies down. And the spotter speaks. The camera then cuts to a POV through a sniper sight.
We then discover that the two are just making conversation to pass time. At which point the camera goes to a US military camp were the viewer is shown hostile forces moving towards a US convoy. This is just in front of the snipers position. The sniper shoots and kills two men and the convoy continues. Then about 5 other enemy vehicles follow the convoy and the sniper has to engage them. The sniper comes under fire. The US camp chooses to leave them there as they are not supposed to be there. An enemy helicopter then shoots at them and the spotter is killed the sniper then does everything he can to shoot the helicopter. And eventually he shoots the rota blade and the helicopter crashes. I feel that this film would appeal to its target audience as although it is different to kill bill it again builds suspense to the viewer, and although the scene is longer than kill bill you still feel a high amount of tension. The time allows the viewer to feel for the two US soldiers. It also gives the viewer a story narrative to go on.
Sin city – the first scene has a title on it called “The Customer is Always Right” the scene opens and a women steps out onto a roof top balcony. A man starts a voice over about what he see and the viewers see him walk out. The two characters exchange dialogue and there is a faint sound of a saxophone in the background which is a non-diagetic sound. This suggests to the audience that there is romance between these two characters. They kiss and a strange style of cinematography is used. Just the main features of the backdrop are highlighted in white. With the two charters everything else is black. The scene looks like an art silhouette. And again we hear the male voiceover. The saxophone is very prominent again here. Then he tells her that he loves her in voice over and explains why he has to do it; as the audience hears a silencer gun shot. The audience feel saddened from what has happened. A long silence is heard as you can hear diagetic raindrops, before the voiceover oh him saying that he will ‘cash her check in the morning’ at which point a strange fade out sound is heard and the camera pans out of the location quite fast and curls around the city towers to reveal the buildings to say – Sin City. Again this is a different genre of film opening and gives the audience a lot of questions and enigmas to think about and answer. Again like shooter we feel for these two characters before we are startled that one of them dies.
So I feel that these three films opening have taught me that for a film opening to be great you must first appeal to your audience. You have to make the opening scene interesting. They will have paid money to see this film and if they don’t think that the film is any good in the first 3 minutes then they are not going to want to watch the rest. In order to keep their attention and make them want to watch the rest of the film I believe that you must give the audience a puzzle/ enigma to solve or think about. This puzzle will make them want to watch the whole film to find out what actually happened and see if their answer was right. To help build this puzzle I believe that suspense must be built up this can be done through the lengths of shot or by the soundtrack. Or even by what’s happening in the narrative. Usually with the suspense the audience will want someone to associate themselves with or even like. So an insight to what the charters like will do this. A voiceover will usually do this. The voice over makes us feel like we are in that charters head and that we know what he or she is thinking.
Shooter – Shooter starts from an extreme long shot and the camera dollies in. As if mounted to a helicopter it then tracks a river downstream at a slow pace the main actors name appears followed by a customises film title. Then various names appear on screen for producers, actors etc. The camera cuts across a meander and looks like it’s going to crash into a cliff but it then tracks up the cliff to the top and very slowly continues forward. Were it focuses on a camouflaged sniper rifle. The shot then cuts 180* to were the camera was where we see the two snipers disguised as bushes. At this point there has been oricestrical music which dies down. And the spotter speaks. The camera then cuts to a POV through a sniper sight.
We then discover that the two are just making conversation to pass time. At which point the camera goes to a US military camp were the viewer is shown hostile forces moving towards a US convoy. This is just in front of the snipers position. The sniper shoots and kills two men and the convoy continues. Then about 5 other enemy vehicles follow the convoy and the sniper has to engage them. The sniper comes under fire. The US camp chooses to leave them there as they are not supposed to be there. An enemy helicopter then shoots at them and the spotter is killed the sniper then does everything he can to shoot the helicopter. And eventually he shoots the rota blade and the helicopter crashes. I feel that this film would appeal to its target audience as although it is different to kill bill it again builds suspense to the viewer, and although the scene is longer than kill bill you still feel a high amount of tension. The time allows the viewer to feel for the two US soldiers. It also gives the viewer a story narrative to go on.
Sin city – the first scene has a title on it called “The Customer is Always Right” the scene opens and a women steps out onto a roof top balcony. A man starts a voice over about what he see and the viewers see him walk out. The two characters exchange dialogue and there is a faint sound of a saxophone in the background which is a non-diagetic sound. This suggests to the audience that there is romance between these two characters. They kiss and a strange style of cinematography is used. Just the main features of the backdrop are highlighted in white. With the two charters everything else is black. The scene looks like an art silhouette. And again we hear the male voiceover. The saxophone is very prominent again here. Then he tells her that he loves her in voice over and explains why he has to do it; as the audience hears a silencer gun shot. The audience feel saddened from what has happened. A long silence is heard as you can hear diagetic raindrops, before the voiceover oh him saying that he will ‘cash her check in the morning’ at which point a strange fade out sound is heard and the camera pans out of the location quite fast and curls around the city towers to reveal the buildings to say – Sin City. Again this is a different genre of film opening and gives the audience a lot of questions and enigmas to think about and answer. Again like shooter we feel for these two characters before we are startled that one of them dies.
So I feel that these three films opening have taught me that for a film opening to be great you must first appeal to your audience. You have to make the opening scene interesting. They will have paid money to see this film and if they don’t think that the film is any good in the first 3 minutes then they are not going to want to watch the rest. In order to keep their attention and make them want to watch the rest of the film I believe that you must give the audience a puzzle/ enigma to solve or think about. This puzzle will make them want to watch the whole film to find out what actually happened and see if their answer was right. To help build this puzzle I believe that suspense must be built up this can be done through the lengths of shot or by the soundtrack. Or even by what’s happening in the narrative. Usually with the suspense the audience will want someone to associate themselves with or even like. So an insight to what the charters like will do this. A voiceover will usually do this. The voice over makes us feel like we are in that charters head and that we know what he or she is thinking.
Evaluation of Exchange
This production task was more challenging than the first preliminary exercise. This time we were asked to take more thought into consideration regarding the environment we would be filming in. To give our productions a feel of noir or even neo-noir. Which type was not specified in the brief. But our group choose to use a neo-noir feel. We had a first group meeting to discuss possible locations to film in. We quickly decided that we would like to use drugs and money as the items being exchanged. This was mainly due to the fact that those two items we felt would appeal to our target audience. We wanted the viewers to see that what the characters were doing was illegal.
After deciding the items we then needed a location that would match the theme of drugs. We went around the group asking each person to show a location that they know and feel that would fit the mise-en-scene of a drug exchange. Each person explained were their locations was and why they felt it was a good place to shoot a drug exchange. It was decided that we would use my location which was situated about 500 metres away from the college. It was a dark alley with old bricks and bunkers in. Most of the brick had moss on it and the location felt really gray and dark which they group liked. But a week before filming one of the groups stumbled across a location near the marina in Ipswich and said it’s perfect for what we want. I really liked what they had found and wasn’t bothered with the change from my location to theirs.
Whilst filming in the location we found some really good locations were cameras could be positioned like fire escapes three stories high. But we were told not to use the location as it did not meet the health and safety requirements to shoot. Also whilst filming we found that some shoots at the marina worked better than the planned story board so we shoot them and included them in the edit. We were also very lucky to have the Suffolk police helicopter fly over our location whilst filming. Again the group felt filming this and putting it in our video would make the audience feel that the characters are doing illegal substances.
The overall task was very successful as we completed all the pre-production paperwork to shoot off the site of the college in time for our filming day. The mise-en-scene was great as the location was what we wanted and we didn’t have to compromise.
The cinematography was also very good, although confined by health and safety we still managed to shoot some really good extreme high and low angle shoots. The only problem with Dutch tilts is its very hard to get the target on the thirds line but I used the knowledge learnt from the mistake in the preliminary exercise and managed to get a really amazing high angle Dutch tilt shot.
The editing also went very well we had very good footage from the cinematography but the continuity didn’t seem to work. We couldn’t accurately show the passing of time. This really made the production value of the piece look really low. But reusing shoots like the police helicopter and a shoot were the character starts walking to the location and gets to the location of the exchange is the same but we used the same clip. Again not having to have to use sound made a vast improvement on my first preliminary piece of work as a boom was not required. The only downside to sound in the piece was the two tracks we used. If we used one sound track (the first one), then the film would have felt a lot more tense. With the second soundtrack in there at the end test audiences said that spoilt the suspense that the first piece had given them.
After deciding the items we then needed a location that would match the theme of drugs. We went around the group asking each person to show a location that they know and feel that would fit the mise-en-scene of a drug exchange. Each person explained were their locations was and why they felt it was a good place to shoot a drug exchange. It was decided that we would use my location which was situated about 500 metres away from the college. It was a dark alley with old bricks and bunkers in. Most of the brick had moss on it and the location felt really gray and dark which they group liked. But a week before filming one of the groups stumbled across a location near the marina in Ipswich and said it’s perfect for what we want. I really liked what they had found and wasn’t bothered with the change from my location to theirs.
Whilst filming in the location we found some really good locations were cameras could be positioned like fire escapes three stories high. But we were told not to use the location as it did not meet the health and safety requirements to shoot. Also whilst filming we found that some shoots at the marina worked better than the planned story board so we shoot them and included them in the edit. We were also very lucky to have the Suffolk police helicopter fly over our location whilst filming. Again the group felt filming this and putting it in our video would make the audience feel that the characters are doing illegal substances.
The overall task was very successful as we completed all the pre-production paperwork to shoot off the site of the college in time for our filming day. The mise-en-scene was great as the location was what we wanted and we didn’t have to compromise.
The cinematography was also very good, although confined by health and safety we still managed to shoot some really good extreme high and low angle shoots. The only problem with Dutch tilts is its very hard to get the target on the thirds line but I used the knowledge learnt from the mistake in the preliminary exercise and managed to get a really amazing high angle Dutch tilt shot.
The editing also went very well we had very good footage from the cinematography but the continuity didn’t seem to work. We couldn’t accurately show the passing of time. This really made the production value of the piece look really low. But reusing shoots like the police helicopter and a shoot were the character starts walking to the location and gets to the location of the exchange is the same but we used the same clip. Again not having to have to use sound made a vast improvement on my first preliminary piece of work as a boom was not required. The only downside to sound in the piece was the two tracks we used. If we used one sound track (the first one), then the film would have felt a lot more tense. With the second soundtrack in there at the end test audiences said that spoilt the suspense that the first piece had given them.
Tuesday, 4 May 2010
Report On Exchange
Our next task we were asked to complete was another filming exercise. This time we were asked to take what video, editing and production skills we had learnt from the preliminary exercise and produce another video; this time our brief was: to produce a film of two people exchanging an object. But this time there would be no dialogue unlike the first. But we were allowed to put in a piece of music to help build suspense for the viewer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)