Final - Dirty Little Secret

Jonno Megan Ben Lishia prelim

Question 7 - Looking back at your preliminary task, what do you feel you have learnt in the progression from it to your final product?

From the start of the year to now we have come a long way from our preliminary short over the past few months. Although we managed to film and editing within two lessons for our Prelim, we spent a great deal making sure we had done all the research that was required for us to develop on our ideas on our Opening Sequence. We have definitely come along way since our 30 second Prelim. Our targets were met from our Prelim to our Opening Sequence, we were all quiet on set (this was easily done and controlled well). The other task was acting continuity, which as shown in our video of Dirty Little Secret, there was nothing different in the way the actors talked or acted. Third and finally the last target was experiment more with lighting and camera angles, this will be demonstrated as I progress further into this answer.

Lighting...

The Preliminary task was filming in our tutors office, we used the natural light coming in through the window and had no artificial light on set. No reflectors were used on set either during the filming as we wanted to create a realistic environment so it would seem believable to the audience. The opening sequence of Dirty Little Secret was a lot more complicated than that, as we had to film our entire sequence in the TV Studio and convince the audience that we are not in a college buildings studio. This meant careful planning on what light was appropriate for a Film Noir styled film. We wanted to keep it low key, so playing around with the lights was crucial with creating certain shadows on objects or the actors. Each shot we used 3 different lights, make sure we put them on at an angle at the actors faces so it would highlight key aspects of that persons face. We wanted our opening sequence to look more 'arty' than realistic like our short Prelim. I think we really achieved this and allowed us to be more creative with our lighting and effects.


Camera Angles...

The Preliminary task we stuck to the camera basics which was shot reverse shot (which is a reoccurring theme in our opening sequence as well), Close ups of specific peoples faces and Match on Action shots and the occasional use of panning. We kept it plain and simple to give the aspect of two people talking in an office scenario. We took all our knowledge from the prelim task and recreated them within our interrogation scene, which we used similar shots but added some more challenging shots to compliment the simple shots we decided to put in too break up the scene a little was an Aerial shot of the two detective talking, we did this bad standing on a step ladder and free hand film the scene for a few second. This was really effective and more experimental than previous shots, which helped boost the cinematography overall. We decided to be less shy with close ups and do more extreme close ups of the detectives smoking to pull away from the typical shot reverse shot technique. Another few shots we used were mid/wide shots, to show the audience more of the detectives surroundings and create my black space around certain characters to create the aura of enigma. 


Correcting Noise...
So we had problems during editing because of noise from off the frame was notice-able. We worked around this but was really hard editing around it or changing the noise/voice recordings over. The opening Sequence for Dirty Little Secret was a lot better for us because we didn't have any distraction noises in the background that we had to correct. The only thing we had to do was the sound was drag it too fit around the cuts we made I.E sound from one clip going on to another clip, on purpose not by accident. Then once we made sure the sound and speech was all to our liking, we made sure that some of the quieter parts of speech were made loud so the audience can hear what they are saying and that the voices don't go out of key/loudness.


Continuity...
Every film will have at least one continuity failure in, with our Prelim it was the acting which didn't match and didn't remain consistent. This made it hard to edit around and caused frustration, so when we began filming our opening sequence we made sure to check over and over again just incase we made any continuity mistakes. Other than one mistake which we resolved by clever editing, it was a lot smoother process than the Prelim, and we pushed ourselves not to make any serious mistakes which could make the opening sequence less dramatic and bring the viewer away from what they should be watch. Overall I am quite pleased with our final outcome.

The preliminary activity brought a lot of mistake to the surface, but made us realize what to look out for and make sure we don't make the same mistakes twice. The Opening Sequence allowed us to experiment more with lighting, camera angles...etc. I'm glad we didn't edit or morph the footage of the prelim, because it allowed us to to try out a mixture of different style with our Opening Sequence footage, where we played around with the contrast and brightness to the desaturation and colour tools. I feel me and my group have made great progress in completing our short sequence Dirty Little Secret as we got to explore bigger technologies (Cannon XF 305 Cameras compared to the smaller handheld ones) and got us more involved as a group with decision making. 

Question 6 - What have you learnt about technologies from the process of constructing this product?

Technologies Throughout our Project
Making this opening sequence allowed us to experiment with a lot of different technologies. One of the first things we started with was creating this blog, using the website blogger. I was used to using other blogging sites such as Tumblr...etc. But Blogger was a completely new experience, it allowed me to blog my work easily and quickly although putting images within the blog was a little hassle, overall it was quite simple to use to document my work.


The actual filming of the project, we used the TV Studio camera (Canon XF 305), the camera's were easy to use, the ones provided to us in the studio. They were full HD and we could easily zoom in using the special remote on the tripod. These were all quite brand new camera's, different to the ones we used for our A2 music video (as I have done AS/A2 in one year). After we had shot all our footage we transferred it to the computer and then transferred the data through a hard drive to a computer where we could start editing our footage together.


Majority of the time we were in the editing suites using an editing software called Adobe Premier. We cut all the clips we needed and made sure we fitted them right on the time line. I had already used Final Cut Pro so I kind of knew how to cut clips and fiddle around with them putting them into order. After we had the basic draft of our opening sequence in order, we experimented around with effects, the one we used all the was through our footage was the desaturation filter to make in black and white (to create an authentic Film Noir Style feel). After this we decided to create a more atmospheric effect, we increased the intensity of the brightness and the contrast, to create more strong contrasting shadows. When all the effects were done we then turned to the sound, which we had to change the vulume of the speaking voices in some clips and put non diegetic music for our opening sequence. For the last week of editing, we had a dilemma of not being able to use the computer because they were over booked, so we then had to transfer over all our date onto my laptop and edit half the sequence through a downloaded trial of Adobe Premier.


Once we had finally finished the filming and editing stages, so after more blog posts we are now uploading it to Youtube, one of the biggest video hosting websites on the internet, this was a simple progress, and then putting the embedded code on the final blog post.

Question 5 - How did you attract/address your audience?

1. What are your initial thoughts on our opening sequence?

"I thought it was really tense and atmospheric. I really liked the music, it made me want to watch the rest of it."

2. Does it remind you of any films you've already seen?

"It was really reminiscent of classic film noirs, I think the femme fatale character is a lot like the ones in Neo-Noir films."

3. How did the opening make you feel? 

"It made me feel quite intrigued, I wanted to find out what happened in the rest of the film."

4. If the film was released, would you go an see it based on our opening sequence?

"Yes definitely!"

Question 4 - Who would be the audience for your media product?

Personal Profile - Liam Crosbie
Name: Liam John Diagoro Crosbie
Age: 26
Location: London, Swiss Cottage
Occupation: Bartender/Script Writer
Likes/Dislikes/Hobbies: Script Writing, Film making, Going Cinema.
Doesn't like films that don't have a good plot.
What films they like: Crime/Action/World Cinema
40s Cinema - Film Noir and Gangsta
What TV Programs they watch: Torchwood, The Sopranos, Animated
What music they listen too: The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, Juliette Lewis...


Why would this film appeal to them?
Our film invites a range of people with all different likes and dislikes towards the film industry. This person is a mature adult who diverse's himself in script writing and associates himself with the crime/action genre. He respects and acknowledges a variety of different films and also has the keen eye for older films from the 40s. Our film is a mixture of the old style Film Noir with the new so trying to put it back on the map so younger generations can experience what their grandparents endured as they grew up. We created a Neo-Noir but followed the basic conventions to make it fit into the bracket. Liam would be attracted to the idea of enigma we introduce from our opening sequence as he likes a good mystery plot that doesn't give much away.

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

What is a production company?
A production company is what provides the basic platform for films and other media. They provide the funding and equipment to help the project become complete. Our company we made is called Demi-Monde Productions we played around with different things but this related to the type of film we were making. Demi-Monde means a small isolated place, usually the 'underworld' type of city where criminals and the marginal all congregate. Our made up production company specializes in Film Noir and Neo Noir styled films, that is self funded by Movie Stars to help promote old movies and get younger generations emerged into old style film making, but attract it by making it so that teenagers can also respect this certain type of cinema.


What is a distribution company?

A distribution company sells the rights to Cinemas, Television Channels, Retailers...etc so that a film or type of media can get seen by the public. Their job is to make sure they distribute it too the right people in places where it will be noticed and seen. The distribution company might give it to the cinema, and ask for a certain percentage of a ticket payed by a customer. The bigger the film and distribution company, the bigger the release of the film. A major company, will get it distributed across the world, too many top cinemas I.E Odeon or Television Companies such as Sky (Movie Channels). Smaller Independent companies are for the smaller budgeted films, so these will be distributed to smaller cinema's more along the Art house type and not Big named ones. Then at some point the film could make it's way on the TV channel Film Four. Our Company Black and White Pictures is a small independent distributors to help get small budget films into Small Arthouse Cinemas and also available on sites like I Tunes, Love Film and Netflix. It main form of advertisement is using Viral Marketing, using Facebook and Twitter to help younger generations get more involved with smaller budget films.


Where would funding come from for your film?
As the UK Film Council has been forced to shut down, smaller budgeted films may never see the light of day. Most of the funding would come from Actors who want to help younger film makers in kick starting there career, or members of our group working on bigger projects to help fund our smaller film (Actors such as Gary Oldman have done this to fund own films, Nil By Mouth). Other funding could come from Film Four which shows movies from all different parts of the world and all types of budgets, so looking for funding from them could be a good help if we shared the rights and allowed them to screen our film on their television channel.


Some Film Four Funded Films...

• Trainspotting
• The Iron Lady
• Sexy Beast
• Slumdog Millionaire
• This Is England

Order of Titles that appear in our Opening Sequence

• Black and White Pictures - Our distribution comes first as they are the ones who have helped promote and distribute our film in all the right locations and done their research on what areas and who would view this film.
• Demi-Monde Productions - Our production team that helped find the funds and equipment so we could actually make our film.
• Highest Billing Actor - The star of the film and the lead role. 
• Other billing Actors - The rest of the main cast will now be mentioned until the next series of titles, no extras, just other key actors who aren't in a lead role.
• Script Writer - The one who has wrote the script for the film now comes after all the actors, they are the ones that brought the script to the table.
• Title of Film - Reminding the viewers of the title of the film, usually comes in around here.
• Sound and Editing - The people that pieced all the film together to bring it as a whole.
• Director - The director will come last, the one who directed the film and had complete control of how the film looked and what went on in Pre/Post Production and during the filming.

Question 2 - How does your media product represent particular social groups?

Our chosen social group we wanted to reach out for was women, possibly some women that believe in feminist views as per say. We made our lead feminine role very strong independent character, but her motives were on the bad side. How people interpret the character could go both way, one way could say that women are evil, and seduce men into doing their awful bidding, on the other hand women may look up to this strong feminine role, as it symbolises that women are powerful and have full control over situations involving the masculine. 

The way we presented our Femme Fatale Vivienne was a strong character who seduces a detective to help her get out of murder. We made sure she looked glamorous, Curly short hair, red lipstick, Vintage style clothing which were expensive looking and made her watch several screenings of scenes from other Film Noir's so she could develop her posture to convey certain messages on screen. The way she dressed is how a lot of girls dress nowadays, as people go looking for vintage clothing trying to get the 40s look. Girls will look up to this as usual 'men' are usually the central focus in films whereas we have developed a female role people can kind of aspire too. We also made our actress take on some characteristics of the Ingénue, as she needs to come across innocent to the detective before she shows her true colours.


Films that we took inspiration from for our Femme Fatale:

• Phyllis Dietrichson - Double Indemnity
• Kathy Moffet - Out Of The Past
• Catherine Tramell - Basic Instinct
• Bridget Gregory - The Last Seduction
• Theda Bara a.k.a The Vamp - A fool there was

Question 1 - In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

Our opening sequence used a variety of different shots which either challenged conventions or developed them. I have selected a series of screen shots which will help me in aid to answer this question.


Title and Font Style

Typically Film Noir is classically known for it's dramatic Title Sequences, They rarely have fades to black and then text on screen, but apply the text over the actual film. The text sometimes dominates the screen but for us, we wanted to make sure our footage remained dominant over the text on screen. For example, classic films such as Murder, My Sweet and Double Indemnity, has the opening title completely across the frame, so you can slightly the footage behind it. This works well, but finding a text which can hold the frame was hard, so we thought we'd put the text around the action. We placed the text above the footage in the left hand corner as one of the actors moves out of frame to create a blank space. This worked well as it wasn't overpowering the images on screen. The font style we used for the opening sequence was 'Courier' which we thought looked the best to match the style of the film. We didn't use it in Bold because it took it's type writer style away from it, and wasn't overpowering to the images on screen but quite subtle and classic looking. Like we did for the title we kept the credits over the frame on top of the images, but not classically the same way film Noir used too. For example, the names of the actors and actresses etc went right across the screen over the images, which obstructed the viewer and took their view away from the images but towards the text. We did it so that it was over the black areas of the screen, so they did remain the focal point, but allowed the audience to continue watching the images as well.

Location and Setting

Dirty Little Secrets opening sequence was all filmed within a studio because this way we had access to all the different lights that we needed create the lighting in the style we wanted, whereas if we filming on location, trying to arrange the light or relying on natural lighting would of caused us problems. We had to different setting we needed to create, an interrogation room and an apartment. We used basic equipment  and nothing to over the top that would  make the scene look out of place or completely bizarre to its period. Whereas if we used one of our groups bedrooms, it would not fit in with the 40s style we were looking for. Old Hollywood films were generally filmed on a studio set, nothing natural but what was made for that specific scene, as we did not have the money or resources to do so, using our imaginations in the studio were crucial to make sure that the audience don't see the set as a studio but as a general location and make it clean and obvious for the viewer. Locations that we used were very generic and yet again were pulled towards Murder, My Sweet whose opening sequence is set in an interrogation room. Throughout the Film Noir styled films we always see a range of offices or apartments, so we definitely developed on the typical Noir conventions as we didn't want to set it somewhere completely out of context like outta space. 

Costume and Props

 Naturally, Film Noir has a wide selection of props which always appear during there films, although we couldn't get hold of certain pieces of props or costumes, I.E Theodora Hats, Zippo Lighters...due to costs, we managed to stick quite closely to the props and costumes which were heavily used during the 40s. Seeing as the 40s had no health warnings, cigarettes and smokey rooms were heavily used in Film Noir styled films. We knew the smoking laws, so quickly sparked up cigarettes for scenes and quickly stumping them out in between takes. Other props were basic things like classes, tables, ash trays, making sure we got a realistic verisimilitude throughout shooting. Costumes we made sure we kept similar to costuming used in past films, the detectives were both in smart dress, shirts, braces, smart black trousers and shoes. We didn't change the hair styles of the main characters to the good old comb over because we still wanted to keep our film modernized so younger generations can enjoy it as well as the older generations. The Femme Fatale Vivienne we kept as close as we could. Red lipstick (even though the film is shot in black and white), a vintage cardigan and shirt and a plain black skirts which go well with a pair of 40s heels. We took our inspiration from Phyllis Dietrichson who is the Femme Fatale in Double Indemnity.We used her character for inspiration to develop the style of our character.


Lighting

Film Noir Style has signature lighting; chiaroscuro/low key lighting which made the scene more dramatic and intense. Low key lighting is great for creating sharp contrasting shadows as you can see in Film Noir styled  cinema. It's commonly used over and over again as it's one of the key conventions. We tried to experiment with the lighting, trying to create a venetian blind effect as can be seen in the screenshot from Double Indemnity, but was too much hassle and sometimes made the lighting a bit too unauthentic. So we stuck to using 3 different lights for the interrogation scene, one hanging directly in the middle of the actors/frame, which worked as a good source of light for the actors to lean into to unveil themselves. The other two behind the actors that lit up the other ones face slightly. The lighting worked well with the cigarette smoke as it highlighted the smoke as it rose from the ashtray. We were very happy with the results as we were heavily influenced by the opening shots of Murder, My Sweet which had very similar lighting.  The apartment scene we used another 3 lights, one coming from behind Vivienne's chair where she is sitting and the other light directly opposite in the other corner aiming at Vivienne. The third light we used a simple table lamp to light up Vivienne's face and create dramatic shadows to make her look quite dark and evil. In this scene compared to the first one, we used blue filters on the light to change the different shades when we came to edit it in black and white, it made the footage more grainy but effective  for the scene as it was a flashback, so it was more like a distortion from Philips' mind. The lighting had a strong role to play with  the fact we were doing a film noir, otherwise the film would not be mysterious or intense, which wasn't the  look we were going for.

Characterisation

Femme Fatale's have their own strong conventions on how they look and how they act, for this we made Bev watch a series of scenes from different 1940s films which had strong feminine roles to which she should aspire too. One of which we showed her was the scene from double Indemnity where the lead man meets Phyllis Dietrichson for the first time, and the way she displays herself to him. She took on board all these characteristics and this came across in her performance. This can be seen as Vivienne enters the Interrogation room and how she walks towards the desk our detectives are sitting at. The detective Philip Meyers, we gathered knowledge like we did with our Femme Fatale from other films of this style. Jono's character was laid back in the interrogation until the going gets tough where he has to unveil some of the story in a flashback. 

Camera Angles

Shooting a Film Noir allowed us to really experiment with different angles. We had a variety of close ups, too mid shots, POV, Aerial shots...etc. We thought we would film more shots than we needed so we could see what worked well and what didn't. The aerial shot we used a step ladder and with difficulty we filmed from above the interrogation scene to make the detectives look small and vulnerable, with no upper hand. This type of shot can be seen in the film called Night of The hunter which heavily influenced us in our style of filming because it has some amazing cinematography. Close ups are a key camera shot in this type of style, used to bring the viewer closer to an object or an expression/reaction on a characters face. We didn't do any location shots due to the fact we filming completely in the TV Studio but we did have a lot of mid and wide shots of the set in which we were filming in to establish to the viewer where the scenes were taking place.

Editing Transitions

Because in our day and age we had more technology and we shot on digital camera's we could challenge typical editing techneques used for our chosen style and also developed on older ones. For the flashback we used a dissolve from the interrogation scene to the apartment so we could make the point to the viewer that we are going to go somewhere different from before. This is commonly seen in Film Noir, it also allowed us to do a smooth transition to the next scene without it beginning to look jumpy and out of place. We also placed all our footage in black and white and heightened the contrast to make our film look authentic and old. Another transition we used was fade to white when the two gunshots went off, using this technique and using an exaggerated sound of a gun shot gave the audience the impression that the weapon had been fired without us even showing the weapon going off (seeing as this is not a high budget Hollywood film, we had to work around editing to bring the shooting seem to life and make it more believable). We got the effect we were looking for without making it look to fake and unrealistic to our audience.

 

Genre/Style

Looking at the Crime Genre made us go back on its own tracks and look at one of its signature styles which is that of Film Noir. Film Noir has been argued time over time whether it is a Genre or a Style, but where as it is more of a style of cinema as it put loads of Genre's into play to bring us Film Noir. We began analyzing a series of different films which were linked to this style and took from them the basic convention we needed to follow to make it clear to the audience what type of film we are making. We set our story in the Demi-Monde, which basically means 'Nighttime/Underworld of Criminals' etc. We made sure we had our protagonist as something along the lines of an out of work detective, out of luck who is a 'lone-wolf' character. This type of character can be seen in:

• Out Of The Past
• Murder, My Sweet
• Double Indemnity
• D.O.A

The other main character is a Femme Fatale (this type of character appears also in all of the above in some shape or form). A seductive middle class/rich woman who obviously married into money, but has a keen eye on what she wants and she will usually get it. Everything listed on the question I have talk about the conventions of Film Noir, we challenged them very rarely, but we wanted to compliment the style and develop it as authentically as we could.

Editing and Sound

Editing The Sequence

The filming stage has been completed and after we had transferred the footage to the college computers we began editing the sequence together. Firstly we sorted through all the shots that we needed and cut the roughly and dragged them onto the time line. We have had experience with working with Final Cut Pro before so moving onto Adobe Premier was with great ease. We sorted out all the interrogation scene shots first, and begin to edit them down making sure clips did not seem too jumpy or out of place. Everything was going well until the computer we were using was overbooked, so our next stage was to transfer over everything to my computer and use Adobe Premier trail to finish editing the apartment scene.

After we had completed the rough opening sequence it was now time for us to put in the effects we wanted to bring the Film Noir to life and make it look authentic. We simply applied the desaturate effect to all the footage and persisted to play around with the brightness and contrast till we were happy and reached a general positive outcome.

Sound Mixing and Audio

The final stage of editing relied on us to make sure that any diegetic sounds were matched to its action as we cut around and replaced some of it's audio with other scenes audio. The only problem we encountered was the sound volume, which was easily fixable with playing around with the pitch settings once clicked on a selected piece of audio. 

Sound Effects

After we had all the audio perfectly matched and in order, we went on to adding the diegetic sound effects coming from inside the frame. We needed a gun shot which was really easy to come across in the sound effects that were offered to us within the college. We wanted really exaggerated echo gun shots so that they gave the impression that they were from the flashback, which would make the film seem more realistic and not cheesy. We also did this with a door, we needed it opening and shutting to emphasize someone had just entered the room (even though we did not film someone entering through a door, we wanted to give the impression that someone had come through). The last piece of added diegetic sound was just outdoor traffic noise from a busy street, to make it sound more like the scene is taking place in a city, and not a quiet abandoned room.

Non Diegetic Score

Finally after we had finished the final edit of the sequence and the sound effects, we could finally progress on adding a sound track, bearing in mind we've based this on 1940s Noir (So that means no updated chart music or anything that will distract the audience away from the film). Me and the sound editor Jonathan listened to a classic selection of Jazz songs in the car whilst trying to imagine if the music would fit our sequence. We finally found two pieces we could use, one for the interrogation and the other for the apartment. The one we used for the interrogation was quite laid back and casual, which set the scene and fitted well with the outside traffic noise. Apartment scene music was more dramatic and higher pitched, to set the tone that something bad is going to happen. Once we had place our selected ripped scores onto our editing timeline, we had to mix them together to make sure that one song didn't suddenly jump to the next, so we faded one out during the dissolve transaction as the other one faded into the scene. 

Overall...we managed to come to a complete final edit of our sequence and the sound that went into it, and managed to get the effect we were after which was dramatic and atmospheric. The sequence with the music fitted into the time period we were looking at and after the few stressful days of editing, we finally rendered it and burnt a copy to DVD and screened it to several people.

Filming: Day 4 Part 2

26/03/2012
The second part of filming today we had to do the final interrogation scene where Vivienne (Bev) enters the scene and creates the aura of mystery. Because we are more zoomed out in this scene as we seeing her entering and walk over to the table, we wanted to add more depth to the scene. We found two white board and duct taped them to make them look like 40s windows when they were taped for the WW2, so that it didn't shatter into thousands of pieces. This worked really well and gave the scene a lot more to look at other than just black space.
As Vivienne entered the room we wanted a mid shot to show her walking in and walking towards the 'windows' in between this we have a close up of Philip (Jono's) reaction as someone walks in. Which work quite well to build the suspense. After Vivienne got to the windows, we cut to a close up of her flicking her head around seductively (typically femme fatale trait) and proceed to walk the the table and sit on the table, making herself look bigger against the two males in the room, making them look more vulnerable. The last shot we need was a close up of Vivienne picking up the cigarette, in close up and saying her last line at the policeman.


We have finally got all our shots and had no misunderstandings since day 1 on what we wanted our opening sequence to be like. Our group is now transferring all our footage onto the harddrive so we can begin editing together our full opening.


Actors Present:
Jonathan Lloyd
Beverley Wilbourne
Ben Davies


Crew...all present.

Filming: Day 4 Part 1

26/03/2012
Today we finished the apartment flashback scene and arranged the set to make sure it match what we already used on the previous day. We shot a few over the shoulder shots to Jono's reaction to being threatened with a gun and close ups of them wrestling over the gun.
We made sure we got enough shots/extreme close ups so that we had fully completed this sequence so we didn't have to panic about anything we missed.


Actors on shot:
Jonathan Lloyd
Beverley Willbourne


Every member of group present.


After we had wrapped up the filming, we did a few promo shots for the film, Dirty Little Secret, using the lighting and camera's that we already had set up.

Filming: Day 3

21/03/2012
We today filmed scene 2 (the FLASHBACK) which involved us transforming the studio into a believable looking apartment bedroom. We first set up the armchair and a small table which will hold the table lamp. The table lamp we thought would be a good way to light up our Femme Fatales face. It casted shadows on her face in all the right places and really looked good on camera. The lighting aswell as the table lamp, we had two other lights, one for general lighting and one behind the Femme Fatales head to silhouette her outline of her head. We place blue filters over the lights to give it a cold more crisp effect, which we hope we soften the tone when we come to edit it in black and white.


Shots included: 

• Close Ups of Femme Fatales face
• Full shots of body
• Extreme close ups of props such as cigarettes and ash tray
• Over The Shoulder shots of Jono looking at F.F
• Mid shots

So we didn't break the 180 degree rule, again, we changed the set and made sure it looked liked all we did was move the camera but in reality we switched around the set. We made a bed out of a table, a quilt, a couple of cushions and pillows and threw the jacket of Jono's on the bed to make it look like they've been in there a while. We then filmed a series of shots of Jono's reverse shots to go along with the couples conversation and we decided to do the next part (shooting scene) when we next had the TV Studio booked.

Filming: Day 2

14/03/2012
Today was finishing off anything we missed from the opening part of the interrogation scene and also doing the bits in-between the flashback. I know the images are a bit blurry but the top image gives you a slight sneak peak of the filming in action from the monitor and the way we transformed the room that we used to film in.


The setting was exactly the same set up we did for the first day of shooting and we just continued the way we first did this scene. It only took an hour to gather the last few bits of interrogation which involved just the two guy actors, so we could move on to the apartment scene and ending interrogation scene.


We encountered no problems during todays filming, we made sure there was no continuity fails and made productive progress in the last few seconds we needed for scenes 1 and 3.

Filming: Day 1

07/03/2012
Day 1 of shooting and we start early prepping for a morning of shooting. today we begin on focusing on our first part of the script which is introducing our characters to the audience. We begin to set up the set and make sure everything is in the right place to start filming.


So we started doing a variety of shots whilst the actors delivered their lines. We got a few close ups and extreme close ups of Ben's face close up and followed the rules of the Eye Match Shot. I then found a step ladder and took a few aerial shots of the interrogation table. After we got a sufficient amount of footage of Ben talking at Jono, we then had to do the reverse/reaction shots of Jono. We didn't want to cause any mistakes and break the 180 degree rule, so we carefully swapped the set around without moving the camera so we didn't break any lines.


The first half an hour was quite calmly taken but we ended up having a few disagreements half way on how we should shoot certain things at certain points. But in the end we all came together and compromised what shots we are going to use and it took us to the end of the session. Another problem we faced was smoking, we first was going to use the smoke machine to give the impression of people smoking, but we ended up lighting cigarettes for short periods of time and then stubbing them out (the owner of the studio granted us permission to use real cigarettes aslong as we were mature and didn't abuse his words). After we had got substantial footage, we then took it to the computers and reviewed what we had done. Ben then had his first go at editing the first 45 seconds together and we had completed page one of our script.

Location and Lighting!

TV STUDIO
As our script is mainly based on the settings which are inside, the way we could create an authentic looking interrogation room and apartment (without anything giving it away that it's a teenagers room) would be to use the TV Studio. This was our one way of making a set and environment which was suitable for our script and for us to film freely in without making any continuity mistakes.



The Interrogation scene all we needed was a table and two lights, one which was hang in the center of the table and one to cast shadow and highlight the actors faces. Even though from these photographs it basically looks like a studio, after doing a few test shots with the camera, we got a very atmospheric look and you wouldn't even recognise the place in which we filmed in. To get window shadows on the wall, we easily taped up boards and after test shots they just looked like the effect of shadows in the distance.


The Apartment scene was harder, We used three lights, one of which was a normal table lamp to light our Femme Fatales face with lots of shadow to create the effect of something bad. We also thought that using blue filters over the light would soften the light and make it look cold, which could work really well with editing after. We arranged the furniture in a way that it would look like a normal apartment, for the bed though we struggled, and came to the conclusion we could make a very realistic bed using bedding material and a large table with cushions.

Shooting Schedule and Shot List

Here is our shooting schedule and our shot list for the next month or so. We have not listed every single shot we need, just so it allows us to get a mixture of different shots to experiment when it comes to editing all the footage together. We listed all the key shots that we definitely needed and were required to make our sequence go smoothly. Our shooting schedule looks empty but we mainly required the studio to film in (after we took out scenes which we were not doing) so this narrowed our filming time and we got around 4/5 days worth of filming to do.

Costumes and Props

Costume
Our opening sequence only features 3 characters and we decided to keep it very close to the film noir's signature style.


Police Officer/Detective (Left)

• Pink shirt because we thought that the colour pink would contrast very well in black and white as you can see displayed in the photographs. The pink came off as a dark grey which we thought gave a nice contrast from the other characters clothing

• Braces which were used gave a very retro, detective feel for a 40s type of character, made him look smart yet laid back.
• A Black tie to finish the overal Detective look
• Black trousers and shoes, for smart appearance.

Detective Phillip Meyers (Right)

• White shirt with rolled up sleeves with a black waist coat on. Made sure the blacks and whites stand out on film. Rolled up sleeves and unbuttoned top to make him look like he's had a hard day
• Black trousers and shoes to complete the overall look.

Vivienne Waldorf

• 40s styled Cardigans and Shirts
• Pencil Skirt
• Stiletto Heels and Tights
• Red Lip Stick (Lustful colour fit for a Femme Fatale)
• Kept it very stylish for its era and alluring for a male.

Props

These are some of the props we are going to use for our opening sequence.

• Red Lipstick
• Glock (Pretend Gun)
• Cigarettes (Very Film Noir, 40s everyone smoked)
• Detective Jacket
• A Bed (which we shall make out of a table and bedding)
• Tables for interrogation
• Bedside Table and Lamp Gapher
• Ash Tray
• Cup and Saucer
• Lighter
• Arm Chair
• Boards and Gather Tape (For the illusion of shadows from windows on the walls)
• A Handmade Doorway