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.