Fifth Day of Editing: Creating the Production Logo and adding it to our opening scene

In a previous post I uploaded the production logo that I had created for mine and Sophie's production studio title for Silent Temptation. In that post I mentioned how the 'L' wasn't straight and how we'd both agreed that the 'L' and the 'P' don't flow into one another like how the 'N' and 'L' do, this was because the vertical lines and the 'P' went all the way down like they were blocking off the 'L' so I have created a new one:

This new one has had all the alterations made to it so that it looks better and more professional:

Now, I need to send this logo to Sophie through email so that she can add it to our opening scene, we cannot do this at school as we do not have the wifi at school for me to be able to send it to her MacBook. Once, this has all been done we will move on to creating a sound/jingle to go in the background of the production studios title.

We have finally added our production studios title to our opening scene, and we added a transition before and after it. The transition we added in before it is 'Crossover Zoom' and this makes it look sharp and clean, following this the transition after it is 'Fade to Black' and this makes it flow into the scene of me running more easily. Soon, we will create some sort of sound or jingle to go in the background of it. Below is a video of the two transitions and our production studio title in the opening scene:
IMG 5269[1] from Emily Smith on Vimeo.

Fourth Day of Editing: Final decision on music

Sophie has been looking at pieces of music to be used in our opening scene of Silent Temptation, and sent them to me for me to listen to and give her feedback on what I thought of them so we could make a decision as to whether we would use them.
I listened to the first piece:

With this piece of music I agreed that I liked it and thought it was suitable, I think it would be best fit to the scenes of the characters in the wedding shop, as it is mainly jazz which has more of a romantic feel to it which fits with the attraction between the femme fatale and the anti hero in these scenes.
From looking at other comments from people attached to this video, the owner is pretty willing to let people use the piece of music for other uses as long as he is included in the credits, so we will send him a message asking if we can use it and then we will decide on what part of the piece to use in the scenes we want it for.

However, for Sophie's other suggestion of an artist who composes his own music I didn't really take a liking to as his pieces of music have more of a classical feel to them and he also sings in all of his pieces of music so I don't feel it is appropriate for the conventions of our film.
Also, we need a piece of music for the scenes where I am being chased that creates tension, I tried looking around but it has proven difficult to find a piece, I will have a look around again and so will Sophie to see if we can find something that fits what is requested.

Update: We think we've finally decided on a piece for the scene where the femme fatale is chased at the beginning, we like the first 40 seconds of it and Sophie said she thinks it goes well with the scenes we would want it to play over top of.

Researching Music

As neither me nor Sophie are very musical and we don't really know anyone to ask who would be able to create a piece of music for us, we have decided to look around online for some pieces and we will ask the owner for permission to use them in our opening scene so that it is not classed as copyright.

Sophie was allocated to carry out this task and if you click here you can see her post on it.

I will be listening to the pieces of music that she has found later on tonight as we can not listen to them at school because the school has blocked the sites. From there, we will decide on what we like and then we will ask the owner for their permission. We have decided where we would want music to be in the background of.

Third day of editing Silent Temptation: Recording femme fatale's voiceover and adding it to Silent Temptation

Ever since me and Sophie came up with our idea for our opening scene of Silent Temptation we always had the femme fatale doing a voiceover in mind. What we decided on isn't very long, just the matter of two lines but it's effective. Click here to see what is said.

Here, is me recording the femme fatale's voiceover.

We were originally going to have the voiceover right at the start of the scene, but now we have moved it to just before the titles so that when the femme fatale finishes speaking the gunshot is heard, we decided on this because it was more exciting and connected more to the scenes she will be speaking over top of than at the start.

We've added in the voiceover and decided on what scenes we want it to be playing over top of.

Second day of editing Silent Temptation: Adding transitions & titles

Today's lesson was a double and so we decided to add transitions so that the clips flowed into each other more, we haven't completely finished this yet so next lesson we will hopefully finish this up.

We also decided to add titles with the name of our film noir, some of people who helped make the film and the amount of hours between the scenes before the titles and the scenes after the titles.

We chose the font type in the middle 'Zapfino', however with the style of title we picked it would not let us change the font type for the writing to the one we liked and we couldn't keep the one that it was because it was too modern and wouldn't fit in with the context of film noir. So, we searched it on google to see if there was another way to change it on iMovie, (bottom picture) but it mentioned that some fonts for certain titles could not be changed. So, then we tried typing it into a writing document in the font we liked and from there tried copying and pasting it into the iMovie title text box, but this did not work either. In the end, we gave up with the title style that we liked as it became obvious there was no way to change it and chose a title style that we liked as well where we could change the font to the one we wanted.

Finally, we could start creating the titles we needed and these were:

Name of our film noir.

Names of the some of the people who helped make the opening scene.

Time change between the two different scenes.

Here you can see the titles and transitions we have added to our opening scene.

First day of editing Silent Temptation: Trimming clips & adding filters

Today, we started editing our raw footage.

And in this lesson we deleted all the clips that we didn't want so that we were left with the ones we needed, from here we started trimming the clips so that they started and stopped where we wanted them to, and finally we added a black and white filter over the top of the clips all the way through as this is a typical convention of film noir, however with the scenes that have been filmed on Elm Hill we wanted it to look a bit darker so that it looked like nighttime but after a long look around the software we couldn't find anything that would help us do that, so we decided to change the timing so that it would be set in the early morning at 5am.

This is image is an example of what the rest of the opening scene now looks like after the first lesson.

We are very close to our final edit of the rough draft which we will show to a focus group so that they can tell us if there is anything to improve, to add or to get rid of. 

To Do - First Cut

Done / Currently doing / Not done

• Add and trim clips
• Finish adding transitions 
• Add productions studios 
• Sort out music clips
• Foley sounds we need - Gunshot, Footsteps, Heavy Breathing, Heartbeat, Jingle for Production Studios.

When we finish these few steps we will be ready to have a focus group to get feedback on it etc.

Strengths: As I have done some editing previously in GCSE stage, editing is a fairly strong point for me, however because we are using the newest software which is different to the one the school has we are having to teach ourselves and learn new ways of editing so it does come with some challenges.

Weaknesses: Making a final decision on some things is proving difficult because if we cannot decide on something we'll agree to sort it out later, but it would make quicker progress if we decided on something and got it out of the way because we could always change it later if we preferred something else.

Update: We have decided not to have the heartbeat sound anymore.

Cinematography

Cinematography from emlouiise

Final preparation for filming and the final day of filiming

For our final day of filming, Sophie copied and wrote down the script and camera angles we are going to use from the post we created a couple of lessons back, which you can find here. This is so we had something we could refer to when filming so that we and the actors knew what we needed to do so that we got everything.

After Sophie did this, she sent the picture above to me on iMessage to check that it included everything we needed to do and so that she hadn't missed anything, I confirmed this for her.

We're planning to get to my sister-in-law Allison's shop by 4.45pm on Friday, I sent this to Danny to let him know and asked him to pass this information on to Zach, I double checked to make sure he had.

Update: As this scene we were filming in the shop is meant to be the day before, so we decided that a different blouse would be appropriate to wear as the femme fatale will have changed. So I wore the black pencil skirt that we'd borrowed from our friend and the other blouse that we were choosing between before we picked the cream one.

The blouse I wore with the black pencil skirt for our second day of filming.

I also decided to wear red lipstick with my outfit as this is another typical convention for a femme fatale in a film noir.

Danny and Zach were both wearing the same suits as there was need for them to change, because you will cannot really notice that they're still wearing the same suit and as they are men it's not as necessary or normal for them to change outfits everyday. To see their outfits ~click here~

The final outfits

Today we filmed at Elm Hill and in the next lessons we will be able to start editing the footage we have, Sophie has the same software on her MacBook at home as what we use on the Mac's at school so we will also be able to edit our work at her house outside of school, and bring her MacBook to lessons to keep updating so we have more time to work on it.
The boys both wore suits:

Left to Right: Zach who plays our villain/killer, and to the right in this picture is Danny our anti-hero

Here, is my outfit (femme fatale) I am wearing the coat that I mentioned in the previous post because of the extreme cold weather conditions, we were lucky it  fit in with our femme fatale look.

The final props and filming update

Filming: The final filming date we decided on is Thursday 22nd to film the outside scenes on Elm Hill, and we've arranged to do this in the afternoon as me and Sophie have double media that afternoon so we could leave the lessons to go up the city and film because both of our actors could make it. We have arranged to film the scenes inside Camilla Brides on Friday 24th.

Originally, we were going to ask the drama department if we could borrow some hats for the boys as they are a typical convention for film noirs, but from previous experience we learned the drama department like you to ask quite a bit beforehand to borrow their props unless you are a drama student, which neither me nor Sophie are. 

We were also going to use a fake pistol gun from my grandad but after much discussion between me and Sophie, and Ms. Moore we agreed that it would be much safer if we didn't use a gun on the streets where another member of the public could see it, just in case anyone reported us. So, we have just changed the camera angle of how this shot will be taken so that it looks like Zach is pulling out a gun but you do not see what he is holding, so the audience will just guess what it is.

Another problem we faced was the friend we originally asked if we could borrow her skirt for the femme fatale's outfit now can't let us borrow it, so we asked another friend who agreed that we could.

For the femme fatale's outfit we also needed to decide on an appropriate blouse for her outfit, we had three options to choose between.

Blouse number 1

Blouse number 2

Blouse number 3

We got rid of option number 2 because it looked too modern with the stud design around the collar so it didn't fit in with the context. At first, I was a bit skeptical about the third option because it has no sleeves and I would be running outside in the cold weather, so it didn't seem appropriate health wise, but me and Sophie agreed on a black coat which fit in with the conventions that I could wear so we went with the third option as it looked more vintage.

Detailed timeline of what we need to do

done // currently doing // to do //

time - management

you have 6 weeks left for productions

you need to plan time carefully:

complete a detailed timeline to ensure you meet the deadline - here is an example; 

Week beginning 6th January -  filming / Planning shoots / capture of photo images for phot storyboards / Uploads of footage / evidence of this added to blog

Week beginning 13th January - final week for getting all footage shot and uploaded / editing and creation of raw footage / editing to complete the first' Cut'/ creating studio & production idents/screens

Week beginning 20th January - editing images - to produce first cuts ready for feedback

Week beginning 27th January -first  focus group work (collect feedback from within the group & HY/MO) / re-editing / planning and completion of any reshoots / planning construction of sound

Week beginning 3rd February - construction of sound / titles / final edits of film OTS

Week beginning 10th February - exhibition and distribution of 'first cut' of final films shared on digital/social networks for the purpose of focus group feedback - use surveys/ questionnaires and allow time for feedback / work on Blogs to ensure all the above is evidenced: talking head, reflective note, production plans, slideshares.....

Week beginning 17th February = Half term - complete focus group research / complete Blogs / plan final improvements to productions in response to the feedback

Deadline for completed Research & Planning Blogs and First Drafts of Productions is the 28th February (Friday after half term)

Organising filming

Firstly, me and Sophie decided to sort out props, location, moodboard and sound for the opening scene of our Film Noir, Sophie decided to take on this task. She also took on the job of uploading a post about the script and allocating tasks to people. You can find the locations, props etc by clicking on this link. And the link to the script etc is here.

We have started a Facebook chat between both me and Sophie and our other two actors (Danny and Zach). This will just make it easier to communicate, and decide when and where we will be filming, what they need to bring and who they will be playing. Originally one of our actors could not film on the afternoon we had decided, but we have resolved this by all agreeing to do it on Saturday 25th.

The boys agreeing to be actors for our film.

Next, we needed to sort out my costume for the femme fatale role, we needed to borrow a black midi skirt to fit in with the context of when our Film Noir is set and to stick with the typical conventions, it just so happens that one of our friends Gemma has one so we nicely asked her if we would be able to borrow it for filming and she said we could.

Asking Gemma if we could borrow her skirt.

Update: Danny has now been able to rearrange his original plans so that we can film the scene at Elm Hill on the afternoon of Wednesday 22nd. We have also sorted what the boys will need to bring to the filming scene on Wednesday.

Production name for Silent Temptation

Non-linear Productions

^^^^ This is our choice of name for our own production company, as non-linear is when things don't follow in a certain order. This makes our productions sounds like they are unique, fresh and exciting.

Below is the logo I have designed for mine and Sophie's production studios:

In this draft the 'L' isn't straight at the bottom and we will remove the line between the bottom of the 'L' and 'P' so that it all flows into one, this is only a draft and these alterations will be made for the real thing. We will also create some little jingle of music in the background of this.

Deciding on a name for our Film Noir

It took me and Sophie a while to decide on three names that we liked the sound of for our Film Noir, to do this we used a thesaurus online and searched the words 'violence' and 'lust' and then chose one from each list and put them together. Above is some examples of titles of other films that inspired us to do this. However, we could only narrow it down to three names, which are;

• Brutal Desire 
• Bloodthirsty Weakness
• Silent Temptation

To help choose the title for our film we have decided to make a survey on surveymonkey.com this is so our classmates can help us choose on the best name that they think fits the story of our film.

Click here to take survey

Results:

The majority vote was Silent Temptation so this is our final decision, and the chosen name for our Film Noir.

Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is a fundamental part of managing health and safety and helps you to identify hazards and control the risk they create for those involved in your production.

 Above, is the forms you have to fill out and the requirements you have to meet in risk assessment.
The process requires you to:

• take the time to systematically look at your activities
• decide what hazards they present
• assess the risk of people being exposed to these hazards
• find ways to either eliminate or control them

Me and Sophie will be filling these out right before we start to film.

Mine and Sophie's animatic storyboard- FPP

This is from our lesson yesterday, looking through and choosing which photos to use for our animatic storyboard.
 
Sophie and Emily FPP Animatic from Sophie Mace on Vimeo.

This is our final storyboard. Cal and Elliott are not the chosen actors to play our anti-hero and villain in the actual opening scene, but the were there at the time when we needed someone to play these characters for our storyboard. We haven't got this in our animatic storyboard but at the start there will be the House name and the production studio's name.
00.00-00.04: The femme fatale (who will be played by me) is running away from the killer, this will be a long, tracking shot. I will be wearing a long dress with heels, my hair will be curled, messy and down, and my makeup will be red lipstick and mascara running. The location will be a cobbled street in the city. Fast-paced music will be playing, with ragged breathing, a fast heartbeat and quick, heeled footsteps. It is night-time.
00.05-00.10: The femme fatale trips and falls to the floor at the killer's feet. The shot will be a close up of her body to see her on the floor, upset and in pain. The music will stop at the point where the femme fatale falls.
00.11-00.15: The shot will be looking down on her so it feels like the audience is looking from the killer's perspective.
00.16-00.20: The camera will be looking at the floor where we can see the killer's shadow (not on the wall, we couldn't get the lighting in the right place to take a picture of his shadow on the floor, in the filmed piece we will have a streetlight which will provide the right lighting for this).
00.21-00.35: This is a tilt up the bottom half of the killer's body to him holding a gun that is pointing at her, from this the audience will be getting her perspective. We may have some kind of music playing in the background to build up tension. The killer will be wearing a suit.
00.36-00.40: We will have a close up of the gun, looking up the barrel of it, so the audience feel they are the femme fatale looking at it. The gun will be a small, black pistol gun.
00.41-00.45: A long shot, showing the both of them, the femme fatale at her feet and the killer pointing a gun at her heart (it is crucial that he points the gun at her heart because it shows there is a relationship between them, as he has chosen her most vulnerable point for both her and him).
00.46-00.50: The camera will be behind the anti-hero, tracking him running towards the femme fatale and killer. He will also be wearing a suit and running down the cobble street, there will be no music, just his heavy breathing and quick, heavy footsteps.
00.51-00.55: The anti-hero stops running as soon as he hears the gunshot, we are still behind him and do not see his face. Everything is silent.
00.56-01.04: The scene fades into the opening credits, which will have the name of the film (we have still not chosen this yet) and names of people to do with making the opening scene. It will have a black background and white writing.
01.00-01.12: Still with the black background and white writing. The final title says '18 hours earlier'.
01.13-01.18: The camera will follow the anti-hero into the wedding shop, he will be wearing the same suit as earlier. It is now day-time. It will be a mid shot of him from behind.
01.19-01.23: A mid-shot of the killer, femme fatale and the woman working in the shop, them finishing their conversation (helps the audience realise the femme fatale and killer were together and buying a wedding dress for their wedding). The anti-hero will say something to the woman working in the shop (this will help the audience to understand that he is the manager of the shop). The killer is quite rude to the lady working in the shop.
01.24-01.27: The killer pushes past and into the anti-hero. Mid-shot.
01.28-01.38: Eyeline match between the anti-hero and the femme fatale. To show what has caught her eye. She is wearing the same clothes as in the night-time scene but her makeup and hair is all in place.
01.39-01.48: Over the shoulder shots, over both of their shoulders so that the audience get both of their perspectives and can notice the attraction between them as she strokes his chest/neck when she walks past.
01.49-01.52: A focus pull, of the anti-hero watching the femme fatale walk away, to show what he is focusing on.

Animatics vs. Storyboard

Animatic vs Storyboards from emlouiise

The main reason why me and Sophie chose to do an animatic over a storyboard is because neither of us are particularly that good at drawing, due to this we thought it would look better and be clearer to understand if we made an animatic storyboard instead.

Example of an animatic:

Example of a storyboard:

Story Summary

The plot to mine and Sophie's opening scene for our film noir is the beginning of the end of the film where the femme fatale is being chased by the villain and he is wanting to kill her, and is also being chased by the anti-hero so that he can save her, but there is a mystery as to whether the villain catches her and shoots her or not, so the audience understand there is an attraction between the anti-hero and femme fatale for him to be chasing after her worriedly. After the credits, it goes back to earlier on in the day with the femme fatale and the villain in a wedding dress shop looking at wedding dresses, so the audience now understand that the villain and the femme fatale are together and soon to be married, however the anti-hero owns the shop and when he enters you see the attraction between them start.

The overall story is that the femme fatale and villain are due to be married, but the villain is abusive towards her and she is not happy in their relationship, when the anti-hero comes along and she sees the attraction between them and how much he likes her she seems him as her hope and escape to get out of the relationship with the villain, because she will run away with the anti-hero and he'll protect her. However, the villain finds out and follows her as she goes to meet with the anti-hero, he is possessive so he is easily jealous, he believes if he can't have her then no one can which is why he chases her and he kills her by shooting her in the heart.

Different audiences and the target audience for mine & Sophie's film noir

The different types of media audiences:

Audience pete buckingham what people go to see from Elaine Humpleby

Mine and Sophie's target audience for our OTS, after discussing what media audience we think would be most appropriate for our film noir, we have decided that Film Fanatics is most likely to be our choice of a target audience. Film Fanatics are male and female, under the age of 25, who plan to go to the cinema and plan what they are going to go see, and people who read reviews about film and decide from them whether they're going to go or not.

First lesson of planning for our opening scene

As of our first lesson of planning, me and Sophie have come up with out plot for our opening scene and the whole story of the film. We have also decided on location, actors to play the three characters and costume for mise-en-scene. We decided on what shots and camera angles to use, how quick the transitions would be and where they would fade in and fade out, which scenes we wanted music in the background of, the script for the opening scene, what non-diegetic sounds we would add in afterwards and where the opening titles would feature.

Straight away after this lesson we went to Billie Bell, a fellow student in our year and asked him if he would mind creating a piece of fast-paced music that would go with a scene of someone scared and running. He said he would see what he could find for us.

Next we would need to create some sort of chat on facebook between me and Sophie so we can always keep in contact with new ideas or any changes or where to meet and when. We could also have a chat with both of us and the actors in so they know what they need to bring and what they will need to do and where beforehand of shooting the opening scene. Also we need to come up with a name for our film.

Continuity Task

Night stab from Cal Ives-Keeler on Vimeo.

In the continuity task we struggled again with timing which explains why we do not have any sound or transitions, because we did not have time to add them in once we'd put it together. In our group was me, Sophie, Cal, Elliott and Ruby. Cal was the cameraman, I was the director, Ruby and Elliott were the actors and Sophie helped me with where they should be and what they should be doing.

Editing techniques in film noir

IMG 5030[1] from Emily Smith on Vimeo.

Experimenting with Foleying

After doing some research with foleying, me and Sophie have decided to experiment with foleying for possible noises for our opening scene for Silent Temptation.

Here we are experimenting creating footsteps:
















The recording of the footsteps noises that we made while foleying:

I am wearing heels while recording this because I will be wearing heels in the actual scene of filming, this way we can make it sound as realistic as possible.

Here we are experimenting creating heavy breathing:











The recording of the heavy breathing noises that we made while foleying:

For the heavy breathing noises I made sure that I'd done quite a bit of running beforehand of recording it, this way it sounds more natural than if I hadn't.

Foleying Research

Miss Humpleby has posted a bit about foleying onto her blog, and after reading into it me and Sophie are considering doing it. We;re not 100% sure that we will include in our final edit of the opening scene to our film noir, but we may play around with it anyway just in case. If we choose not to include any foleying into our final edit, then FindSounds will be helpful.

Research on foleying:

Neo Noir

Typical Film Noir characters

Typical femme fatale

A woman of great seductive charm who leads men into compromising or dangerous situations and an alluring, mysterious woman. There is a sexual attraction between her and the anti-hero, however he is more obsessed with her than she is for him, this usually what leads to both of them being punished in some way. The femme fatale most often dies. They are usually trapped in an abusive relationship, most likely with the villain, and their life is tragic, they see the anti-hero as their escape from this for a better life. 

Typical anti-hero

The anti-hero is a leading character in a film, book or play who lacks some or all of the traditional heroic qualities, such as altruism, idealism, courage, nobility, fortitude, and moral goodness. He usually has some kind of flaw, but manages to attract the femme fatale of the film, however he falls for her more than she does for him which usually leads to a heartbreaking end when she dies. Usually working-class, being working-class ad ordinary he is someone the male target audience can relate to or wish to be like him, he is an 'everyman'. He has a checkered, messed up past. 

Typical villain from film noir

The villain is quite often psychotic and detached in some way. He sometimes is in love with the femme fatale, and as soon as he is worried or gets wind of her leaving him he is determined that no one can have her, especially not the anti-hero so he decides to punish them both, he ends ups killing the femme fatale. These villains are not your usual villains, they are two dimensional and are just plain, black and white nasty.

Sometimes there is a supporting character, often known as the Girl Next Door, who offers a conventional and domestic portrayal of what women should be like. She usually helps the anti-hero investigate and work out where the femme fatale has gone and how she died, she sometimes ends up in a relationship with the anti-hero which is better and more genuine for him.

Identifying the conventions of film noir

Film noir codes & conventions from jonsaward

This slideshow highlights the basic conventions of a film noir, but after looking through it I have gone into more depth as to why some of them are the key conventions.

Low key lighting and the use of venetian blinds - this is to show the contrast of dark and light, which represents that there is a bit of darkness and light in everyone.
Everyday urban locations - urban locations are used because they are cities, cities always have lots of different people there which means there is usually lots of crimes there; people find it more scary and intimidating to walk about cities at night because they are more likely to be hurt or get attacked in a dark city by themselves.
Sound - this is important for film noir because there is always, usually a  romance between the femme fatale and anti-hero and music plays in the background to reflect seduction and romance. Heavy breathing and footsteps build up tension, because you know someone is running because they are scared and afraid because if they stop they will be attacked. Voice over of protagonist, so the audience understand and know who the lead character is and who's perspective they are watching it from.