Evaluation: How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Below is a list of the media technologies we used throughout the project.

• Canon 500d (built in microphone)
• Tripod
• Photoshop
• Studio lights for photography
• Sony Vegas 9 Pro
• iTunes
• Windows Media Player
• Youtube
• Microsoft Word

Canon 500d: We used this to film and to record audio. It served us well, with us being able to switch lens types for different shots. One had a shallow depth of field while one was the normal 55mm lens. We also used the in built microphone which did its job well enough for our film. If I redid the film, id  defiantly use a boom mic as it would be able to pick up the sound better than my microphone which often captured the noises coming from inside the camera instead of what the actors where saying.

Tripod: We used my Tripod to reduce shaking of the camera angles and also to match the convention of static panning shots used in many film noirs.

Photoshop: With my extensive knowledge of Photoshop, I used it when ever I could. I used it in my Poster creation and also my review. For my review I erased the review I had print screened which was for Battleship and created a text box where I then copy and pasted my full review into it. I then changed things such as the trailer in the video player at the top and the score (which was at a 2 star). I also changed the films facts such as Director, Cast and Run time using a text box. We used photoshop to create our logo aswell.

Studio Lights: I used the studio lights to highlight key features of our characters and also create a suitable mood for our characters such as low key lighting for our bad guy.

Sony Vegas 9 Pro: This was vital in the editing process which I was in charge of. We used this instead of the Final Cut which the school provided as I had vast knowledge of Vegas and had never used Final Cut before and did not want to waste post production time learning how to use it.

iTunes: It was used to collect the music for our film in a playlist and then reduce the number of songs in that playlist to the ones we defiantly wanted to use.

Windows Media Player: This was used to play our film for our screening and also to review our edits in Post Processing after exporting them.

YouTube: YouTube was vital for two reasons. First was the obvious one that it is hosting our film for anyone to watch and the second is that it helped us find music we needed, such as the Big Fish soundtrack that I did not have on my iTunes prior to using it.

Mircrosoft Word: Microsoft word was used throughout the project. Early stages used it as a place to write our screenplay, script and plot. Also it helped us note down things such as props we needed, our shooting schedule, lighting notes, locations and sound effects needed for scenes.

Evaluation: What have you learned from your audience feedback?

As part of a showing of all our films, we wrote down our feedback for other peoples films and they wrote feedback for ours. These pieces of feedback (shown here) helped me view the film from a fresh perspective and allowed me to see what was wrong with the film and if I did it again, I could improve it based on these comments. These comments also helped me write my review.

Our feedback was generally positive, which pleased me greatly after having worked on it for so long, and being very stressed about whether it would go down aswell. The general good and bad points of the comments where:

Positive


- Good, Interesting Camera Shots
- Lighting was good
- Music was suitable

Negative


- Convoluted, Confusing story
- Below Average acting


If I decided to re do this film, I would take these comments and apply them to the new version, but due to them being such major changes (would require new actors, new or changed plot, new script) we decided it was impossible to change these in the small time we had before the deadline.

Evaluation: How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

My Ancillary texts stood the same amount of research as my main film did, and the same level of detail. My Film Noir poster was researched, as I looked at dozens of Film Noir posters from the time to try and get an idea of how to create a true poster. I noticed common themes among them, including slanted text, characters bigger than other characters and actors last names being in capitals. Also, due to the lack of technology, almost all of them where hand drawn.

Due to me being no artist, I used photos I captured of all the main characters and arranged them in photoshop to create the poster seen below. I created a hand drawn effect using a effect on photoshop which makes photos look like oil paintings. I found it difficult to know where to space the names, as the shape where the faces where in took up most available space, which was frustrating as I am still unhappy with there location.

To fully combine my poster with my film noir, I photoshopped it into a photo so it looked like it was hanging

outside a cinema right next to posters for other big blockbusters such as Clash of the Titans and Book Of Eli.

My review helps add to the believabilty of this film actually being released into the box office, with me thinking like a critic after reading many reviews, analyzing their layout and highlighting what makes a bad film. I found it easier to criticize my film as I can find out things I did wrong and wanted to do again than completely praise it for being a masterpiece which it is not. This is why I gave it 3 stars out of 5. I made my critic ignore the run time, as if you paid full price cinema ticket for a 6 minute film, you would believe its the worst film ever so I had to suspend reality slightly. Click here to see the review.

Evaluation: In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

As with all Film Noirs, the themes and conventions are vital to create the correct atmosphere, even down to the music and camera angles. Our group researched these, watching numerous Film Noirs such as LA Confindential, Double Indemnity and Brick to find common themes. We discovered common themes where:

 

•       Characters who have broken, shady backgrounds
•       Use Of Mirrors
•       Urban Setting
•       Corruption 
•       Disorientation Devices (such as blur or dutch angle shots)
•       Other than Brick, all of them where set in 1940’s America
•       Smoking was used throughout the film
•       Strong female characters, often bound to death or tragedy (femme Fatale)
•       Lighting was used in all to create an atmosphere of foreboding danger
•       Suits with trilby’s where worn by men, while dresses where worn by women.
•       Low Key Lighting
•       Gang Crime, Murder and Drugs
•       Voice Overs

 

Now we had a strong idea of what it takes to create a believable film noir we used our knowledge to create our film. Starting with what our characters names where and what they wore. Bones Frisco, Adrianna and Barnaby Frisco all decided upon as they were uncommon in today’s society, but not in the 1940’s. We chose what our characters wore as well to highlight who they were, such as Bones and Goodwin wearing grey to highlight the fact that they are not understood fully enough to make judgements and also it creates a link between the two with them wearing the same colour. Adrianna wore a dress, to highlight her key role as a Femme Fatale. A dress is used to create an allure of sexiness while empowering the woman with a sense of high class in society.

 

The use of Black and White was almost not worth thinking about. Creating our film in colour would require more work to make an atmosphere of Film Noir. Black and white creates this atmosphere without any hard work required. While colour Film Noirs exist, they are often high budget unlike our film, where the budget was about £10.

 

Our film title "Le Mortel Liaison" was chosen to be in French due to Film Noirs roots in post world war countries such as France and Germany. These countries where in states of depression and ruin. The first film noirs came from these places and it shows, with the themes of broken society through corruption, characters often having shady, shattered backgrounds and crime taking over a city, much like they where in post war France. 

 

Dutch Angle's are commen in Film Noir's to represent that something is not quite right in the scene, giving a sense that something is off. We used this in the finale, to show Adrianna's state of mind, with her thoughts being off and confused as she has shot Barnaby. It also shows how the world featured in 'Le Mortel Liaison' has been disrupted with the killing of our main character, which follows the conventions of Betrayal in Noir's.

 

 

Lighting was also used in film noirs to create an atmosphere, things such as low key lighting will create an air of mystery or danger around a character from just one light, making a Chiaroscuro effect which was key for our film was in Black and White. An example of this is when Frisco is leaving his house and he turns and enters the light source coming from above. This creates shadows on his face, drowning but also highlighting others creating an uneasy tone for the next few scenes.

 

 

 

Voice overs are also key to Film Noirs, they are used to fill in the background story (like in our film) or to narrate the characters thoughts. I found that when adding our voice over, it immediately felt like a film noir.

 

Our Film Noir challenges the conventions of film noir as our Noir had no set time, unlike many Noirs which are set in 1940’s America. This allowed us to use modern cars for Frisco and in our audience feedback, no one seemed to mind. Also, our film noir is set in England, which is unusual for true film noirs. These choices where all down to budget, and we tried to aim for a 1940’s setting wherever we could, shown in props such as the telephone in Frisco’s office and the gun used in the finale.

Locations Part 2

For our finale, we needed a church exterior and interior. We used Ashwell Church's exterior as it was rural, isolated and more daunting than Baldock Church's which was situated by a busy high street road.

We used the Interior of Baldock Church as we gained permission to use it. It had vast stain glass windows and a large central walk way we used for a shot of Frisco walking down to increase tension. We where fortunate on the day that it was bright so the stain glass stood out even more and was highlighted. I took the advantage and added a few extra shots on the day for this reason such as when Frisco walks into the frame with a stain glass window in the background.

Locations

For all films, location is possibly the biggest star. Setting the emotion, tone and atmosphere without saying anything. For this reason, we thought of scenes with areas we knew already in mind. Here are some stills of the locations we planned to use, and did use.

Frisco's office

The Lighting was soft in here, giving a sense of saftey

The Tunnel used for the Crime Scene.
With the vines and foliage covering the entrance like a cave
it was naturally scary place.

The graffiti creates a striking image. We were originally
going to use this red smear as a blood smear
but on the day we realized the ground had
glass on and didn't want to risk injury.

As all film companys do, we needed to assign jobs to each of our group members as soon as possible to get production rolling.

All Of Us

• Writers: Creating the Plot and Characters for a film to be based around.
• Casting: deciding who would be in our film.
• Actors: performing in our film.

Emilie Cherry

• Screenplay: making our storyline into a script.
• Assistant Film Editor: Provides a second opinion to Chief Editor
• Location Scout: helping to find locations that we can film.
• Wardrobe Supervisor: deciding the costumes.

Matthew Williams

• Cinematography: Keeping track of film timings on set and making sure each shot looks well and is shot well. 
• Film Editing: The Chief Editor of the films post production. 
• Music Supervisor: Finding suitable music

Luke Jones

• Main Actor
• Assistant Film Editor: Provides another opinion 
• Location Scout: helping to find locations that we can film.

Raya Renney

• Secondary Cinematography: making sure the shots looked good as well as filming.
• Assistant Film Editor: helping to edit the film.
• Property Assistant: finding suitable props.
• Location Scout: helping to find locations that we can film.

Audience feed back from Screening

1. "The whole film was very good and very well put together as a whole. I thought the music fitted in perfectly with the scenes to add drama, especially at 4:30 when he is walking through the church. I also thought the link between scenes was very clever at 3:30 when the dark tunnel turns into a coat being taken off. I really enjoyed watching this." - Gemma

2. "Overall I enjoyed watching the film, and feel it had a good storyline. I particularly liked the use of shadows in the tunnel scene which fitted the Film Noir genre well, and although I am usually put off watching black and white films, I thought it worked well in black and white. I also liked the use of slow motion. The only room for improvement is that I found a few of the shot transitions did not flow completely, giving black flashes." - Sophie

3. "I liked the film and thought it was suspenseful, but the use of the LA Noire music was sometimes over powering and a bit too dramatic." - Ben

4. "A really gripping storyline that fits in well with the film noir genre.
Mise-en-scene, was well planned in advance. The camera angles and editing executed and flowed really well from one scene to the next." - Jess

5. "I enjoyed this film a lot and thought it was very well done and was impressed how well the genre and storyline came across in the short amount of time they had. Although slightly amateurish I thought it was very well done the editing techniques especially were impressive and slick. I thought the voice over was a nice addition that helped the storyline." - Mark

6. "I really like this film and I feel it relates well back to original genre- I can see some of the traits of film noir coming through. I think the black and white really makes the whole thing stylized and professional looking. I also thought the music worked really well with the film." - Florrie

I am relatively pleased with the feed back and this allows me to see the film in a different way. As someone who was there while filming it it breaks the illusion slightly and this will help me in my evaluation. Also this feedback could help me if I ever decided to re edit the film for whatever reason.

Editing

We used Sony Vegas Pro 9 to edit our films as I did not want to spend valuable time working out how to edit on a new programme on the school computers.

I edited the film first in separate scenes so I could get each scene to what I wanted. I split them into the Intro, Luke and Emilie getting ready, Luke leaving the house, Him at work, the Crime Scene, him returning to his office angry and confused and finally the climatic ending scenes.

After working with these we put them together and decided what could get cut as our film was 8 minutes long. We trimmed down the film and in the process lost the introduction with establishing shots of the town the film was set in and other, unnecessary scenes such as Luke shaving. 

After we cut our film down to just over 6 minutes, we saved the film to WMV and opened up a new file named EntireFilmAudio.Veg. This would be where we added audio such as music and sound effects to the film. We used fades and blends to make our music tracks calmly and subtly fade in and out of one another to not interrupt the viewing. 

In a few scenes people on set laughed during filming and I did not notice this until we had finished filming. One notable instance was in the tunnel where Frisco shouts "Who's there?" and a person laughed down the tunnel. To not break the tension I had to fix this audio so it would not just stop instantly. I took audio from an unused piece of film of Bones running down the tunnel and put it over this piece of audio track so in the film it sounds like Bones is running down the tunnel out of shot, which in the film he is. 

After audio was complete I added a few effects into the shots such as the flashback shot. 

The shot had added effects such as a slight glow to give a dreamy feel. The Flash back was bookended by transitions that are white flashes which came with the Software.


To add the text, I used the text generator built into the software. This allowed me to move the text into the positions shown in the final film where the text wouldn't be obscured by light and dark areas of the shots.

Review!

Here is my review for my film, I decided to tell what a critic would really think about it ignoring the run time of 6 minutes. I also photo shopped it to look like it has been written up by Empire Film magazine and has been posted on their website. I structured my review as so;

- introduction (to genre, what the films about, who by etc)

- spoiler free discussion of plot and good and bad points

- acting

- technical, post production (sound, editing)

- conclusion/verdict

Click For Larger Version

Below is my review in its entirety

Film Noir is a franchise that is one of the prized possessions of cinema and in recent years has been converted and transformed to suit its modern audience through the likes of LA Confidential or LA Noire, the cinematic video game from GTA creators Rockstar. RELM Productions first feature Le Mortel Liaison takes these recent changes and throws them in the gutter like many criminals before it. While it’s not perfect, it’s the first true Film Noir seen in many years.

The suspenseful plot surrounds Detective Barnaby Frisco (played by Luke Jones), a shady cop with an even shadier background. As the early voice over describes, his ex-partner Bones Goodwin (Matthew Williams) had an romantic entanglement with Barnaby’s Wife Adrianna (played by seasoned actress Emilie Cherry) which didn’t end well for him, and Barnaby and his Wife somehow manage to get away free without anyone suspecting. While the characters are interesting, there is little interaction with all 3 on the screen at the same time, and this is not helped by average performance by a few actors.

Barnaby returns from his leave early in the film to his old job as a detective, shortly he leaves to investigate a murder (there is no rest for the wicked) and this is the pivotal scene where the plot gets moving and very interesting. While I will not ruin the ending for you, the film does end raising more questions than answering, maybe purposely left open to raise the question of a sequel?

The film has a fantastic flow, with many scenes blending into one another without any horrendous, jerky cuts. This level of polish also filters into the music, which really sets the atmosphere of uncertainty really well, harkening back to the early 50’s with Brass instruments and piano stabs that complement the goal of RELM Productions goal of returning to the true roots of Film Noir. The sound isn’t all perfect, with some scenes featuring drops in sound entirely, whether this is due to technical difficulties or on set noise, it is something that cannot be over looked.

And that’s what this film shouldn’t be, over looked. A tremendous effort for a first project, RELM Productions do have a future ahead of them but while Le Mortel Liaison may not survive the long run with competition from summer blockbusters coming round the corner, RELM Productions certainly have potential to create the next Brick.

Finished Film

Researching For A Poster Design

Many Noir posters where hand drawn, as in the 50's computers didn't exist at all. This lead to many inventive designs and varieties of posters but themes did exist across a majority of the posters that I will list below;

- Posters often featured one character over sized and looking down on the other subjects in the posters

- A woman was often present, featuring the femme fatale on the poster shows that Male Gaze theory was a major part of the films.

- Slanted text

- Many posters featured boxes or areas sectioned off to the other parts of the posters.

- Actors sure names where often in capitals, as many where known by their sure names.

- Dots where often featured between actors names.

- Colors where often black, white or red with very few featuring vivid colours such as blues. Red was used prolifically to show the threat, romance and lust the film featured.

For my poster, I used images from our character photo shoot and edited them to look like they where hand drawn. Next, I used Photoshop to edit the text and also create the section of the poster where the characters are featured. The logo used was created separately and is the same one featured in our film. It uses a warped horizontal arc to match the arc the crown has. We used a royalty free image of a crown as it suited our film companies name ' RELM' which stood for (Raya, Emilie, Luke, Matt). Relm is a play on the word Realm, and the crown shows hints at the king or queen that would rule that Realm. 

To help visualize my poster, I added it into a real life scenario with other film posters with a quick photoshop.

Sound

Through out the film, I edited in sound effects to create the atmosphere of the areas and locations featured.
These sound effects where free and royalty free. They where sounds such as gun shots, traffic, office sounds and came from these following websites:

http://www.audiomicro.com/free-sound-effects

http://soundbible.com/tags-gun.html

http://www.grsites.com/archive/sounds/

http://www.audiomicro.com/free-sound-effects/free-electronics

We recorded the sounds live, using an in camera microphone. The camera in question was a Canon 500d.

For the soundtrack, we used a mixture of music from different sources. First, we used music from the "Big Fish" soundtrack. This suited the early tone of our film, as we introduced the characters getting ready. This light, major music helps make the films atmosphere of 'humble' beginnings at the start.

For the majority of the film, we used the soundtrack from the video game "LA Noire" to suit our Noir feeling.
Most of this music featured pianos, trumpets and bass suiting the 50's theme. A taster is below. The Songs we used where:

 Redemption Pt. 1 and 3
 Use and Abuse Pt. 1, 2, 3 and 4
 Fall From Grace Pt.1 & 2
 The Investigation Theme
 New Beginning Pt. 2
 Pride of the Job Pt 2

For the final moments of the film, we used a track titiled "Every Dream Comes To An End" by the collective "UNKLE". The track suited our tragic ending well with the strings emphasizing this.

These tracks are not royalty free, but to bypass this I used the Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 which allows for 'Fair Use' of all the songs.

Props and Costumes.

To achieve the impression of a 50's Film Noir, correct props and costumes are important, with any modern props (mobile phones, headphones etc) breaking the look. To complile a list of props I read through the plot and noted which devices and equipment our characters use. The same goes for our costumes.

Barnaby Frisco


Grey Blazer - Smart, typical clothing of a detective. Grey hints that there are grey areas in the characters life/background.

Black Shirt - Black often represents evil. While Frisco is not all evil, he has done bad things in his past to warrant him as evil.

Grey Trousers - Same as the grey blazer, and also to match with his outfit.

Adriana Frisco


Black Dress - Seductive and suits her role as the Femme Fatale.

Locket - An important plot device to drive the films plot forward. Shows her higher status as jewelry often did in the 50's.

Fur Coat - Highlights her upper class. Classy and keeps with the 50's fashion.


Black Shoes - Matches her Black dress.

Bones Goodwin


Grey Blazer - Links him to Barnaby through the same color clothes. Showing they where detective partners and shared the same background.

White Shirt - Incredibly Ironic. White suggests innocent, pure character. Hints that Barnaby is the bad guy, as he wears Black. Innocent as he was shot by Frisco who was in a Jealous rage.

Walking Stick - Highlights his injuries sustained by Frisco, shows vulnerabilities and weakness.


Props


Frisco Household


Dressing Table

Make Up Appliances

Car

Frisco's office scene:


Office equipment - stapler, books, pens, clock.

Retro Ring Dial Telephone

Crime Scene


Locket

Note

Fake Blood

Walking Stick

Church Scene


Gun