Story board and shot list

Shooting schedule

Creating a shooting schedule means that we can organize our time and use it effectively. It will ensure that each member of the crew or cast will know where to be at what time and how long it will last. It means that we will know what equipment is needed which should help to avoid any forgotten components that are vital to the scene. It means we will know what costume and props are needed for the character to ensure continuity throughout our thriller opening. 

Soundtrack

We decided on using two tracks for our thriller opening and overlapping them. The main repetitive, guitar music is quite hypnotic but also gradually builds tension and suspense. It has no obvious inclination of whether Ted or Ruby are good or bad people, this way the audience is still left questioning who they are and their intentions. It does however create quite a melancholy atmosphere which suggests neither of the characters are particularly happy, it is also quite dark and enigmatic which are key connotations of a film noir thriller. 

The second track adds extra sounds at key point in the thriller e.g. at 0:13 when Ted goes to get something out of this desk, this plants a seed of doubt in the audiences mind and makes them begin to wonder what he is doing as the sound implies he is doing something he shouldn't. This happens again at 0:49 when we see a close up of a photo graph of Ruby which then cuts to her walking. This makes the audience feel uncomfortable and slightly anxious, Who is he, who is she? and why does he have these pictures? Questions further planted by the eery suspense of the soundtrack. The most effective use of this is at 1:59 when Ruby is attacked, it adds an element of surprise and will make the audience jump. This adds to the fear and shock that Ruby would of been feeling which makes the audience begin to feel her fear and empathise with her. It makes the attack much more dramatic and exciting for the audience. 
When Ruby is left lying on the floor the second track fades away and we are left with just the hypnotic guitar music, this adds emotion and empathy for Ruby's character and suggests her vulnerability and how alone she is. The music then fades out without answering any questions, this will make the audience want to watch more and find out what happens next!

Actors

Actors by lizzieadcock

Final Cut

Fonts

We decided on this very elegant 1920s style font called 'Nite club' as it captures our film noir theme perfectly. The thinness of the letters makes it appear very stylish and reflects the world of glamour that was popular in the 20s. This relates to the characters, costumes and props used in our thriller opening. The detective style clothing and office as well as a sophisticated woman reflects the glamour of the 20s. The font appears very upmarket, this links to the plot line of our well established, higher class detective and sophisticated lady. It is also very fragile, this links with the vulnerability of Ruby and her role within the film, as well as Ted who has either been driven to commit a crime or has been cruelly framed. Either way, both characters are very fragile within the film.







The font is fairly similar to that used in The Great Gatsby and The Artist. Both very sophisticated, 20s style films. Both include well dressed, upper market sophisticated characters who ooze glamour and class.


The letters have a similair shape to those used in L.A. Noire however they are much more elegant and thin. Nethertheless they share that film noir style, detective, enigmatic and glamorous feel. All connotations that are included in our thriller, Corruption.

Rough Cut

I really like the lighting when Ted is sat at his desk, i think the way it casts shadows and creates silhouettes is effective and works well with our film noir style. It also helps to create tension and enigma.  The mise en scene works really well, the costumes and props look good with the lighting and settings and fit with the story line. (0.02 - 0.14)

Our choice of music is effective in gradually picking up the tension, it wasn't too obvious that something was going to happen which added more of a surprise to the attack. The overlay of the second track adding extra sounds in specific places added tension and worked really well. e.g. 0:33

I think the lighting is too dark in places and the titles look too random and out of place. Some of the cuts are not as smooth as they could be but we could fix this by re editing parts. The font at the beginning is different to the font of the rest of the titles, this makes it looks unorganised and not well thought out. Also we have not included the title of our film.

At 1:48 when Ruby is attacked it appears the first little bit of her dialogue has been cut off, we shall have to edit this to make it fit to maintain the pace and fluidity of the piece. 

The ending of our opening is too abrupt  we should add a fade to black to make her death linger in the minds of the audience. This will add emotion, suspense and anxiety, giving the audience something to think about. 

The shot of the address written on the paper at 0:12 is not left on for long enough, this makes it difficult to read and causes confusion. The address needs more focus as it is a fairly important part of the scene. Similarly we are first introduced to Ruby by the image on the desk at 0:36. this is an important shot as it begins to suggest that Ted is not quite right and installs suspicion into the audience, we should re edit so that there is more focus on the image by leaving it on longer. 

Evaluation; Question 6

Evaluation; Question 5

How Did You Attract by lizzieadcock

Evaluation; Question 3

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

Our thriller 'Corruption' is a very stylised film noir inspired film targeted at a niche market. The opening of our thriller is slow and builds up tension very gradually through the use of music, lighting and camera angles/shot types. The costumes and mise en scene are quite traditional of an old school noir detective and a glamorous  sophisticated damsel in distress. The film is more aimed fairly middle aged, upper class people. These qualities make our thriller not mainstream, therefore companies such as Universal would be very unlikely to distribute our films as it is not their scene, they have distributed well known, award winning, money making extravaganzas such as Les Mis, The Bourne Legacy and Fast and Furious. 

Pathe however, is a UK based distribution company that has distributed similair style films. Non mainstream fairly slow films with noir style costumes and lighting such as The Black Dahlia which has some similar qualities to our film 'Corruption'. For example, the passive, helpless damsel in distress victim, with some underlying corruption and plot twists, all in a very old school, film noir style. 

Studio Canal is another UK base distribution company. They specialise in low budget, non mainstream, independent films such as Broken City, The Double and Under the Skin.

They also have a deal with love film that means there movies are promoted via Love Film. This would be suitable for our film 'Corruption' a low budget, non mainstream, independent film!  

The link with love film is a critical one. Modern times see's the increase of people watching films on demands from home via websites such as love film and net flix, this is mainly because it's cheap, quick and convenient. The amounts of people purchasing DVD's and visiting the cinema is decreasing rapidly over time. For this reason, my film being promoted on love film will make it recognisable amongst the public and more likely to be watched.

However, the vast proportion of cinema goers these days are the older generation. Our Thriller 'Corruption' will appeal to these types of people and will bring them into the cinema to enjoy the movie. For this reason our film should be played at Cinema City as my target audience is much more likely to attend here than other cinemas such as Vue or Odeon. 

Evaluation; Question 4

Who would be the audience for your media product?

Name: Nigel Saunders

Occupation: Writer

Marital Status: Married

Age: 48

(the man below is just from google images, he isn't really Nigel!)

 

Through being a writer Nigel has formed a love of stylish cinematography found in niche market films of fairly unknown directors/producers. He likes to take the occasional trip to Cinema city to watch Scandinavian thrillers for their fantastic cinematography qualities and enjoy a glass of red wine. He hates main stream films with predictable story lines and over rated actors and directors. He feels that they use special effects and action packed explosions and violence etc to compensate for the unintelligent story lines and poor script writing. He much prefers films  where he will be required to use his brain, complete with a stylish use of mise en scene and varied camera angles/ shot types. He appreciates when the use of lighting creates suspense and various emotions. He is of a high social class and is known to look down his nose at people, he drives a posh car and uses long words in unnecessary social situations...

The diagram shows that Our Thriller is generally aimed at those in the 40+ age category, fairly gender equal but steering slighting closer to a male audience. Very niche market. 

Research into user ratings.

The Black Dahlia  is of a similar style to our film Corruption. The user rating of this film on imdb shows that its audience is fairly gender equal. Under the assumption that our film would have similar types of viewers, it suggests that our film would have a fairly gender neutral audience. 

Black Dahlia (2) by lizzieadcock

Evaluation; Question 2

Evaluation; Question 7

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

Since creating the preliminary task of ‘shooting a conversation’ I feel my understanding of varied shot types and camera angles and the effects they have is a lot more comprehensive. We had a lot more time to create our thriller openings which allowed opportunity to familiarise and experiment with the cameras and what different shot types and angles looked like. Putting the theory into motion has definitely extended by understanding of how it all works. In the preliminary task we stuck to the straight forward establishing shot with the occasional mid shot which makes for a not very stylised or sophisticated piece. Whereas the final piece was more varied, long shots, mid shots, close ups, extreme close ups and over the shoulder shots to convey different emotions and to create enigma and tension at certain points in the thriller.

Preliminary

Final cut

The longer time period meant the planning was a lot more thorough for our thriller than the preliminary task. This meant that the story line was more thought out resulting in it being more in depth and stylised with clear archetypes created by more sophisticated locations and mise en scene. The preliminary task was shot in school, in the clothing the actors had happened to wear that day, it didn’t require much planning or organisation. Our actual thriller required the planning and finding of suitable costumes to portray a corrupt detective and a damsel in distress, glamorous type character and the making of props to make the locations more believable. We also had to find the suitable locations, with a little added creativity to polish them off.  By filming in locations that were not in school it meant the filming schedule was less flexible, this required us to be more time efficient and organised.

Bad organisation - the cups are empty!

More sophisticated props

The use and understanding of the effects of different forms of lighting has also become a lot clearer. In our preliminary task we just used the natural lighting of the study hall, this didn’t require much thought or planning. In our thriller to achieve the perfect film noir style lighting we experimented with the use of single source lighting from a fairly vintage style lamp. This worked perfectly with the costumes and mise en scene to create a film noir style detectives office. It created enigma and cast strong shadows which are both iconic features of film noir.

More advanced editing was required to complete our thriller openings complete with the finding and downloading of sound and fonts most appropriate for our particular style. In the preliminary task, simple editing was used to create a fairly shoddy piece with rough cuts and very poor sound. In the final piece we trawled through several sounds and musical pieces to find the perfect tracks for our thrillers, we then had to download these and edit the footage around the sound, so that it was in time and specific shots would happen at specific points in the sound track, this helped to create tension in certain parts of the thriller. We used diagetic sound in parts along with the music, for example the sound of her footsteps and her trying to open the door. Apart from this we took out the sound from the footage and just had the music, this created a more stylish piece and avoided the cringeyness of poor sound quality. We also had to consider the effect and use of credits; this required us to find a font appropriate for the theme of our film noir style thriller, download the font and judge where the best position would be for them on the shot. All of this meant our understanding of the purpose and the effects editing can have more advanced than in the preliminary task. 

Use of titles

How my skills have developed?

Compared with the preliminary task I now have more confidence and better ability to use the digital camera to film various scenes using a variety of different shot types and camera angles to create enigma and tension. I can now work better with lighting and use it to create strong shadows and connote moral ambiguity which can be seen in this shot. 

I can also edit more efficiently and effectively and find music and fonts that will work well with the footage. I can also find locations and use creativity to make them more appropriate for our chosen film noir theme by constructing props, planning costumes and experimenting with lighting. 

What are the conventions of film noir?

Evaluation; Question 1