Location, Location, Location.

Personally, i think the Beehive pub was a great setting for our film noir, the lighting in there was quite dark, it was quiote old fasioned and it included pretty much the atmosphere we were looking for. Here are some pictures of what the setting looked like:

 This is where our Hero and Femme fatale sat. I think the cushions on the chairs and the fireplace make it look quite old fashions.

 An overview of the main area, where the camera pans through at the beginning. It was quite spacious, despite the fact we didn't need that much room, but again, it fitted our needs perfectly.

 Another shot of the seating area. Most of the camerawork was done behind the banister, and that was a great way of getting the over the shoulder shots, and the window shot in the next picture.

 

It was quite hard to see the actors from inside, when they were outside, but the shot didn't turn out too bad.

The door which the gangsters burst though, quite a fun and effective part to film. We thought the "No smoking" signs on the doors would be a problem, but they were easily overcame. Pictures from various films, Including the Godfather lined the hallway, and we thought this was very convient, as it was too prefect to be in the backround in some of our shots.

Target Audience Poll

So Matt had the brilliant idea of creating the Questionaire via Facebook, which I believe is a much more effective way to produce results then have a piece of paper filled in, here it is.

Different Parts for Different People

I just thought I'd do a post explaning a bit more about the roles of our group.

Matt Armes: http://asmediastudiesmattarmes.blogspot.com/

He's in charge, being quite a technical wiz, at a majority of the filming and editing, although we all had imput in how we wanted the production to look. He took care of some of the lighting, doing some experiments with lighting and it's effects.

Lee Cooper: http://asmediastudiesleecooper.blogspot.com/

Being a very keen/good animator, Lee produced the animation bit of our OTS, aswell as helping out with props and organisation of the filming. Lee also took charge in the location aspect, being the once to find the Set's owner, and getting him to agree to let us film there.

It's hard to put official titles on everyone, Director, producer ect, because we all pretty much had a part in everything, and when it comes down to it, Our OTS would not have been possible with all of our input.

Continuity Task Evaluation

So, since I started slightly late to everybody else, I was pretty much thrown into this task on my first lesson, but having done media at GCSE, I don't thihnk it went too bad.

By filming something in the style of Film Noir, having heard nothing of the genre before hand, I was able to learn a whole load by doing something hands on, examing and using aspects of the lighting and style from the time period of Film Noir.

I was also reminded of the various shot types we used, including match on action shots, Over the shoulder shots and close ups. One of the purposes of the task was to make sure our short film contained no continuity errors, these are little things that subtley change throught a piece of footage without meaning to, such as when someone opens a door with their right hand, but the camera then cuts to to the left side. We made sure in our film to not do this.

Overall, having learnt a lot from it, I think it went quite well.

Continueity Task

Near the beginning of the course, I done a Contiueity task with Olivia Smith, Emily Dimas and Jenni Dack.


CONTINUITY TASK JENNI SAM OLIVIA AND EMILY from fLIX.TV on Vimeo.

Mid term Self Assesment

I think me and my group have got quite alot done this past term;

• created a concept board which show our idea's evolving
• Planed, organised and finished filming our OTS
• researched target audiences
• written the soundtrack
• Produced A continuity task
• Examined the "Film Noir" genre

 I think our time management has been pretty good...apart from Matt lagging behind me and Lee, but other than that, we've gotten quite a bit done.
Despite starting late, i've gotten through most of the work thrown at me, and have recieve quite positive feedback.

Targets/Tasks that need to be done in the next 3 weeks are;

• Piece together our OTS by combining the Live footage,
• Add and finish the soundtrack
• Add titles
• Produce evaluation
• Add Continuity task + evaluation.
• Link more to each others blogs
• deconstruct a film noir

Filming Success!

Well, On Thursday, Me, my group and are actors all pulled together to get our filming done, and In my opinion it was a great success.
We got all of the footage we needed, pretty much exactly how we wanted it, and in quite a quick time aswell.
Our set was brilliant, Featuring nearly everything we imagined, including a  few pictures of "The Godfather" movie in the backgroud, which we all thought was a stroke of luck.
The only downside to the night was probably the sound. There was quite a bit of music playing, and a few spurts of loud voices, making the sound we recorded fairly poor, but, we have decided to call our actors back to foley their voices in, and them, aswell as the music and a looped crowd sound, it should turn out very well.

Both Matt and Lee are editing at the moment. Matt is piecing together our footage, and Lee is putting the finishing touches to the animation. Once it is all brought together, We can start adding the sound, and I can start creating the soundtrack to fit over the Film.

To do that, I need to call upon my drummer friend to record a drumbeat for me, and that should be done by next week. If all goes to plan, the whole OTS should be done by either the comming week, or next.

P.S Head over to Lee's blog to see some photos of us finshing the script and the script itself.

Props Update + last minute preparations

We've finally managed to get hold of a toy gun, which is, conveniently, a replica of the James Bond gun, and this should fit what we need perfectly.

As far as we know, all costumes have been sorted, either by us, or the actors.
Me and Matt will probably go into the city on wednesday to buy last minute additions, such as the diamond necklace we still need, and a few waistcoats/trousers.

we have been able to find a couple of extras which will be able to just be in the shot.
Pretty much everything will have to be done Thursday, so until then, thats all.

Finally, a Demo!

Ok, so I've finally managed to record a semi decent quality version of the soundtrack for our OTS.
It starts out with my original piece, which I think is quite atmospheric and slick, very fitting for the mood we want our OTS to induce, the second piece (the heavier part) is a song by Autumn titled "Liquid under Film Noir" which I told Matt and Lee to listen to, and they agreed it would be perfect for when the gun is fired, and the animation kicks in.

I have uploaded the song to Soundcloud, a pretty new music streaming website, and I produced the song in the Audacity program, I understand I will have to look into Copyright laws in order to use Autumn's song, and I shall do a further post about that.

http://soundcloud.com/sam-high/media-film-noir-demo

Note; I still need feedback from Matt and Lee about this, hopefully, they will like it...

Filming dates

I've been trying to organise a date to gather our cast down our setting and film.
I first suggested two dates on our Facebook group, Thursday 20th January and Sunday 23rd January.
The feedback we got was that the Thursday was the more convinient date and we have tried to settle on this, We also decided against the Sunday, as it the setting may be quite crowded.

We still need to organise the costumes (which we believe most of our cast member may own) and Props, Which we are pretty much done with apart from the BIG problem of guns, we are doing all we can to try and obtain these.

Assessment Criteria for level 4

This is the assessment criteria for the higher level that I am hoping to get for my production

Marking Criteria for the presentation of the research and planning

Level 4 48-60 marks

• There is excellent research into similar products and a potential target audience.- in process
• There is excellent organisation of actors, locations, costumes or props.
• There is excellent work on shotlists, layouts, drafting, scripting or storyboarding.
• There is an excellent level of care in the presentation of the research and planning
• Time management is excellent.

Marking criteria for video, filming and editing.
*Matt was responsible for most of this, But we all had alot of input into how we wanted it too look

• holding a shot steady, where appropriate;*
• framing a shot, including and excluding elements as appropriate; *
• using a variety of shot distances as appropriate; *
• shooting material appropriate to the task set; *
• selecting mise-en-scène including colour, figure, lighting, objects and setting; *
• editing so that meaning is apparent to the viewer;  - In process
• using varied shot transitions and other effects selectively and appropriately for the task set; - in process
• using sound with images and editing appropriately for the task set;  - In process
• using titles appropriately. - To be done

Set, Vblogs and Times

Ok, So last Thursday me and the group done our first video blog. As well as having quite a bit of fun, we managed to write down a script for our OTS, and just discuss ALOT of general ideas relating to our project.
The video is currently in the process of being edited down (We managed to record around 1 hour of footage!) by Matt, and he should post it up soon.

We have also decided to change our setting to the Beehive pub, instead of Paolos restaurant, the main reasons being we managed to talk to the owner easily, he said there would be no problem, and it is fairly local to all our crew, more info can be found on Lee's Blog. We also intend to start filming in about a week, we have yet to sort out a date, but that shall be done very soon.

I've also done a rough edit of the soundtrack we can possible use, as of yet, I have no way to record or upload it, But I intend to show it too Matt and Lee, to see what they think.