Improvements Made

I have made some improvements from the given feedback from the anonymous on Survey Monkey. Some of the improvements however I could not change due to either budget or the time given. A couple of people had said for the title and casting section the paper looked too plain and rushed. One person even suggested making the paper look a bit dull and dreary to match the time period, therefore I had remembered that using tea and crumpled paper I may be able to achieve this target. However, I hadn't done this technique in years and so had Youtubed different ways of making this work. The video below is the one that I am going to use.

I will be using the oven technique as I  like the small indentations and darker spots, also the darker saturated colour around the edges makes it more realistic. I will add my own video on shortly of how I decided to create the look. I am going to use a5 white paper though, due to my title sequence being in a smaller proportion.

This is my own video:


HOW TO MAKE OLD FASHIONED PAPER from Charlotte Beach on Vimeo.

I created this video on how to age paper, I didn't use coffee as I did not want a look that is far too strong, I wanted a natural yet rustic feel to the paper.

1. Firstly, I cut my paper in half for the size I needed, fetched four tea bags, turn on the oven and boiled the kettle.

2. Pour the hot water into a glass jug or bowl, making sure not too add too much water as you want the water rather strong, you can add more tea bags if needed.

3. Make sure the water is not too hot so leave it to cool for 5-10 or you can just put it in the fridge if in a rush like I did.

4. Grab a bowl and pour the contents of the jug into it. Completely soak the paper on both sides.

5. When the paper is soaked you can leave to soak for five minutes for a stronger look but I wanted a more subtle look. Now put the paper on a baking tray and put in the oven.

6. How long you leave it in the oven determines how dark, rustic and crumpled you want it. I tended to leave each tray in for between 3 to 5 minutes.

7. Bring out of the oven, using oven mitts and ta da!

Below is how mine turned out. Perfect.

THE FINAL TITLE SEQUENCE DEMO from Charlotte Beach on Vimeo.

More Drinking Scenes
Other improvement ideas from the survey included: more drinking scenes to show that the femme fatale was at a loss of control and that the drink should be darker in colour to look like it was whiskey, a well known drink then. Therefore for the final I have added in another scene of drinking before the femme fatale removes her gloves to show she just wants to down a drink and forget things, especially what she has done. I could not add any other shots of her drinking in because the film can only be 2.5 minutes long. However, I believe this may be enough including the voice over I have created.

The drink itself was water originally however someone on my survey suggested to make it a better replica to have a darker looking mixture in the decanter. Therefore I had decided to add green tea bags in to make I look darker in colour, similar to that of whiskey. Some people suggested I also buy some bottles/decanters that were old fashioned and with labels to make the mise-en-scene more realistic, however upon searching for these, they became very expensive due to them being under antiques now. This did not fit my budget.

Adding Enigma
I feel that there wasn't any enigma or storyline to the first drafted production as I hadn't time to add in the anti-hero scenes. However, knowing this I have worked on some scenes with my anti-hero cast. The scene is underneath a street lamp outdoors with him smoking and smiling at the camera, almost as though the femme fatale was filming it. In the last scene of him he pushes the camera away playfully showing that they had a good relationship. This will be shown as a flashback of her life with him.

I will add this scene into the video by an over the shoulder shot as I did with the title sequence before hand, the femme fatale will be looking through her polaroids and stumble upon a photograph of him, this will zoom into the video and the audience will be able to recognise who he is. I may even add a scene of her ripping up the photograph of him in the ending showing her aggressiveness.

Sound
I agree that sound is something that I need to add more to, and so I have written a script that can be added over the dreary jazz music being played. The script can be seen on another blog post. This will add background to the storyline and the audience will be able to understand the characters a bit more, adding enigma and a relationship between the femme fatale and anti-hero. I also may add a couple of foley sounds in too but only quietly such as the gulping and pouring of the drinks and the shy laugh of the anti-hero pushing the camera away from him.

Crime
One person revealed that they felt it was not noir enough due to the lack of weapons or crime scenes, therefore as the femme fatale is murdering the anti-hero I am going to add a short scene at the end of the gun aimed at the anti-hero, adding a crime sense. However, I didn't want too much crime aspects due to the femme fatale trying to think straight and be feminine. But, I did feel it needed a small aspect and therefore it will be added without the music at the end and a short quote from the script I had adjusted myself. This will add enigma and a shocking cliffhanger for the audience.

Visual
Another person mentioned that they felt due to the film period the production should have a slight grainy affect to the visual element. Therefore I am going to play around with iMovie and Movie Maker for a short grainy effect.

Feedback from Survey Monkey on my First Draft

This Slide Share shows my feedback and comments from what unknown others thought of my first drafted production. I had shared this on social media and therefore would not know many of the participants, making it fairer.

Survey Monkey on Film Noir First Draft from CharlotteLouiseB

Awards

Our teacher decided that we would all vote on the best productions starting 1-5. Every member of a team had to vote for their favourite productions. Autumn and I didn't believe it when we came third out of five productions. I was ecstatic when finding out the scores. Now, I feel we can create a very moving and very effective final production in the next couple of months. This score has made me very excited to start our production.  Below you can see the slideshare of the scores.

2015 media production as fairy tales position votes + comments from Elaine Humpleby

Little Red Riding Hood Introduction and Peer Assessment

Below I have a vimeo of myself introducing our short film to the class. We had decided to peer assess all the short productions for internal feedback. I believe both giving and receiving the feedback was very helpful considering in our class we have past media students and therefore was easy to pick up the terminology and what we should be looking out for in a good production. Enjoy.


Introduction to Little Red Riding Hood Neo-Noir from Charlotte Beach on Vimeo.

And now below we have the peer assessment vimeo of what people thought of our presentation. We had comments such as 'the ending was far too short' this was our fault as we had left editing far too late compared to when we had planned. Other comments included: 'I really liked the sinister sounds' of which we created with sound effects on iMovie and 'I liked how the colour changed to black and white but I think you could have used a different transition'. All comments were taken into account and we can work on them when we create our real production. This video is below.

Little Red Riding Hood Evaluation

At the beginning I felt thrown in at the deep-end seen as this was my first media production I had directed therefore I believe there are many things that I would change when it comes to the real production.

Choosing Conventions

At first Autumn and I had struggled as to which fairytale we wanted to do and how we could make it more neo-noir. After many mind maps and storyboards we had decided upon Little Red Riding Hood. We believed we could create a very mysterious production and change the concepts of the fairytale into film noir. Therefore we decided upon trying to change the characters roles around slightly, we wanted Little Red to be the anti-hero, the wolf as the femme fatale and the axe man as the girl next door. We wanted to create a dramatic production and yet keep the scenes almost the same as the fairytale. We had to decide upon who would be acting for us and considering no other young people we know live near to us and the location we were using in such little time we just decided to use ourselves. Our location was perfect for the forest scenes as it looks dark and spooky with natural sounds like whistling trees and cracking branches, we decided to film it at Sprowston Green. Throughout my blog you will see the use of many kinds of planning techniques such as script writing, storyboards, comic strips and mood boards. We spent hours on perfecting scripts and what camera angles we were going to use rather than perfecting our final.


Research
Between us we had researched the full Red Riding Hood fairytale and Autumn had even looked at the film of the fairytale that was out in 2011 starring Amanda Seyfried. I had enjoyed watching these clips because they showed dramatic and action scenes, and how they had positioned their camera.


Planning
For our planning we had created many mindmaps and storyboards the position where the scenes will take place and what characters will be involved. We had spent hours planning the final shoot including holding a photo shoot a few nights before. However, when we had started the photo shoot in October around 7pm the sky was already extremely dark. I am very happy that we had looked into the timings of the evening and realising when to do the final due to weather conditions and how dark it is outside. Then, we had decided to film in the holiday so that we could do it slightly earlier of a time of 4pm. As we chose the timing three hours earlier it was much brighter outside and therefore our cameras had picked up more focus still gave the glum and eerie feel to the film.


Organisation
I believe we organised the production very well however if I were to do it again I would take many different takes of the same scenes so that we had more to work with whilst editing. As I was playing the main character we agreed that Autumn would do the majority of the filming and we would leave the camera on the tripod filming whilst in a scene together. I had organised all the props that we had borrowed from out drama studios in sixth form, I believe we picked the best props we could find without having to purchase any. I had also been in charge of creating the comic strip and storyboards. I believe we worked well together in the time we had.


Production
We agreed that because this was our first production we would try all different camera angles and lighting (as best a lighting we could work with in a forest). We had tried to use pan shots, low and high angles, close-ups and using the 180 degrees. I believe our set continuity task was edited extremely well. Autumn edited the whole production on iMovie, I believe Autumn did the best. We both had difficulty on adding the sound on iMovie to fit in with the production and then discovered that it was actually extremely loud compared to the characters dialogue. I think even though we had little time and difficulty having the same time together that for our first ever production this went really well considering neither of us has ever taken media before. We both really enjoyed taking part in both the filming and (bad) acting of this production and it was definitely worthwhile. There are however many things I would change about the production including how the ending finished so fast, I would add more scenes and drama in and how the music was too. I would have liked to attempt to create our own sounds a little more, even though we did foley the gun shot at the end by clapping together. I would have liked to use different actors instead of ourselves as well as I believe we would both be able to concentrate on the editing and actual filming of the production a lot more. We are

Feedback
We are now receiving feedback from Survey Monkey after I had created a short survey and shared it on some social media sites. I am just waiting for a good number of people to have anonymously taken art in my feedback to show the results. I shall keep you posted!


Conclusion
I think we did try really hard to have a good piece of work and as this was both our first production without having any prior Media experience i think it was a really good effort and our work did pay off. There are many pieces i would change like perhaps planning our script and also including different people to play the characters rather than us as we arent the best actors,  this would allow us to have more control over our production. We are now in the process of receiving feedback as this will allow us to capture what we can improve and how other people see our work.
With more time and as our knowlege of media grows i think me and Charlotte will improve with our filming and editing.


Continuity Task Feedback

For the feedback of our video I have decided to create a Survey Monkey with a few short questions on to share through my blog and social media. These questions include about the camera and composition, lighting and props. Hopefully, after a few days we will start to see many results and so will be able to analyze them on our blogs through the use of screen grabs. We both understand that if we were to do it all over again there would be many improvements to make, however we would like to just get some quick feedback on the first video we edited and created together. So please could you look in the link beforehand watched our short video and then kindly complete our survey, it shouldn't take more than five minutes altogether and would help us so much. The link is below, thanks. 

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/FLS3BMD