Our Fairytale Continuity Task

This is our neo-noir version of the fairytale: Little Red Riding Hood. I have taken this from my Vimeo account along with other blogs and posts i have created. We both felt thrown in at the deep-end seen as we have never done anything with creating videos or media since creating this. Therefore we did find it terribly difficult but we both know that to create a good final that we need to put so much time into practicing different skills to get our best. Enjoy.

Little Red Riding Hood Neo noir from Charlotte Beach on Vimeo.

Little Red Riding Hood Comic Strip

 

I have created this comic strip using the app: Comic Life. This app allowed me to transform my pictures from the first photo shoot into a comic strip/storyboard of what is going to happen in our short film. This app was brilliant because it was extremely simple to use including adding own photographs, text and changing borders and colours. There are many ways to create it so that it looks like your own, and very unique.

 

 

Reflective comment:



I believe that the app itself was exceptional to use and had many simplistic and easy features that you can use. However, I found it highly difficult to save it as a jpeg. or just a simple picture. I had to play around with different ideas on my laptop to save it rather than it just opening on the app, and discovered that if I were to save it onto a word document as a print screen and then crop it I could then save it as a picture. I think I would use this software again as it was interesting to be able to create your own comic strip absolutely free and because it was just so simple.

Identifying an Audience for our Fairytale Neo-Noir

Making sure a film has the correct film rating is very important especially to parents that want to protect their children from sexual scenes, violence and disturbing images. Film ratings provide parents with advance information about the content of films to help them to determine what movies are appropriate for their children. In the case of films shown in the cinema, local authorities have the final legal authorisation over who can view a particular film. The majority of the time the local authorities have accepted the Board's recommendation for a certificate of film. However there have been some notable exceptions such as Last Tango in paris and The Exorcist in the 1970's that were classed as an X certificate, but the local authorities chose to ban the films. 

These classifications above are the regular British Board of Film Classification that were changed in 2003 compared to the ones that were in tradition since the 1980's. I believe that our film so far with planned it would come under a PG as there are no sexual scenes, just small talk and flirting. There is not much violence neither just a gun shot. However, some may say it will be a 12A or 12 because the storyline is about kidnapping. 

Fairytale Neo-Noir Script Work

Autumn and I have started writing up a draft script of when we film our short film next week. We have decided to keep it short but sweet as we do not wish to make it too long, only a couple of minutes to keep the audiences attention. Here below are some photographs of Autumn's note book of the draft:

As you can see we have colour coded it. The red pen is obviously for Little Red Riding Hood, orange is for the wolf and blue are the stage directions. We found this much easier to coordinate when running through our lines. 

Reflective comment:
I still believe that we need to tweak this to give the short film it's full potential and to making it slightly longer. We also did not know what the wolf should say to Little Red because he should be flirting with her to get what he wants (her as his dinner). We also need to add much more detail and media terminology to create the best effects. I enjoyed this task because we could add our own imagination and how both Little Red and the wolf should act.

Planning Fairytale Neo-Noir

We have decided as a group (Autumn and I) that we are going to create a modern 2015 neo-noir of Little Red Riding Hood. To do this we will need to add film noir aspects into the short film therefore we have decided to change the characters around so that they are stock characters: the everyman (anti-hero) will be Little Red who is harmless, the wolf will be the femme fatale and the axe man will be the girl next door. We have decided to have Little Red as the everyman because she is very quiet and does not get into any trouble therefore having the femme fatale as the wolf trying to seduce her into having her as his dinner works perfectly because he is top of the food chain and that is his plan after all. The axe man in the original story ends up saving Little Red and her gran from the wolf so I have decided to make him the girl next door. Obviously the characters being different genders makes it slightly neo-noir. But we would like to get creative and make the film and photo shoots black and white and only have the red cape of Little Red's that is coloured a vibrant red, we realise this will be very difficult to do for the entire film. We have created a storyboard that can be seen below: 

These are photographs of the storyboard Autumn and I have drawn up about specific scenes we would like to include in our short film.

Scene 1: 

Little Red Riding Hood leaves her house. We have thought about using my front door as the setting and have it set in the evening when it is dark and gloomy. We want to capture this scene very mysteriously and would like to play with shadows.

Scene 2:

Here Red Riding Hood will be skipping into the woods, we have decided to use the Sprowston woods outside my house as it is hidden and discreet.

Scene 3:

Red Riding Hood bumps into the wolf and he startles her. This is where the scene will become much more dramatic and the audience will start to realise the stock characters. The expression on Red's face will need to be a dramatic shocked face to represent what will be coming soon.

Scene 4:

The wolf tries to seduce Little Red showing once again who the stock characters are with the wolf being the femme fatale this shows how we are creating this much more neo noir than original. I believe that the wolf should be smoking to create the atmosphere and seductive femme fatale.

Scene 5:

Little Red ignores the wolf and carries on her journey not aware that the wolf is behind watching her every step. We are thinking of eyeline-match here to show the wolf constantly watching her every move and many shadows with him in the background. This will create a dramatic yet horrific atmosphere for the audience.

Scene 6:

This will be our continuity task of having Little Red walking through a door and greeting the wolf in her grans rocking chair and having a short discussion. This will be a trial and we will most likely take this in the photography block and the studio.

Scene 7:

This is where the wolf if in the grans living room and is sat in the rocking chair still trying to seduce Red to be with him, when we all know his plan is to have her as a meal. Rather than a date. Here we could use many shadows in this scene and the smoke from the cigarette the wolf is smoking.

Scene 8:

This scene is when gran is screaming from the wardrobe that the wolf has locked her in. She is screaming for her granddaughter to run away and hide.

Scene 9:

The axe man turns up at the grans house as he hears the screaming and rescues Little Red and the gran. In this scene we could use many close-ups to show intimacy and the courage from the axe man.

Scene 10:

This scene will include a happy ever after for Little Red as we believe the everyman should get his chance with the girl next door. This scene will also have close-ups and focal zooms, for intimacy.

Reflective comment:
The next thing we will be doing is looking at writing up our script for the actual film we will create ourselves. However I will need to create the photo shoots over the week too as will need to create some photographs in the evenings in our spare time.

Freeze Frame

The Great Gatsby Synopsis

Midwest native Nick Carraway arrives in 1922 New York, he is in search of the American dream. Nick moves next door to millionaire Gatsby and across the bay from his sweet cousin Daisy and her manipulative husband Tom. Therefore, Nick becomes drawn into the world of wealth and as he witnesses their illusions and deceit this film leads a tale of impossible love, dreams and great tragedy.

In the frozen photograph you can see both Gatsby and Daisy, Daisy of whom looks very lustful towards Gatsby as she is resting her fragile hands among her lips. Gatsby is positioned on the left in the frame, however he is not in focus. I believe the photographer has done this purposely because it shows that she is constantly on his mind, whether he likes that or not. Throughout the film the colour is very saturated this is usually done to show age to the film and they do this with camera effects and the colours that characters dress in. The distance between both Gatsby and Daisy shows they are now intimate and have been so before, Gatsby is longing over her as he is not focused. This is an over the shoulder shot which also shows he is watching her, gazing almost in this scene. I believe the shot is composed over the shoulder and with Jay Gatsby not focused because he has loved her all his life and all he wants is her back, throughout the film you can see all he does is try and win her over. If the shot were not composed from this angle I believe it would not be as capturing towards the audience. By the mise-en-scene of both characters in this freeze frame you can see both are wealthy, however both are not happy. The jewelry and elegant dress shows that she is a modest woman and is quite infatuated towards Gatsby. Lastly, the focus of the scene would be Daisy as she is in focus and so we can tell she is either about to start dialogue or there is meaning behind her smile.