Final Props and Costume

 

The social media aspect of looking for props worked! I managed to get all props for no cost at all from a generous lady not far from Norwich. She has allowed me to borrow a headpiece, flapper dress, black T heels, beads, dress gloves and a scarf. This means that the femme fatales costume is finished apart from the make-up I would like to add. I am still searching for a hat for a my male character, the everyman, but if I cannot find a cheap option costume then I will get my actor to wear a suit and boots. Making sure that I use much smoke as effect. I have added photographs of the props below.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I am very happy with the props I have chosen and discovered however, I would like to think about smaller things I will be needing such as whiskey glasses, decanter and such. I have also got a cigarette holder and a shisha stick so I can add smoke into the production as this is a typical convention of the time period and flappers.



Scheduled Timings

Here I am going to add the dates in which I hope to get important events done and finished. 

Thursday 14th January: photographs of props and dressing table (location)              COMPLETED

Tuesday 19th January: have storyboard finished and written up                                    COMPLETED

Monday 18th January: find two music tracks for the production on a music archive COMPLETED

Tuesday 19th January: find youtube videos of make-up and foleying, have smoke video on blog

Friday 29th January: have first small video production filmed (femme fatale)      COMPLETED

Friday 29th January: have every man photo shoot printed for polaroid's      COMPLETED

Tuesday 2nd February: have video of everyman and femme fatale finished (short)    COMPLETED

Friday 5th February: have final filmed (femme fatale and anti-hero)        COMPLETED

Monday 29th February: have the final film edited                                    COMPLETED

Monday 29th February: add production to the blog                                  COMPLETED

Mise-en-Scene Update

I have already purchased some small items that I can use for the filming such as: a sequinned/feather headband, a cigarette holder, a shish-a stick (for the smoke) and a glass jar that looks similar to a decanter. I ordered the majority from Amazon and the glass decanter is from Hobbycraft. I am still yet to find a size 12 flapper dress for my actress considering the ones that I have come across are extremely expensive for a small production. The next step is to ask on social media to see if any one will lend me the dress for the filming of the production, as it will not be worn afterwards. I will add photographs of the props I have so far during the week including the location I am going to use. 

I have created a Pinterest board for my media studies called: '1920's' this includes props and costume of what was around in the Roaring Twenties. This is the biggest inspiration I have along with The Great Gatsby film starring Leonardo DiCaprio. My Pinterest can be seen below:

http://pin.it/K15CFOW

Sound Techniques

 

We have been challenged by our teacher to create some foleying techniques that we would use in our productions. As a class we watched the opening of Priest (in silence) and had written all the sound devices that we think we may have heard. When it came to watching it over again (this time with sound) we realised that there were so many more sound effects in the background that we would not have understood unless we could hear. The video below is showing a way in which foley artists are used in the media industry and one way that they add the sounds.


I found this extremely useful to watch as it gave me ideas in which I could create some foley sounds. The picture below is of the white board that we had written all the 45 sounds we had heard in the beginning of Priest. Our aim is to now create as many of these sounds as we can and attach to our blogs.

Here I have added a Prezi of my own to show different types of sounds and techniques. I have included definitions for all so that the audience can understand the vocabulary, as I found it tricky when I first discovered it.

Research for OTS

For this OTS production to be as effective as possible I will need to research many aspects of the time era such as male and female costume, furniture and props and fashion/makeup. I would like to set it in the 20’s but have the film noir aspect of a femme fatale introduced with heavy makeup and similar dress including head piece and cigarette holder.

Below is my slideshare of the research I have found and produced. This will help me to choose a style of dress and understand what kind of make up they wore.

Research for OTS - 1920's from CharlotteLouiseB

1920s fashion from Hailey Wheeler

Mise-en-Scene Planning

I believe that mise-en-scene is a very important part of a production as each prop, appearance and costume should have a reason or meaning to be in the frame. I would like the femme fatal to be seen as a male protagonist being broken and believing her innocence after a murder. Therefore, acting like a male protagonist, adding in the film noir typical conventions and making the production a success I think that i have a lot of props to research and purchase for this 2.5 minute production.

Props

I would include an old fashioned dresser into the frame with a mirror attached because that is where the femme fatal will be sat removing her foundations (make-up). Researching 1920's dressers now they look much more antique with more drawers, a  sharp wooden effect and a glossy finish. However, mine is more Victorian based and is completely white-washed. Although the film will be black and white and therefore the dresser will not seem so much newer compared to other props such as the flapper dress the femme fatal will be wearing. The mirror attached to the dressing table will be used for camera and composition for almost over the shoulder shots with the actress. 

I would like to get some whiskey and a whiskey glass to use for the real production to try and shoot through the glass and work on a kind of kaleidoscope image. I am hoping this effect would work or to shine light through it to create a disco ball-lighting effect around the room. As the location is my bedroom the walls are painted a very light pink-peach colour and therefore looks similar to that of dull walls. I cannot change the walls however, as the film will be black and white they will look almost grey in colour. My curtains are also a grey colour which will be okay to use as they let light in and may work well with the lighting side, I will experiment this on the run-through without all props. If this doesn't work I may have some older and thicker curtains that do not let as much light in.

I really want the femme fatal to be extremely broken and act as though she was very devious following the evening I will be filming. Therefore, I would like her make-up to be extremely heavy as many women wore in the 1920's. I would like to research the general outfit from the 1920's flapper and femme fatal to make sure she is not shown as the girl next door. At the ending many may feel that she is the girl next door because she will be admitting to all her mistakes including what happened that evening. I want her outfit to be very flirtatious as though she really has gotten somebody in trouble, deep trouble. 

I will need to purchase a fake weapon, which i would like to be an old shotgun as she will be looking over this during the start of the production as a reminder of what she has done. I would also like there to be some homemade polaroids scattered around the room, especially on the mirror where the femme fatal can pull them off in disgust at what she has done. These polaroids will include photographs of a desirable anti-hero that she had fallen in love with, and yet ruined everything with a single gun shot. On the dressing table there will also be an old style hair brush and something for her to take her foundations (make-up) off with. Becoming a different person.


Equipment 
I am going to need different equipment for this production such as my microphone, my Nikon D5200 and fish-eye lens to make her look secluded, tripod and possibly both of my flash's to add more lighting as I do not have the radiant lights at home. 

OTS Planning Ideas

As I am now working alone on the OTS production I have decided to steer away from my original idea of a Great Gatsby party leading with a murder and have decided to take an different route for the filming aspect and have more complex camera and composition effects. I am going to stay with the style of Great Gatsby and have all the props based around the 1920's. 

The story

I am going to have a femme fatal character throughout as the central protagonist because I like the idea of having the femme fatal from the start to draw attention to her mistakes instead of the everyman. I would like her heavily made-up and taking away her foundations to become a girl next door character by realising her mistakes but being unable to change them. I would like to have just the femme fatal and voice over of her mistakes because it adds enigma to the story, ending on a cliffhanger. 

Adding to the conventions of film noir

Film noir was around in the 1940's however I have decided to set the OTS in the 1920's, the Gatsby era. The idea of film noir was to show men that women are being included in more male role responsibilities and many men did not enjoy this. The film producers wanted to show men that women need to return to their original gender roles. Therefore I am going to turn my femme fatal into a wreckage of disaster and go with the moral convention. 

The femme fatal will be drinking whiskey and sobbing about the past acting as the anti-hero broken down as in the conventions of classic film noir. This shows that the OTS will begin at the end. The production will be filmed in my bedroom as I have white washed old-fashioned wardrobes and a dressing table with a mirror, making it more realistic for the time period. I also believe along with heavily drinking there should be an element of smoking and soft smoke going past the lens as femme fatal were shown as danger including smoking, drinking and trouble. As the film production will be captured in my bedroom only, i will not be able to add elements of darkness and alleyways as many film noir films include, however I would like to include deep contrasts between shadows. I will try this with use of different lighting to show emotion for the femme fatal. I would also like the whole frame to be in black and white as all original film noir films are.

OTS Research

We were set a challenge in lesson to find a couple opening title sequences that inspire us. I looked on the website Art of the Title and found a couple that I would like to explore and perhaps use some sections in my own ideas and production. 

I found the OTS to the film Seven 1995, now this is not a film noir however there are sections that are inspirational and imaginative that I like. The OTS can be seen below.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/se7en/#

This film is a 1995 American neo-noir psychological thriller film with a strong A-list cast including Brad Pitt, Gwyneth Paltrow and Morgan Freeman. I enjoy this OTS because it is very dark and gloomy, creating a cold atmosphere. There is much use of close-ups during the OTS such as the fingers, the diaries and pictures throughout. I would like to base my camera on close-ups with the femme fatale being broken, with tears running down her face, whiskey in glasses and the polaroids of her old lover, the everyman she had killed. The diaries are also a brilliant idea which i may include but I feel that past love letters may be a better idea from the everyman, making her tearful. I would also like photo's of her lover from old style polaroids that I will hand make.

Another technique I really like about this OTS is the titles and writing. Most opening title sequences have font titles rather than sketching and scribbles like the killer has written it himself. I would like to either like the femme fatale to write the cast and titles on a piece of paper with beautiful calligraphy or I would like to try to scribble it and add it in later on like the film Seven. The music throughout this OTS is much too eerie for what I am trying to capture but fits perfectly with the idea behind the film.

Another OTS I have found is called I Wake Up Screaming 1941, this is an American film noir. The credits are spelled out in lights superimposed over the New York Skyline. As seen below.

http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/i-wake-up-screaming/

There is no story behind the short title sequence and as it is so old there is not much to it. However, I very much like the font and think it is very interesting. At the beginning there is the production company, Twenty Century Fox and I believe I should add something similar for the Top Hat Production of mine. I would like it to look similar and nothing much to it. The kind of music used in this OTS is similar to what I would hope to find for mine. I will be looking for a free music archive for something similar along with some dance jazz music as I am thinking of adding some flashbacks.


I will add pictures and screenshots of examples later.

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

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.

Quick Vlog Whilst Filming

This is a short video of us updating you on what scenes we are filming. By this time we had already filmed all scenes in the forest including Little Red skipping and meeting the wolf. These scenes took around forty minutes to take as we had a short period of time in which the forest would become extremely dark, as you can see from the video. After this video was taken we were heading to my house to film scenes of Little Red being wary as her grandma's house has been wrecked and when the Axe-man saves her from the wolf. Enjoy and yes I understand I could not say continuity correctly.


Quick Vlog whilst filming Little Red Riding Hood Neo-Noir from Charlotte Beach on Vimeo.