The Exchange Project

For the next project we had to film another sequence but this time we had to show that we had improved from the preliminary exercise, from the comments that were made from the preliminary exercise i was determined to get everything right this time.

This sequence was called the exchange sequence. In the exchange sequence character no.1 (Nicola Wright) had to exchange a confidential item for example, an envelope / suitcase / cassette / memory stick etc.. to character no.2 (Nick Rayner).

Our group contained of four people, myself, Nick, Nicola and Muhaimin, we all had to draw a storyboard of an idea that we had individually come up with. When we brought our ideas to the table it seemed we all had the same sort of idea, the start to nicola's was the best, the end of mine was the best. So we combined both of the ideas to create an even better idea and thats how we came about of what our sequence was going to be like.

Choosing a location was difficult, somewhere that was dark and "in the backstreet" style. We found somewhere right outside the front entrance of the college. Right next to the underground carpark where there was an arch with slight darkness for the scene and it seemed gloomy. this is where we started to shoot, i was oblivious to the fact there was a dark underground carpark right next to us at the time, so we started shooting outside the carpark. As we were deciding what to do first i looked around to see where to start and noticed through the grill that the carpark was dark, gloomy, it had dim lights and it seemed noisy. So i suggested it to the group whether we should shoot inside the carpark and they thought it was a brilliant idea, so thats where we shot our scene.

The shots were good, we had more angles unlike the prliminary exercise, we had long handles because i knew how much of a pain it is to not have handles, so handles was a neccessity. The framing was comfortable, i watched the rule of thirds and the 180* Line just to make sure that everything was perfect and everything was.

Editing was easy because we had long handles, could have done with a couple more shots but apart from that everything was fine, i found it very easy to edit the scenes and to put them together. I also had help from nicola who is also a good editor and would recommend her.

Music was chosen by the group, i listened through one of the teachers CD's and found a track that sounded as if it would suit, i asked the group and they told me to put it over the film and see if it worked, and fortunatly it did, very well in fact. This Is how the music was chosen.

We had made a brillaint piece. The comments were all positive, no-one could spot a mistake, the only negative comment which was from the teacher who said it was only a "Nit Picking Comment" was that the cuts weren't perfect, and that they were a few frames out, which was true, but apart from that there was nothing wrong with it which means a major improvement from the preliminary exercise. From the comment though it means that in the Final project i am going to have to spend more time on the editing when editing to make sure that i get it perfect.

Classic Film Noir Review

The Big Combo:
When Brown finds out that Diamond is on the case and means to put him behind bars, he boasts: Joe, tell the man I'm gonna break him so fast, he won't have time to change his pants. Tell him the next time I see him, he'll be in the lobby of the hotel, crying like a baby and asking for a ten dollar loan. Tell him that. And tell him I don't break my word.

Mr. Brown taunts Diamond every step of the way and makes Diamond more obsessed. Brown says: I'm gonna break him so fast he won't have time to change his pants.

Brown's right-hand man, the over the hill and hard of hearing Joe McClure (Brian Donlevy), plots with gangsters (and possibly lovers) Fante (Lee Van Cleef) and Mingo (Earl Holliman) to overthrow Mr. Brown, but he ends up getting killed himself. McClure's hearing aid, in an earlier scene, is used to torture detective Diamond with amplified sound (so as not to leave marks) in a display of violence rare for its time.

Meanwhile, Diamond finds a witness that could finally nail the elusive gangster, Mr. Brown's wife--a woman who was thought to have died years ago. The film ends dramatically in a classic foggy airplane hangar shootout.

The Blue Angel:
The Blue Angel follows Emmanuel Rath (Emil Jannings) through a transformation from esteemed educator at the local Gymnasium (college preparatory high school) to a destitute vagrant in pre-World War I Germany. Rath’s descent begins when he punishes several of his students for circulating photographs of the beautiful Lola Lola (Marlene Dietrich) the headliner for the local cabaret, The Blue Angel. Hoping to catch the boys at the club itself, Professor Rath goes to the club later that evening and meets his eventual downfall: the lovely Lola herself.

Consumed with desire and determined to remain at Lola’s side, Rath returns to the night club the following evening (to return a pair of panties that were smuggled into his coat by one of his students) and stays the night with her. The next morning, reeling from his night of passion, Rath arrives late to school to find his classroom in chaos and the principal furious with his behavior.

Rath subsequently resigns his position at the academy to marry Lola, but their happiness is short-lived, as they soon fritter away the teacher's meager savings and Rath is forced to take a position as a clown in Lola’s cabaret troupe to pay the bills. His growing insecurities about Lola’s profession as a “shared woman” eventually reduce him to a mere shell of the man he used to be, consumed by his lust and jealousy. The troupe returns to his hometown, where he is ridiculed and berated by the Blue Angel patrons, the very people he himself used to deride. As Rath performs his last act, he witnesses his wife embrace, and kiss, one of her former lovers, and Rath is enraged to the point of insanity. He attempts to strangle Lola, but is beaten down by the other members of the troupe and locked in a straight jacket.

Later that night, Rath is set free, and makes his way towards his old classroom. Rejected, humiliated, and destitute, he passes away in remorse, clenching the desk from where he once taught.

Detour:

A piano player, Al (Tom Neal), sets off hitchhiking his way to California to be with his fiancee. Along the way, a stranger in a convertible gives him a ride. While driving, Al stops to put the top up during a rainstorm. He discovers that the owner of the car has died in his sleep. Al panics and dumps the body in a gully, takes the stranger's money, clothes, and ID and then drives off in his expensive car. After spending the night in a motel, he picks up another hitchhiker, Vera (Ann Savage) (a femme fatale), who had earlier ridden with the stranger, threatens to turn him in for murdering the stranger unless he gives her all the money. In Hollywood, they rent an apartment and while trying to sell the car, learn from a newspaper that the stranger was about to collect a large inheritance. Vera demands that Al impersonate the stranger, but Al balks at this notion. When the two get drunk in the apartment and begin arguing, a snubbed Vera takes Al up on his earlier dare to call the police, whereupon Al accidentally strangles her with a telephone cord. Al starts hitchhiking east again, but is apprehended by the police near Reno.

The Preliminary Exercise

Our first Mini-Project before The Exchange project was our preliminary exercise. We were given a task where we had to shoot a short film lasting approximately a minute. The shoot had to include a character walking into a room where a different character was currently sitting inside, the first character sits down next to or opposite the second character, a couple of lines of dialogue were exchanged and then the end. The reason we were set this task was to lead up to the Main Project that we are doing in January/February time, and because we are not experienced professional cameramen, we need to slowly do exercises to gain experience so that we know what techniques and skills, for example the “rule of thirds”, the “180 Degree Line Rule” and the “Shot/Reverse Shot”, to use whilst making our final project.

You can see from the short film that we adhered to most of the rules, the ones we did follow were the "180 Degree Line Rule" and the "Shot/Reverse Shot", we tried to follow the rule of thirds but whilst filming this wasn't going through my mind so i failed to follow the "Rule Of Thirds" on a couple of shots. On the other hand we did mange to follow the "180 Degree Line", we didnt cross the line during the shots, this is because if we had it would create an uneasy and confusing scene where both characters would look like they were in the same place. We also managed to follow the "shot/reverse shot", this creates action to keep the audience from yawning from bordom, this is also useful for dialogue between two people.

Our Story was that the first character (Muhaimin) walked into a room where the second character was sitting (Hannah) and Muhaimin sat down and dialogue was exchanged.

M : I Challenge You To A Staring Competition
H : Ok

*Pause Whilst Two Characters Are Staring At Each Other*
*Muhaimin Cant Stand The Pain And Reacts*

H : Yeh I Won!

The short film worked very well, the scenes flowed well, the dialogue went well. There were a couple of things that were pointed out that i didnt really notice at the time. Some of the scenes didnt cut to perfection, they were a few frames out, but this was also because we didnt have any more recording of that scene, this meant lack of handles. Lack of handles is a major problem as i found out, you cant get the scenes to cut together perfectly if you dont have handles, this made the scene just not that right and a bit uncomfortable. Scenes are meant to cut together so that you don't notice any editing whatsoever, but to achieve this handles are needed.

Another thing that was pointed out was the lack of shots, there weren't that many different angles only about 4/5, which doesn't make it very interesting if its the same continous angles. This means in our next Mini-Project, more shot angles are needed.

Thirdly there wasn't any close-ups, i suppose this isn't a neccesity but it would have been nice to see some close-ups to show expressions or moods.

The History Of Film Noir

Nino Frank was a French critic who in 1946 first applied the term film noir (French for “Black Film”) to Hollywood movies. Nino Frank was unknown to most of the American Film Industries at the time. Cinema historians and critics defined film noir as a remembrance; many of the creators involved in the making of classic noir films later claimed to be unaware of having created a distinctive type of film.

Film Noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize doubt and sexual motivation. The classic Hollywood Film Noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film Noir of the 40s and 50s was a very simple black-and-white visual style. Many of the classical Noir stories derived from the crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

Film noir has sources not only in cinema but other artistic media as well. The simple lighting schemes are in the tradition of chiaroscuro (Italian for light-dark, meaning the contrast of light and dark) and tenebrism (A heightened version of chiaroscuro using violent contrasts of light and dark) , techniques using high contrasts of light and dark were developed by the 15th and 16th century by painters. Film noir's aesthetics are influenced by The German Expressionism. The opportunities offered by the ever growing Hollywood film industry influenced many important film artists working in Germany who had either been directly involved in the Expressionist movement or studied with its practitioners. Directors such as Fritz Lang, Robert Siodmak, and Michael Curtiz brought dramatic lighting techniques and a great deal of ideas to mise-en-scène with them to Hollywood, where they would make some of the most famous of classic noirs. Lang's 1931 masterwork, the German M, is among the first major crime films of the sound era (the sound era was the time when a motion picture was made with synchronized sound began to take place) to join a characteristically noirish visual style with a noir-type plot.

The Characteristics Of A Film Noir

The Main Character of a typical film noir usually ends up trapped in a difficult situation, most communly from a woman (The Femme Fatal of the story(Femme Fatal meaning a woman with no morals)). The main character is usually a male who has to do what he is told to do by the woman through blackmail and bribary, this makes the woman dominant in every situation so the main character has no choice but to follow instructions. In Fargo (1996 By; The Coen Brothers) the main character is in debt but we do not know from who or what, he knows that if he kidnappes a woman (who's from a wealthy family) he will recieve lots of money in return to pay off the debt.

Film noirs covered a wide range of genres, from gangster, detective and PI (private-eye) stories to films about social problems.

Film Noirs were typically made in black and white this wasn't because it was cheap and cost-effective, although it was an advantage, it was to give off a dark and sinister background to the film. The mood is set by the colours used, the setting, the dialogue, the lighting which was adjusted by certain objects which made shadows to create silhouettes, venetian blinds were communly used to break up to picture so much so that you couldnt quite distinguish the person, as if they were being sly or cunning. Smokey rooms from a cigarette gave the impression of a weary and gloomy mood to the situation. The music was quite jazzy but tense which made the situation seem sneaky and undercover.

Flashbacks were communly used to tell a story or to refer to the past of the story to explain something or to make the audience ponder. Many Camera Teqniques were used including deep-focus allowing the foregroung and the background to be in focus at the same time, low-angled shots looked up on someone to maker them dominant and seem more powerful than something or someone else.

What Is Film Noir?

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize moral ambiguity and sexual motivation. Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style that has roots in German Expressionist cinematography, while many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

The term film noir (French for "black film"), first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the era. Cinema historians and critics defined the canon of film noir in retrospect; many of those involved in the making of the classic noirs later professed to be unaware of having created a distinctive type of film.

The Brief

The Brief:

We are being commisioned to produce a film opening and the theme is "contemporary 'film noir' thrillers". Our work needs to be up to date with the modernised world yet still bringing the noir traditions, values, narrative, mood and conventions to the film to a modernised audience in contemporary style and setting. We will need to consider and mention what sort of institution it would sit within and the cinemas and distribution pattern the film would have and also where it will sit best in the television schedules and on which TV station it would be most suited to.