Evaluation

Overall I feel that this unit went fairly well, I was able to focus on an area which interested me most not only in terms of enjoying watching films and viewing the film stills but that it is something I would like to enter into as a career. For this reason I chose to do this particular unit in this way, photographing images in the style of film stills by following a script that was written for my requirements, I think that at the beginning of the unit in my first tutorial I was pushed away from the idea of using video and making a short film which I thought was part of the unit outcome to make a digital piece, this did not help me at all as I felt my ideas were being talked down, I was told “you’re on a photography course not a film course “ I’d never said I wasn't going to take photographs but this angered me in that I didn't feel free to explore what I really wanted to do, for that I decided to change my idea slightly by taking images as film stills and putting them together to create a narrative, this I felt worked well and I wasn't discouraged to do so, because of that I went with my own opinions whilst taking on what others suggested.

When it came to the review mid-way through I was told that maybe it was a little too elaborate and I could have done something simple, but had I done that I would not have felt I was pushing myself to create something I hadn't done before, I was also told that the narrative worked not using models but as you can see on my blog and I my book I went through some trouble to arrange with my models the shoots and after all that I wouldn't want to not go through with my original idea of which I really liked.

In terms of my research I feel this was very relevant to my work, I looked at photographers who used techniques I would need to use myself such as Cindy Sherman’s film stills and Weegee’s dramatic black and white shots, however for this work I do feel my research into films which follow the particular genre I was looking was more helpful as it gave me an idea of the cinematic and how it influences photography and not just film, from films such as L.A. Confidential and Gangster Squad I was able to extract information to help inform my narrative in terms of how I shot the costume and the language looking at older films such as The Singing Detective and Kiss Me Deadly it gave me an idea of dramatics a that was something included in Film Noir crime style and was something I wanted to use in my final pieces.

I found the workshops to be very useful such as the flash workshop which helped me with learning how to use my flash gun properly and how to make the most out of it with my images, this was useful in using my flash for my images as this was something I really wanted to do to try and create more cinematic images which I feel it certainly did and from that I was very happy with my images for my pieces.

In terms of my publication final piece, my idea changed to which I originally wasn't very happy about I had my head set on creating a Graphic Novel as I felt it fitted with a lot of my research into Frank Millers novels and the way he uses images to drive a narrative forward, as it got closer to the deadline I realized my final piece would have told the exact same story as my digital piece, so for this reason I came up with the idea to do a newspaper print, I wasn't sure whether to write the article a film critique judging my digital piece as a film or to do it as an article by a journalist I thought this would work well in conjunction with my digital piece in that it would work as a written piece to fill in the gaps of my open ended digital story giving the audience a little more to go on other than just filling in the gaps. I was slightly annoyed when it came to printing as the first print I did printed very well however I realized it had a spelling mistake so I then decided to print this again but the colour was slightly more sepia than I’d of liked, In terms of the style of my final piece I did do some research into the different types of newspaper which were available, from this I found three main types, I originally didn't want my piece to resemble a tabloid newspaper which are typically quite full of gossip content however after doing my research I found the style newspaper or articles which were covering this style of story fits with the era and style of dialogue and would work well with what I am creating so I think it would have been best to keep it to this style so for this reason I feel my work resembles a Tabloid newspaper, despite this I am still happy with the final piece.

For my digital piece I was very happy with the final result, I wanted the work to be carried by the images at the beginning of the project however to add a little more substance to the work I decided to opt for a voice over narrating what my main character was going through and thinking as he went through the scenes in my film style piece, it was a late decision to add music to an undertone of the work, this I am glad of as the work was a little too quiet for my liking and the music adds more dramatics to the work which helps to inform the story the style of the music is more ambient which I think is best for the work style.

Overall I am very happy with my work as a whole, I feel my research is extremely relevant to the work I have produced some artists/films were looked into more in depth as I felt they may have been more informed with my work. I have been consistent with the research going back through what I already have in order to progress with the work, my final pieces I feel relate well to each other which is something I very much wanted with my work, the digital piece is finished to a high standard which I am very happy with as I felt it would be the thing to let the work down a little. If I could do this again I would be a little more organized and be better with my timing. Other than that I am happy with the volume of work I have created.

Narration Piece

Here is my Narration piece to go in my digital work as my voice over, this was created by the same person who created my screenplay, He knew I wanted something to narrate the story from my actors point of view, and I think he has done just that when I read the piece there wasn't anything I wanted to change to it. in order for him to write this for me I had to give him a copy of my digital piece so he could work from it and see how I interpreted what we had written in for the screenplay. I am very happy with the text and I feel it works really well to inform my narrative and give more of an idea of what is happening in the story, I feel this would have worked best as the story in the images is quite open ended and you don't really get much context from the images.
Overall I am very happy with this piece and I look forward to using this with my digital piece as I feel they will work well together, particularly as I have my actor voicing the narrative as well.

Jessica Narration.

You could have heard a pin drop out in the hallway.

Her door was locked, old habits die hard.

I didn’t have a search warrant, but her words weighed heavy in my mind like a gun in my holster.

Bingo.

I slipped into the apartment.

The kitchen was pretty much empty except for an old table. An open window inviting in the cold air for a dance.

This morning’s paper is sat alongside a glass of booze and what looked like an untouched smoke.

The fuchsia pink lipstick stains on both of them confirmed that she’d been here tonight.

My old man used to warn me about dames that chose whiskey as their poison…said they were dangerous.

The silence was broken by a noise from one of the other rooms.

I closed the window and drew heat.

Something bad was brewing. I could taste it in the air.

I crept through the apartment like a church mouse.

Light bled through the crack of the bedroom door at the end of the hallway.

Breathe easy now jack, keep your shooting arm steady.

That’s when I opened the door.

There she was…

Her deep brown eyes frozen in the void.

And as my heart sank in my chest, my revolver fell to the floor.

“Keep me safe” she made me promise.

I faild her.

Publication Final Piece

For my final piece, I created a few drafts as I wasn't sure how exactly I wanted my article to look, When I started I hadn't really researched to much into the designs of Newspapers,the ones i had looked at were too modern and I know that the designs and layouts of Newspaper as well as the way they are written has changed dramatically over the years so because of this I went back to some of my initial research into L.A. Confidential I found more relevant newspaper designs which would fit with the genre and the era of my article which I wanted to create, I went back through watching the film and taking as many screen grabs as I could to try and figure out a design for my work which was relevant, This was quite hard as some of them were quite blurry and hard to read but nonetheless I was able to create something from what I found. I took design ideas from the header as well as a font and design of the headline of my article (this can be seen in an earlier post) From my first drafts I originally created the title of the paper to be bigger than the headline which was not correct, so I re designed this to be as it is below which is more accurate to the 1940's/50's newspapers.

From what I could see from the films I have watched a lot of the front page was the main headline and only some other smaller articles, however I very much preferred the idea of using just my own article as the front cover as it was meant to be a scandalous headline story that so for that reason this was my decision behind the design only being my story on the front cover as it is i feel this works well I have the two images at separate ends of the paper which allows me to fill the space with my columns of text and divisions in between the columns this I feel works well and still looks to me like a legit newspaper. 

I noticed in the films I watched that on the front covers of papers they tended to have images of the deceased on the cover pages which is not something they do today by any means so this was important to include as it is something that strongly differentiates the two eras apart. I also included an image of one of the scenes which is mentioned in the article as i felt this would be relevant particularly as the newspaper often had images of the scene as the body on the scene. 

In terms of language I took inspiration from many movies I watched which based heavily around the noir scene and genre such as The Black Dahlia of of course L.A Confidential both of which use voice overs which helped me to pick the language I wanted to use, when the films used a journalist to speak as writing an article this was especially helpful as it made the writing aspect easier for me as I picked up on the chatty gossip style way of speaking spilling all the beans as it where to the readers giving all the insights and raising new suspicions around case which may be right or wrong this style I took to using in my paper as I felt it was the right way to go with for my article.

To print my finial piece I didn't want to print onto photographic paper as it wouldn't be very authentic to a newspaper print, however newspaper paper would be too thin to print on and wouldn't hold the ink very well if I'm printing from university, so for that reason I decided to try both Natural Sugar Paper and China White Cartridge paper, When i did this I printed the work in colour (despite being black and white) onto A3 paper and then photocopied that onto both types of paper, this I found worked very well and looked very authentic for my final piece I decided to go for the sugar paper copy as I found it looked more authentic and looked really good as it was. I am happy with my final piece as I have said I feel it looks authentic and works well with the theme of my project

My idea behind doing the Newspaper article as a journalist rather than a film critique was because I wanted both my digital piece and my publication to relate to one another as my digital piece is very open ended and you don't get much of the story I wanted my publication to relate so that you get a bit more of an insight into what the story is about, whether it be right or wrong the viewer understands a little more of the story and perhaps can tie together what conclusions they make from the information I have given.

Digital Piece Final

For my final digital piece I knew I wanted to have a voice over for my work to help guide the viewer through what was happening in the story, I liked the idea of it being told by my main character Jack as I felt it gave a bit more insight into his as a character and his story with Jessica. For the narration piece I had my friend write this up who also wrote the screen play, when he showed me there were no alterations I wanted to make as I thought the piece fitted beautifully with the work I had already put together, for him to make this he needed to see the sequence I had created, as Premier Pro was something I hadn't used before he was also able to help me with the sound a little as I was a little clueless, however I edited all the pieces together so that they all alighted to the right text to the right image, by doing this I had to make the images appear on screen longer for each image which is something I didn't like before but with the sound over the top i feel its better that they are longer as it gives you time to sink into the story.

My voice over was narrated by my friend Reece who is my actor Jack in the story, sound equipment for recording films were used to record the voice over as it was a lot cleaner and made it easier for editing at a later stage, I'm really pleased this was used and not just an app on my phone as the sound is extremely clear and made for good editing. my actor did well to put on his American accent and act well to the noir style script, I think this all added to the atmosphere of the work making it very successful.

Once these pieces were put together it was suggested to me to put a sound over the top to work as an underlying tone to the story, This was a great idea so I went back to my research and knew what film I wanted to take music from, Sin City was very influential to me for this unit so I wanted to use something from this to use in my story I chose the song 'Her name is Goldie' this piece of music is very ambient and works beautifully behind the images and my voice over, this is times perfectly with certain parts of the sequence as the music picks up in tone and falls as well. I am so pleased I went for the music with the piece I think it adds a little more depth to the work as the voice over was a little too quiet it certainly works really well in my view and I'm really pleased with the outcome.

By looking through my work I feel it is clear to see where I have been influenced most, despite photographers being a big help and inspiration I do believe that film is what drove me forward with my ideas, the films Sin City and L.A. Confidential most of all the imagery used in these films in something I have wanted to follow through with my work, and I certainly feel I have done so in that, I feel i have created a film noir style piece of work and with that I am very happy with the outcome of both my pieces and my research.

EDIT - For some reason my video would not upload to Blogger so please watch through my DVD! Thanks!

Choosing Music | Last Minute Idea

Whilst editing my digital piece to have my voice over match the images correctly I felt it was a little too quite with no background noise, so it was advised to me to include some Ambient music behind the dialogue, I quite liked the idea as I found there to be no background noise what so ever which usually isn't bad but typically in films there are tones used throughout to add suspense to the narrative.

I searched through my research and scoured through films to find any tracks which I thought might be relevent and found myself again coming back to Sin City, the music used in this is very ambient and adds suspense to the film which is exactly what I wanted for my work, I found the album on YouTube and listened to all the tracks to find one which would fit the theme and parts of the sequence I have created, I didnt want anything which was too loud or was too deep in level. I decided to go for 'Her name was Goldie' Which in the film is used when Marv wakes up to discover Goldie murdered in her sleep and goes on a rampage to find her killer. This to me was perfect I found the scene to be similar to what i have created in my work and for that reason thought the music would work well in the piece.

I layered the music to play alongside the images and the voice over, lowering its volume so that it can just be heard under my narrators voice to add a little more suspense to the images, this I thought worked brilliantly as I found the music peaked at times in the sequence where it was needed to add the suspense, it filled the gaps of silence (which were minimal) but works very well. the music was looped so that it played through the whole sequence as it was originally a little short to begin with, but I found where the music stopped in the middle was perfect for that particular image and dialogue and then began again at the right point for the ending I faded the sound out which works really well with the fade out from the image and my narrators voice. I am really happy with this piece as a whole as the music fits perfectly and personally i think the volume is at the right pitch/volume to inform my narrative successfully.

Images For Newspaper Print

For my Newspaper article I needed to find some images I had taken which would illustrate the story well. After doing some research into the films I had watched I had discovered that back in the old day they would actually use images of the deceased on the front cover of Newspapers as well as other images of the scene of the crime, this I found really interesting and wanted to do for my own tabloid print. When it came to choosing my own images for the front cover I wanted to have a picture of Jessica dead on the bed but I didn't want to use one of the images I already used in my digital piece and I wanted it to look as though it was taken by a journalist photographer rather than the idea of a film still image, for that reason I chose this image below as its a true depiction of what happened and I feel it looks as though it was taken by someone visiting the scene of the crime, I also picked the image below that for the reason it shows part of the scene which had happened. In my article I have spoken about both the scenes so they both seemed very fitting with the text I had created. For these images I added a slight tint to make them appear slightly older as well as adding some contrast and black and white filter so that they look darker and more contrast like in the image to fit the decade and genre better. I do like these images and with my final piece they work really well with the text and the whole composition.

Publication Article

To write my publication article for my Newpaper print, i looked up various newspaper articles on murder which wasn't particularly pleasant but I needed to find the right sort of language for my piece I was writing, however as  was only really able to find more recent articles say from the last 10 years the dialogue didn't quite match the decade in which I was writing for, so for this reason I kind of gave up on the more modern texts I found. I decided to go back to the films I had watched which used Newspaper articles and voice overs to extract the right style of speaking and text use for my work, I decided to focus more on again L.A. Confidential as there was a voice over from a journalist who write a Gossip style magazine, there were also screen grabs from newspapers which I could just about decipher to think up some sort of text to go along with my story, which would fit well with the theme.

I decided to go for a slightly more chatty and gossipy style mixing up a bit of controversy within my article so that it gives more information on film than the film gives itself, as my digital piece is open ended you don't really get the full story, but my idea with this was to open it up a little more and give its viewer a bit more insight into what was really going on in my digital or really how they perceived it, its really designed to make a guessing game and offer up different scenarios of what could have happened to my victim Jessica Knox and what was the reason for Jack Cohen my Detective for being in her apartment that night.

Below is the article piece I have written for my newspaper, with the language being taken from films and newspapers I have read in relation to my theme of crime and noir.

23year old Jessica Knox (pictured right) was found shot dead in her apartment in the early hours of yesterday morning. Detective come lover Jack Cohen, discovered her with a bullet wound to the chest, while presumably sleeping in her apartment alone. Her body has been moved to the county morgue where a post mortem will be held later today. But who would kill such an angelic damsel? Miss Knox was known for a few brush in’s with the law, being put down to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time as per usual. It has been said that no force of entry was found on the apartment, predicting that Miss Knox knew her killer. Was it the seemingly innocent lover Jack Cohen? Had a lover’s feud gotten too much for the couple that he lashed out with devastating consequences?  After all no one knew the two we’re involved until last night. However having found her body and being seen snivelling at the scene of the crime is he to blame, were they tears of regret or tears of sadness for the loss of his lover in the bed? Through further questioning which took place through the night jack told fellow policemen that he entered the apartment to find a drunken bottle of whiskey on the kitchen table prior to hearing a mysterious noise in which he investigated to find poor Jessica Knox dead in her bed. Are there any clues as to who may have shot her? Only that it must have been someone she knew, knew enough to invite into her home… disturbance to the scene of the crime is known… there was a window open (later closed by jack) perhaps her killer climbed through the window and shot the unsuspecting damsel whilst she slept. Was the lady mixed up in business she shouldn’t have, as said before she was known to police as an associate to organised crime gangs running around in New York City. Now I wouldn’t want to jump to conclusions but something tells me she got herself caught up in something she shouldn’t. Running around with New York gangs dealing with drugs, prostitution and murder whilst sleeping with a Detective? Who is known for his mysterious ways of dealing with thugs, something doesn’t smell right to me. But again she was a beautiful woman she could have gotten herself caught up in something with another female, maybe this was an act of vengeance or jealousy. Who knows what secrets lay behind this devastating tale of love and murder? All we know is a young innocent female lost her life in a tragic attack against her, or perhaps against the mysterious Detective Cohen with a little corruption and mistrust thrown in for good measure this is a case to keep an eye one. All you need to know is I’ll get the details circling the case, you know where to come for an honest telling of the tales. For now may Jessica Knox Rest in Peace. And may her killer be found and put to justice.

I feel happy with what I have written I did do a few drafts of this and altered any text as I went and proof read my article I also got others to read the piece to give me their opinion on what I had written and whether it links well with my digital piece as I liked the idea of them being linked together in this way, I liked this idea because I thought it went well with the films I had watched and the general way the old tabloids and crime went in history, where there was crime there was an article about it and that still follows up today however I do feel the writing technique and style has dramatically changed in the years and I certainly have followed the more traditional abrupt route into it.