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.

Draft One | Draft Two

After doing my research further in L.A Confidential and how they use newspapers throughout the film I had to have a re think about how I was doing my initial draft of my publication, I began by using the Newspaper title as the largest piece of text, when actually the largest piece of writing should be the headline below that, as you can see below I  began my first draft by doing it slightly incorrectly, for this reason I began a second draft in which I just re created what I was doing and whilst doing that I looked closely at the film pausing it to be able to see what was said on the from of Newspaper of the day so that I could incorporate it into my own Newspaper print.

As you can see from the images above, I changed quite a few pieces around so that they would link closely to the research i have done from the film stills. in my second draft I have made the title of the Newspaper smaller and created a direct and obvious headline which is bigger as it is the focal point, I also extracted quite difficultly some of the smaller text used on the Newspaper in L.A. Confidential which would be more legit to the time period and used them in my own work, for example the 9A.M Final is taken from some imagery as well as the idea of date, number of pages, issues and price etc. which I have altered slightly to my own preferences, below you can see the pieces which I took my inspiration from I have highlighted the parts which I have directly taken and some parts which I have done some alterations to. This particular shot was very helpful in allowing me to see the style of writing and the layout of how Newspapers would have been typically layed out.

L.A Confidential | News Paper Research

In the realisation that I am going to create a Newspaper print instead of my Graphic Novel for my publication it reminded me of the L.A. Confidential film I watched earlier on in the unit, the film had a narration by a journalist throughout who was a character in the film as well the voice over, to go along with his narration they also included Newspaper prints which merged in with the film stills and motion images of the events that were happening throughout the film which predominantly were based around murder or homicide (as they call it) which is perfect research for the piece I am creating as I feel I want to do the work from a journalist point of view of the events that has happened in my story, and for this I feel would be very beneficial.

After going through the film again to find the places in which the Newspaper pieces were I found them very useful to me when it came to designing my publication, from looking at these prints I have found that the name of the paper isn't always in fact in most cases is smaller than the actual headline which is something I got wrong when doing my first design of my newspaper. Only having the newer newspapers of today isn't the most ideal way to research 1940's style newspapers covering homicide cases.

From what I realised in watching this film is that murder was something put on the front page of a paper and not just the title but the image of the dead body at the scene of the crime, which works well for me as I have images such as this from my many shoots in trying to capture the 'perfect' dead body image for my work, these give me a relatively clear idea of what I could create as I said more so than the newer papers of today as film productions must have researched into this further in order for them to create something genuine looking for the film, this has been really helpful and has certainly got me under way with designing my Newspaper Journalist piece.

Throughout this film I also picked up some slang which may help me with my dialogue for the publication piece as it wouldn't help at all to have modern terminologies when I'm trying to focus my pieces on the 1940's / 1950's

Dialogue Picked Up:

• "Off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush."
• Ruckus
• Homicide
• Crooks
• Organised Crime
• Dapper Gent
• Balls of Brass
• You heard it here first
• Busted
• Showbiz
• 
  

Useful Tips to consider : From Film

Rhetorical Questions

Be a movie star

Newspaper Types and Formats

To create my publication, I wanted to look further into what types of newspaper there were out there, there are many variations of different styles of newspaper, but there are three in particular which tend to be used all over the UK. These would be Broadsheet, Tabloid and Berliner. the fotmats vary in each style of newspaper depending on the publication within them.

Broadsheets

Broadsheets tend to be seen as the higher quality journalism newspaper, they tend to be the largest as well, making them slightly less readable whilst commuting (which many people do)

• The Daily Telegraph
• Sunday Telegraph
• The Sunday Times
• Financial Times
• The Observer
• The Times
• The Independent

Berliner

The Berliner paper fits between both broadsheets and tabloids, they don't have any particular association with the quality of its reporting, I suppose you could say the Berliner is a happy medium between the other two formats, not only in size but by giving both styles of writing.

• The Guardian

Tabloid

Is the smallest of the newspaper formats and is one which has a reputation for containing the worst journalism. I found out by means of research that the term tabloid is older than the actual tabloid format, it is just a term which is applied to anything small. typically the tabloid is associated with bad journalism and gossip style writings, many broadsheet newspapers which have taken on the tabloid size have try to avoid the bad connotations of a tabloid paper and have taken on the 'compact' format rather than tabloid of this reason.

• The Mirror
• The Sun
• Daily Express
• Daily Mail
• Daily Star

After doing research into the main styles of newspaper I found it interesting to see how different newspaper tackles headlines and ways of writing. I found this helped me to figure out what style of paper mine will be, as much as I would like it to be a Berliner as it sits very much in the middle, I feel my newspaper would work best with the Tabloid format, purely for its chatty style which from what I have seen in my research is very much how many articles were written of the time, I think this would work well anyway given that it is a publication which is speculating idea's of what's happened which in its simplest form is just gossiping. I feel this has helped inform my work and give me the chance to work forward with a tabloid style of writing.

Researching Newspaper Designs and Language

For my research into my publication as I want it to be a News paper publication I began attempting to research newspapers from the 1940's area, this became slightly harder to find as they're are very little resources out there allowing me to actually view content, I stumbled across the British newspaper archive to which I narrowed down my search to certain decades in which I was interested in, this proved to be quite difficult as i found it hard to narrow down to this particular time, however my reasoning for this was that I wanted to be able to extract the style of writing and language to interpret into my own Newspaper print, I found with this website I needed to have a paid membership to be able to have full access to the full archive of newspapers which I couldn't afford so the image below illustrates just the amount of information I was able to grab without membership, despite not being able to get full information/language from the newspaper articles it did help me with the layout of broadsheets and tabloids etc of the day which is something I wasn't too sure on either when it comes to creating my own. 

From the screen grabs below you can see where I have tried to narrow down my search for Murder style news prints, however this was less than helpful as I particularly want a headline front page for my work which this website just wasn't able to offer me it gave me tons of images of newspapers which just listed columns and columns of articles which is not the style I want to create. 

Despite this not being very constructive it did help in leading me to other means of research into the design aspect of my work, as for the language I feel this is something I may have to pick up from more films which I had previously watched and maybe from film critique articles. 

Change of Idea

After realising that both my ideas for my digital piece and my publication were basically telling the same story I had to change my idea as I found I was too stuck in my ways with the Graphic Novel idea that instead of needing to edit the way I used the images as Ellen Nolan had told me to do, she said I should try to re arrange the images to the text to see which worked better at telling a story the image or the texts, however through my research I had stuck to my guns with having the story following the story of the screenplay I have written exactly which didn't help with telling a different story, because I didn't want to change this idea just a little bit I have decided to completely change my publication idea.

Below is a draft/mock up of how I originally wanted to my publication piece to look like as a graphic novel, as I said above this is something I have my heart set on creating for my entire screenplay, but I found the unit didn't allow any leeway in doing what I really wanted to do which personally is not good at all! however I do have plans to further my work personally to allow to me experiment with this idea further perhaps expanding into different areas of narrative in my own time so that way I can create work I am happy with.

So my change of idea came in a tutorial with Natasha while discussing others work, as part of the unit I have looked at various films following the genre of Film Noir and Crime, because of this I have also looked at film critiques of certain films which i thought might help me a long the way, from this I have decided to create a News Paper publication, as yet I'm not sure whether I want the piece to be in a journalism style telling the tragic story of the couple in my digital piece or whether I would like to write it from a film critiques point of view who may be looking at the piece of work. From this I will look into various newspaper styles from the 1940's and present as well as more film critiques to find an area which interests me most and I will work from this to produce my publication.

The Singing Detective

Ellen Nolan advised me to look at The Singing Detective which is a series drama from the BBC written and aired in the 80's, she said that this style programme would fit well with the theme of my work, the story revolves around a struggling writer who is hospitalised with psoriatic arthritis, in researching this I found the writer of this Dennis Potter actually suffered with the same condition (not perhaps relevant but interesting) the actor seems to reflect exactly what the writer (Dennis) was going through. The writer in the story Phillip Marlow refused to take medication and as a result falls into a fantasy world involving The Singing Detective a form of escapism and adventure.

In watching this i honestly found it quite difficult as i found some of the imagery hard to look at, however taking this out of account the programme fits quite well with the style of work i want to create, a voice over is often used to narrate what's going on or to describe a place, the use of a voice over is something I like in works of narrative and the style of the dialogue is something I am keen to look at as i need to adapt this into my publication and digital piece in order for them to seem authentic.
This series uses a style of flashbacks which switch between the writer who's fantasy world were viewing and the actual fantasy world so you get an insight to the reality and fake, this works nicely and fits well as the writer mumbles what he wants to happen in the other world by sometimes saying exactly what the 'detective says' which I feel connects them well. Flashbacks are something which interest me but I don't feel it is something I want to use in my work I like it how it is leaving the story being open ended for the audience to interpret for themselves.

This series most certainly borrows from Film Noir using its style of cinematography to create a noir like series in the fantasy world, the images seem desaturated and dark which is something I have tried to do with my experiments as I feel it adds the edge to the images of an older era.

I tried my best with this series, it is usually the sort of programme/film I am interested in but I found I just could not get to grips with it my concentration lacked with it and I found myself looking at other things, despite this I did take some aspects of it for my own work, for example the way of shooting I particularly liked such as the image about with the woman and the man sitting down with her is at a slight angle which I particularly like within images this has been taken and used within a couple of my images as I feel it adds a little something more interesting to an image. As well as this some of the language used has helped me in extracting things which may be useful for my publication work, so for this reason I do not think it was a complete waste I just hope I could have gotten more into the series to watch a few more than just 3 episodes however as I said i was able to gain some knowledge from the work to influence my own work.

Black and White - Option Two

Since I knew I wanted to create a graphic novel based around the style of Frank Millers Sin City which is in black and white high contrast, I decided along with my desaturated images I would also create some black and white images for the Graphic Novel publication I was going to make. However as I began to edit there were some images I really liked and felt worked really well with the dramaticy I wanted to create and linked well with the Noir and Silent films I have been watching for more research, but then again there were also images which didn't look as great in black and white and which contrast just looked quite ghastly and fake which is something I didn't want and don't particularly like in my work. However I did carry on with a number of edits to see if they could work and how they may change the whole structure into an alternative narrative. This hadn't previously occurred to me that this may happen until the review when it was mentioned in my notes from David Rule. I wasn't sure how I felt about the narrative changing as I very much liked how it had originally been written without it being depicted differently in just the editing and presentation. I feel I have enough diversity in my narrative structures given that despite both being open ended and in linear form I have incorporated a voice over in my digital piece and I wish to have use of text for my publication which originally isn't what I wanted as I am very much a fan of "let the images carry the narrative forward" which is what I said in the beginning of my research as Frank Miller does this with his Graphic Novel work which I have followed through throughout my work. Below are some images which I have edited into black and white here you can see that some of the images work quite well and are dramatic in the style I wanted to create, however there are also some which just don't work well at all and for that reason I feel I will not carry this through my final work.

First Experiments

Since I began shooting a few weeks ago I have done about six shoots of photographs to make up my sequence, (contact sheets in book) here I thought I would upload some of my edits I am most fond of and think that I would like to follow through with the rest of my edits for the work,

In relation to how much I edit my photos I am not a fan of too much over editing so a lot of the images are either desaturated or black and white as these are both styles I would like to play around with for my final pieces. However I am a tad unsure on how I feel about my Black and White images not only do some not look quite right but it will take me a lot of time to have to do two sets of edits, so I need to decide whether it is worth me experimenting so much over something which may not work so well in the end and consequently not get used at all. To figure this out I will edit a few more Black and White images to make up my mind without getting too carried away with it.

The first image is one of my favourites as I really like how the smoke is brilliantly highlighted by the flash, I think this is very dramatic and very Noir like in its style, this is something I do not think would work as well if it was without colour, but with a little desaturation I feel it works beautifully. However in contrast the very last image works very well without colour it has been made to look dark and eerie with a slight sinister feel to it by being dark adding dramatics to the mix which is of course something I am trying to create, it is just a case of me choosing which route I wish to go down.

'Brandishing Gun' - Test

I am currently editing my stills and how I would like them to appear in my digital piece. Before I got too carried away I decided to piece together the images which consisted of continuous photo's such as this one 'Brandishing gun' and another of a gun dropping to the floor, I did this as I feel these would be the hardest parts of the work to get just right, In this test only one of the images is edited how I want it to be, but it gives me a good idea of how I want the work to look, particularly the parts of the film which are in sequence with each other such as this piece. 

This short video hasn't been edited yet to have the quickness of the final piece however it works to give me an idea of how to put the work together for my final piece, for that reason I found this helpful in my development of my final piece which is slowly coming together, I feel that this sort of sequence which should appear 2/3 times with different images throughout the film would work better with a 0.05 of a second so they're quick and flashing through much like a film but with the use of photographs instead.

 I think this could work quite successfully, from doing this I will now work on creating my final digital piece in the hope that they work successfully as a whole.

Flash Workshop

TTL - Fits all Cameras

Hammerhead Flash

MZ 70 - Nikon - Dedicated flash
-knows camera settings
-Auto expose
DSLR - Fill Flash - Shutter priority
- ISO set not Auto 1/60
Go for 400ISO

Film fill flash works differently

Flash on camera - turn off flash - Shutter priority 1/60 as close in number to focal
ISO 400
White Balance - Auto, Can be done later

Turn on Flash - mode TTL - Exposure compensation on 0

F2.8 - 1/60 under exposed with no flash - hot spot with flash in centre of image --balanced =quality of flash

- Point Flash up and back straight
- Flash turned to side + reflector
- Large reflector

Flash facing away - blips bounces off walls and illuminates

- Closer the flash to lens the more red eye in images

- Best to have flash bounce off something
- Stand in corner of a room for flash to bounce

Despite my notes not really making a whole lot of sense after reading through them I did find the workshop to be useful in helping to know how to illuminate my images in a way to make them cinematic, this helped as I had not known how to use my flash properly. From this I will take what I have learned and use it in my work.

The Black Dahila | Film

The black Dahlia is a film based in the 1940's with the genre of film noir, or neo-noir as they call the newer more updated versions of film noir,  these tend to be in a slightly desaturated colour, rather than the traditional Black and White, L.A. Confidential followed this same style too, which is where I got the inspiration from to create my images in the desaturated style. The Black Dahlia was written by James Ellroy who also wrote L.A. Confidential. The film is based around the true murder of Elizabeth Short nicknamed The Black Dahlia, for her unsolved death, this is just on of the films/book adaptation of the unknown events of the woman's killing.

The main character played by Josh Harnett opens to movie with a narrative voice over, this is again similar to L.A. Confidential, I am a fan of how this style of telling a story or just to inform the story more with a narrative to introduce the characters and the general story is a nice way to engage the viewer into the story, and is something I would like to experiment with my digital piece as I feel it would definitely inform my story in a positive way.

The story also follows the story of two ambitious cops who are tackling the case, and along the way encounter troubles with former crooks who are released from prison or either somehow involved with the new case, there are damsels which need saving added into the mix too, which all just adds to the noir style of film which is what I particularly like about it, I find this style of filming is very inspirational and is my reasoning for wanting to create work from this.

What I have taken from watching this film and also L.A. Confidential is that I would like to experiment with my images in both Black and White and in a desaturated colour, to see which would work best for my film piece. I like the noir style of images with just them being slightly desaturated with an almost sepia tint to them I think it works beautifully and fits well to the dark style of the story line. So from watching these I will be experimenting to see what style images work best to inform my work.

L.A. Confidential | Film

For my research one of the films I was advised to watch was L.A. Confidential, it wasn't something I had seen before although I knew it had some similarity to what I wanted to do. I found the DVD in the library and was able to watch it to gain some inspiration for my work and the style I want to create. I took down notes whilst watching the film of anything I thought might be useful to me:

Opening Scene:

• Narration / Voice over - Description of the time the film is set in 'Hollywood' 'Glamour' 
• Brooklyn accent to voice over
• Typewriter style introduction

Frequent Names : Noticed in other films of similar era:

• Micky Cohen
• Johnny
• Bud
• Jack / Jacky / Jacky boy

Genre Styling: Typical for Noirs

• Femme Fatale
• Drugs
• Prostitutes
• Corrupt Cops
• " Organised Crime"
• Cover ups
• Photographers
• Journalists

Slang Used :

• Ruckus
• Homicide
• Nick names for Cops
• "On the QT" (Quiet)

Throughout the film the narration carried on through, with this there was also the sound of a typewriter typing up a story as the narrator who was speaking was telling the story of what was happening at key points of the film as well as typing a story for the magazine he writes  as his character in the film (hope that makes sense) this only stopped (from the key parts) when the character was killed off throughout the film, this I thought was quite a nice touch whether it was the idea I do not know but it is something I noticed whilst watching.  

Narration or a voice over, however you want to look at it is something I want to experiment with for my digital piece I feel a voice over in this style would work really well for what I have created or want to create, however rather than doing it from the point of view as a journalist I would like to do this as a Detective looking in on the story or the detective in the story to almost guide the audience through the story whilst watching. 

As you can see in the image above in some of the opening credits the film introduces some of the key characters in the film by the use of a typewriter style font which I think works quite nicely, I feel this works well with the motion image but I'm not sure it would work so well with my still photographs however it might be something I can experiment with later when it comes to putting together my work. 

Overall I feel this film has helped my work, the narration and the dialogue throughout the film has helped me to make decisions on what I would like to come from my digital piece, given that it is to be taken in film stills style watching this style of film really helps to figure out the style of images I want to create and the way I can later edit my work to fit this genre specifically.

Home Videoing #2

(LATE POST)

As I had experimented with the personal factor of moving house and the changes this had inflicted on my family I took it upon myself to document this whilst home for a few days. I did this as I wasn't sure whether I wanted to change my idea and the direction of my work, After doing this I very much preferred the work I had originally began to create, I don't feel this work is a waste of time in any way as it gave me the opportunity to experiment with film and a form of documentary work which is personal to me and may wish to carry on privately. In order for me to be able to upload this video I had to put it onto YouTube which I didn't really want to do as it's quite a private matter, but for some reason I wasn't able to do it any other way.

This was supposed to be a piece of work which consisted of a series of Videos with image inserts of my house changing and perhaps the distance between certain family members and myself, I didn't feel I was ready to create this work yet and It isn't something I want to have as public information, it is for that reason I will not follow it through for my narrative unit. However this did give me an opportunity to play around with different means of presentation and ways of recording a narrative which for me I think made me realise also that making a film using a film camera isn't something I'm quite ready for yet and hopefully will learn over the summer as I want to have experience in this too.

This is the first of many videos I took whilst being at home, this one is just of me explaining what I will be doing for the next few days and going into small detail of what happened and why I'm doing what I am. I did find the microphone on my camera doesn't work very well at picking up sound so if this is something I want to try again I will use some sound recording equipment to up the quality.
It took me quite a lot of courage to be able to do this as what happened hit the family quite hard, I was really annoyed about uploading this video as I wasn't able to actually upload it without first up loading it to YouTube which I really didn't want to do soooo after the review this will 100% be coming down!

In reflection of doing these videos I feel they've worked well in creating a documentation of how I felt during a certain time in my life, it is something very personal to me and the work I could create from this would work well as a narrative, however this isn't something I want to be publicly known as I have said before it is something private which I would like to carry on in my own time, I have taken many videos from my last trip to my childhood some but it does take about 3 hours to upload to YouTube and is very time consuming for what I'm doing and as this isn't something I want to pursue for this unit it doesn't seem worth it to upload like 30 videos of me moaning about my feelings.

However despite this, this has given me the opportunity to play around with filming and experiment with change through out my work as well as using videoing as a different medium to taking photographs, my aim is to combine both video and film which is something again would have fitted well but it not what I will do right now.

Home Videoing

I had to go home last week quite unexpectedly as I wasn't sure quite when this was happening it was a bit of a surprise, so due to this I had to cancel the shoot I had planned for that week which would have given me more time to experiment with my photos and creative a stronger series of images and final digital piece, I did re arrange my shoot but that will be explained later.

As we need to explore different style of Narrative I took it upon myself to photograph my house as it was being emptied in stages as well as videoing the process and also videoing myself talking about what is happening and it has effected me. This is a particularly private piece for me as it is something I feel strongly about.
In the end of this process I want to either create a video with image inserts or a series of short videos of me documenting this particular change in my life, this is something I would like to work on outside of my Narrative unit but I found this fit rather well with the brief and what it is I have been researching. This idea of mine is similar in the style of work as

In some of the videos I created when I went home I reflect on memories from the home I lived in I also speak about the changes and how it has effected me since last summer, as the move was happening there and then I also speak about how I'm feeling about the changing happening around me with things that are not so familiar to me.
For some reason I am unable to upload the videos at the moment so at a later date I will post the videos, as I said I managed to photograph the house, here are some of the images of the rooms being empty.

Flash Testing Experiments

The other day before I was able to shoot I thought I would try and practice with my compact digital flash on my camera as I want to create a cinematic atmosphere within my photographs to fit in with the Film Noir style, I will be shooting in colour and editing in post production as I feel shooting in this way works better for me and the overall finish of the photos before and after editing are higher in quality.

The first shot of this image was highly over exposed, this was because I had the camera on the wrong settings. I altered the camera to shutter priority and adjusted the flash thus. this image was taken in complete darkness as you can see from the window it is dark outside and I had no lights on in the hallway, this image is still slightly over exposed but in comparison to others it works well.

This image like above is a shot of the bedroom I will hopefully be shooting in for my film (with some tweaking of furniture) I took this image again in darkness with no lights on to receive the desired effect, again it took some shooting to get the right image to be light appropriately, however this is not the style lighting I am hoping to be using for the final shoot.

After much fiddling with the equipment I found a way to use my wireless sync equipment for my camera and flash and was able to experiment with the placement of the flash strategically placed around the room, for this image I placed the flash under the blanket facing up towards the pillows as you can see from the directional lighting, despite the lighting being very much at the background of the image I still think this image works well as the outer edge of the image is darker than the back of the room giving a slightly more atmospheric appearance to the image, if I had a subject in the image where the 'glow' of the light is I feel this would work as a strong image.

In my screenplay the description of the 'apartment' I'm shooting in is covered with dark shadows up the walls making the rooms dark in contrast, this is something I needed to experiment with before the night of my shoot with my actors so that I don't waste time and I know exactly what I'm doing to create my images how I see them when I think about how I see them looking like when its complete. I like this image as I feel the flash works well to create harsh shadows thrown up the walls which is what I want for my images, despite a lot of darkness being in the centre of the image (on the bed) I still think this is a successful image giving a lot of atmosphere to the room and is something I am pleased with the outcome.

This image is the same as the coloured one above however for this image I altered it to be in black and white and added a sepia filter to make the image look slightly older with a rustic feel to it. I feel this works quite well with the theme of work I want to create being mostly based in the 1940s where colour film was only just being experimented with. With the rest of my images I will experiment with the same if not other similar techniques to see which works better and is more appealing to the eye.
Doing this helped me to work out what style of lighting I would like to experiment with for my work for this reason I found it very useful.

Chris Marker | La Jetee

Chris Marker created a film/sequence comprising entirely of photographs with this he used a voice over to tell the story of the post nuclear war experiment in time travel, the video is 28 minutes long which personally I find to be quite a long piece of film considering it is more or less all still photographs. I find the film to be quite moving and sad, the tone of voice used helps to give depth and feeling to the men and women who are featured in the film, not only this but the music which accompanies the film is also that of a sad nature which really cuts deep for me personally as it really does add more to the emotion of the images being shown to us in a slow manner. 

This video in particular uses a flashback narrative strategy this is shown in a way that uses photographs to bring the viewer back to a time in which they are trying to reach at the same time as the man undergoing the experiment is experiencing it. The video helps to document the experiment and what happened during this time as well as the man's own experiences. The narration over the top helps to glide the story along with the added help of visual imagery moving at a pace which is sufficient with the story.

This work is similar to the style of work I would like to produce. After my tutorial with Ellen Nolan I decided to look at creating film still images to work in a sequence similar to this rather than creating a film in the short time which I have before the mid review, So as far as this research is concerned I feel this fits very well with my work as this is also working as a linear narrative with the imagery within the story as well as focusing on flashbacks. A flashback isn't something I would like to create in my work personally as I don't feel at the moment as my work is in depth enough with the story to incorporate this, However the aspect of using a voice over is something I would very much like to experiment with within this unit.

Video Sourse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqMEc0oe4yc

Shoot Locations | Part One

After having the screenplay for my work written I needed to find locations to shoot which would fit well with the story that has been created, some aspects of my student house would work well so I took some images of it to show which aspects of the story would fit with the particular location.

This is the main hallway in my house, within the screenplay the main actor walks into the hallway of the apartment with the doors closed apart from the one directly in front of him, this location may work well as this is the doorway into my kitchen which corresponds to the action in the story, the stairs on the left hand side pose a slight problem as there wouldn't be stairs in a 1940's apartment let alone today as well, as time is short on producing this part of the work it will suffice for now until I am able to get access to somewhere else. Using the same door the second image would demonstrate the door being 'slightly ajar' with light pouring through the crack as it is open. 

As Jack enters the kitchen I want to include as shot of the kitchen, as this is directly at the back of the house I wanted to use my kitchen and attempt to make it appear older than it is, this will be the only shot of the kitchen before I use close ups of props to tell the narrative. 

As for the rest of the locations I would like to shoot I wasn't able to get access right away to shoot and some of the places are not 100% decided on just yet. I'm planning on having the images in black and white originally shot in colour so I am able to adjust saturation and make them have the atmosphere I am looking for. I do feel that time is particularly short for what I am hoping to create but I'm hoping to have something for the formative assessment which I can later work on at a later date. 

John Smith | 'The girl chewing gum'

John Smith created a film titled 'The girl chewing gum'  in 1976 in which a film is being made on  a corner of a busy street, with a voice-over seemingly dictating what will be happening in the duration of the film. Throughout the film the directions slowly become more evident that they are slightly absurd, it soon becomes clear from watching the video through that the 'director' is the one who is fictional and he is only describing the events that are taking place in front of him, Smith says that in this form of video he is playing words against the picture rather than the other way around in your usual filming style whilst also using the chance of something happening against the order. the voice-over is sharp and direct not allowing us to realise how this film has been constructed until the scenarios become slightly witty and laughable.

This is one of my favourite video pieces as I find it to be done incredibly well considering this is all been done down to chance using visuals to direct a scene however using words against the picture, the first time I watched this video I found it to be quite confusing as I wasn't quite sure how it was created or what exactly was going on in the video, as the film develops your able to see and make an understanding of what the director is doing and what he is challenging. As the video/director is gradually annotating events happening as they do it is using a linear format as there are no flashbacks just a continuous story in time, however as their is also the element of a voice over dictating the events this is showing a dual narrative being used as their are two elements telling the story, the film and the voice over.

I very much like the idea of using a voice over and it is something that I may look into further in use with my own work, for the narrative I am wishing to tell I feel it would fit in quite well with telling my story in perhaps a dual narrative structure.

Cindy Sherman | Film Stills

In my tutorial with Ellen Nolan I mentioned that for one of my photography pieces I would very much like to create film still style images, from this it was clear that the work of Cindy Sherman was very relevant to what I want to create.

Cindy Sherman's work titled 'Untitled film stills' 1977-1980 very much takes the approach of looking at how women are depicted in films on TV and in magazines in a way of looking at how women can be stereotyped. She has said in her work she doesn't see herself she she's a character that she has portrayed usually from famous films. I very much like this work she created I feel it depicts women in a way they are portrayed in films, despite these all being staged and purposeful created to look like film stills they are extremely convincing, if you were to show these images to someone who didn't know this work of hers or her herself for that matter I don't think they would be able to tell that these are not in fact actual film stills.

I have/will be taking inspiration from this work in the way that I want to create not only a film on this particular unit but I would like to create my own 'film still' images without actually creating a film for my digital piece, these images are very cinematic despite not actually being taken with a filming camera which I feel is incredibly well done and despite being very deceiving. The images in this series are in black and white which is what I would like my work to be shot in as I feel it fits in with the theme of film noir which I would like to carry through all of this work I think the lack of colour in the images gives a deeper sense of mystery particularly if the story goes down a darker route with atmosphere. Not only this but it gives verisimilitude in the sense that in the 1940's images would have been in black and white as colour was only just being attempted at this time. I feel the authenticity of this is important so I would like to experiment with this in black and white film despite this not being my strongest area, however if I feel this was not successful in any way then I will be carrying this shoot out in digital and attempt to create a series of images of this style.

Image source one: http://tristonrobinson.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/cindy-shermans-untitled-film-stills-and-postmodernism/ 

Image source two: http://imageobjecttext.com/2012/01/19/in-the-kitchen-with-cindy/

Sin City | Film Inspiration

After deciding I want to look into doing a  film and being very interested in the filming style of film noir, and similarly the style of Sin City directed by Frank Miller, I wanted to have a closer look at the way the film is shot and how this is perhaps shown to the viewers. Sin City itself was taken from a Graphic Novel so for this reason it's imagery is very similar to that of the novels being very dark with stark points of colour running through the entire film this makes the film very cinematic and atmospheric much like that of Film Noir, for this reason I feel they run hand in hand with each other and work well with my idea of creating something similar, from watching this film more recently again it has given me inspiration to work in black and white perhaps starting to shoot in colour to see how they might compare.

The opening scene of Sin City is one of my favourites 'The customer is always right' I find this to be very dramatic and running with the theme of a melodrama, putting characters in danger and leaving the viewer in suspense of what might happen next. The tense atmosphere of this scene is something I would like to duplicate in my own work with the vulnerability of a female and a strong male character by her side perhaps completely contradicting her character and clashing with tension in perhaps a highly sexualised manor? This for me is coming from watching film noirs which have a surprising twist either at the end or maybe only having it suggested throughout.

To carry on my research I will look into silent films, and watch some more Film Noirs for inspiration I recently purchased 'Kiss me Deadly' an old film noir which I would like to take inspiration from.