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.

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.

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.