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.

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.

'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.

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.