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.

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.

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.

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.

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.