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!