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.

Initial Idea

Since my first lecture I've had my mind set on doing a short film as my digital part of this unit, As the film industry is something I would like to go into I thought it would fit well for my CV as well as give myself some experience with using a film camera as well as my DSLR.
I am very interested in the film style of Film Noir I like how the films are very atmospheric and dramatic, the monochrome adds a little more to the film which is what I would like to incorporate into my work.

General Idea's from first Lecture:

• Film Noir style film for my digital piece
• Use film stills to create my photographs?
• Images will be in style of film noir
• Black and White shoot
• splashes of colour?
• Sin City - Film style / Graphic Novel
• Short film
• Collaborate with film students

From this point I will use these bullet points to further my research into each area and hopefully come up with a more thorough plan of what I would like to do for both the digital and printed pieces.

Creating a Narrative

To be able to create a narrative you need to consider all components needed in order to create a successful narrative in our first lecture of the unit this was broken down for us to be able to make sure we cover all aspects when creating our own.

Narrative Strategies - Types of images

• Textual Narrative
• Visual narrative
• Still image
• Moving image
• Text as image
• Image and text
• Tableau image

Narrative Structures - The way a story is told

• Linear
• Random
• Open ended/Closed
• Repetition/permutation
• Flashback

Narrative Types - Style of the story

• Documentary
• Fiction
• Scientific
• Theoretical
• Poetic
• Personal/Diary

Visual Narrative Structures - How the narrative is presented

• Series of stills
• Sequence
• Image with Caption
• Text and Image

From this lecture I want to look at classic works of Fiction such as Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland to get an idea of the way in which these Narratives have been told, I feel doing this will allow me have a deeper understanding of what I need to do to create my own narrative.