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. 

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.

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.

Chris Marker | La Jetee

Chris Marker created a film/sequence comprising entirely of photographs with this he used a voice over to tell the story of the post nuclear war experiment in time travel, the video is 28 minutes long which personally I find to be quite a long piece of film considering it is more or less all still photographs. I find the film to be quite moving and sad, the tone of voice used helps to give depth and feeling to the men and women who are featured in the film, not only this but the music which accompanies the film is also that of a sad nature which really cuts deep for me personally as it really does add more to the emotion of the images being shown to us in a slow manner. 

This video in particular uses a flashback narrative strategy this is shown in a way that uses photographs to bring the viewer back to a time in which they are trying to reach at the same time as the man undergoing the experiment is experiencing it. The video helps to document the experiment and what happened during this time as well as the man's own experiences. The narration over the top helps to glide the story along with the added help of visual imagery moving at a pace which is sufficient with the story.

This work is similar to the style of work I would like to produce. After my tutorial with Ellen Nolan I decided to look at creating film still images to work in a sequence similar to this rather than creating a film in the short time which I have before the mid review, So as far as this research is concerned I feel this fits very well with my work as this is also working as a linear narrative with the imagery within the story as well as focusing on flashbacks. A flashback isn't something I would like to create in my work personally as I don't feel at the moment as my work is in depth enough with the story to incorporate this, However the aspect of using a voice over is something I would very much like to experiment with within this unit.

Video Sourse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqMEc0oe4yc

John Smith | 'The girl chewing gum'

John Smith created a film titled 'The girl chewing gum'  in 1976 in which a film is being made on  a corner of a busy street, with a voice-over seemingly dictating what will be happening in the duration of the film. Throughout the film the directions slowly become more evident that they are slightly absurd, it soon becomes clear from watching the video through that the 'director' is the one who is fictional and he is only describing the events that are taking place in front of him, Smith says that in this form of video he is playing words against the picture rather than the other way around in your usual filming style whilst also using the chance of something happening against the order. the voice-over is sharp and direct not allowing us to realise how this film has been constructed until the scenarios become slightly witty and laughable.

This is one of my favourite video pieces as I find it to be done incredibly well considering this is all been done down to chance using visuals to direct a scene however using words against the picture, the first time I watched this video I found it to be quite confusing as I wasn't quite sure how it was created or what exactly was going on in the video, as the film develops your able to see and make an understanding of what the director is doing and what he is challenging. As the video/director is gradually annotating events happening as they do it is using a linear format as there are no flashbacks just a continuous story in time, however as their is also the element of a voice over dictating the events this is showing a dual narrative being used as their are two elements telling the story, the film and the voice over.

I very much like the idea of using a voice over and it is something that I may look into further in use with my own work, for the narrative I am wishing to tell I feel it would fit in quite well with telling my story in perhaps a dual narrative structure.

Cindy Sherman | Film Stills

In my tutorial with Ellen Nolan I mentioned that for one of my photography pieces I would very much like to create film still style images, from this it was clear that the work of Cindy Sherman was very relevant to what I want to create.

Cindy Sherman's work titled 'Untitled film stills' 1977-1980 very much takes the approach of looking at how women are depicted in films on TV and in magazines in a way of looking at how women can be stereotyped. She has said in her work she doesn't see herself she she's a character that she has portrayed usually from famous films. I very much like this work she created I feel it depicts women in a way they are portrayed in films, despite these all being staged and purposeful created to look like film stills they are extremely convincing, if you were to show these images to someone who didn't know this work of hers or her herself for that matter I don't think they would be able to tell that these are not in fact actual film stills.

I have/will be taking inspiration from this work in the way that I want to create not only a film on this particular unit but I would like to create my own 'film still' images without actually creating a film for my digital piece, these images are very cinematic despite not actually being taken with a filming camera which I feel is incredibly well done and despite being very deceiving. The images in this series are in black and white which is what I would like my work to be shot in as I feel it fits in with the theme of film noir which I would like to carry through all of this work I think the lack of colour in the images gives a deeper sense of mystery particularly if the story goes down a darker route with atmosphere. Not only this but it gives verisimilitude in the sense that in the 1940's images would have been in black and white as colour was only just being attempted at this time. I feel the authenticity of this is important so I would like to experiment with this in black and white film despite this not being my strongest area, however if I feel this was not successful in any way then I will be carrying this shoot out in digital and attempt to create a series of images of this style.

Image source one: http://tristonrobinson.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/cindy-shermans-untitled-film-stills-and-postmodernism/ 

Image source two: http://imageobjecttext.com/2012/01/19/in-the-kitchen-with-cindy/

Sin City | Film Inspiration

After deciding I want to look into doing a  film and being very interested in the filming style of film noir, and similarly the style of Sin City directed by Frank Miller, I wanted to have a closer look at the way the film is shot and how this is perhaps shown to the viewers. Sin City itself was taken from a Graphic Novel so for this reason it's imagery is very similar to that of the novels being very dark with stark points of colour running through the entire film this makes the film very cinematic and atmospheric much like that of Film Noir, for this reason I feel they run hand in hand with each other and work well with my idea of creating something similar, from watching this film more recently again it has given me inspiration to work in black and white perhaps starting to shoot in colour to see how they might compare.

The opening scene of Sin City is one of my favourites 'The customer is always right' I find this to be very dramatic and running with the theme of a melodrama, putting characters in danger and leaving the viewer in suspense of what might happen next. The tense atmosphere of this scene is something I would like to duplicate in my own work with the vulnerability of a female and a strong male character by her side perhaps completely contradicting her character and clashing with tension in perhaps a highly sexualised manor? This for me is coming from watching film noirs which have a surprising twist either at the end or maybe only having it suggested throughout.

To carry on my research I will look into silent films, and watch some more Film Noirs for inspiration I recently purchased 'Kiss me Deadly' an old film noir which I would like to take inspiration from.

Film Noir | What is it?

For my work I am very interested in the style of film noir, and using moving image to portray my narrative, I like how these films are very Atmospheric, by doing this it adds something more to the image and gives a stronger idea of what the characters may be experiencing through the film whether it be using this or dialogue.

Film Noir began in the 1940's when inspired by numerous screenplays being written based around crime fiction. The storytelling was highly stylized and very theatrical. Often the imagery used within Film Noir was taken from the earlier era of German expressionist cinema as many of the early noir film directors came from Germany to Hollywood. Film Noir explores various chapters covering many themes such as physiological, lovers planning murders corrupt policemen etc. This style film was admired by many and audiences responded to the more adult orientated type of film certainly by end of the second world war. In 1946 the films were recognised for being visibly darker than your average film and much more cynical for this reason they were given the title of "Film noir" its literal translation being "Black film". It is still heavily debated whether film noir is a film genre in its own right, however a style of film consisting of doomed romanticism, lost innocence, corrupt cops etc is still generalised in this way today.

Despite being popular and being used a lot, This is the sort of theme I would like my story to take, I feel it would fit well with the brief, given that the nature of these style of working are quite mysterious without giving too much away, From this I will continue my research into film noir and the styling of how to place together my narrative.

Some Popular Noir Films:

• Double Indemnity
• Gun Crazy
• Touch of Evil
• Kiss me Deadly
• Blood Simple
• The Big sleep

Part of Double Indemnity, directed by Billy Wilder  in 1944