Evaluation

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

 Before starting this project, I had limited knowledge of the Film Noir genre. I knew the basic facts, (black and white film, 1940's era, detective based storyline) but nothing about the codes and conventions or examples of any famous examples of Film Noir. As a group, we started off by sharing the information we knew about Film Noir. Several members of the group had already studied the genre in a different subject and this prior knowledge proved to be a great help when planning our film to replicate a genuine Film Noir.

 To get an idea of the codes and conventions displayed within Film Noirs, we watched several famous examples of the genre. These included 'L.A Confidential', 'Double Indemnity' and 'Brick.' We then made up a table and compared all these films to see if they all contained the most common codes and conventions of real life Film Noirs. I have added an extra column that contains our own film and compared it alongside the genuine Film Noirs to see how it compares.

 Another way we used conventions of Film Noir was in the costumes our actors wore. As shown in the character profiles, we dressed the actors in suitable clothing for the time period most Film Noirs were based in. In the 1940's - 1950's, the time when most Film Noirs were set, most men dressed smartly, in suits, shirts and ties - something we picked up on and used heavily in our film. The girls also dressed smartly in skirts and blouses and we made sure every female in our film followed this rule, the exception being the Femme Fatale who we dressed in a black dress to represent her corrupt side and also give our film a unique twist on the genre's costume codes whilst still dressed smartly to follow the codes and conventions of a regular Noir.

 There was no doubt in our minds that we were going to make our film in black and white due to the fact that this is probably the main characteristic of the Film Noir genre. We had the option to go down the route of a Neo Noir film, an example being 'Brick' which was filmed in colour, but we felt that we could achieve the best mark by following every single convention possible to replicate a genuine Film Noir. Another reason for choosing to shoot the film in black and white was that this allowed our film to convey more atmosphere to the audience.

   

                                                                                                                                                                For example in the opening sequence, the contrast between the hall light and the black and white filter gives off an eerie effect that is used as a metaphor for the chilling message our film gives across.

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts? 

 I strived to continue the trend of including as many codes and conventions of Film Noir into my ancillary texts. The main focus of this went into my poster, as this is the main follow up product to the film itself. One of the main conventions of a Film Noir poster was to include a female femme fatale as the main feature. This is used to show that male gaze theory was involved heavily within Film Noir. I have used this convention in the design of my own poster in order to make it as authentic as possible. The photo I chose also features Emilie looking straight into the camera, which makes the audience feel that they are being addressed directly by the poster, creating a strong connection between them and the characters in the film. It also suggests that the Femme Fatale is the main controlling character, as she is in the middle of Frisco and Goodwin's fight for her love. Another convention of Film Noir posters is the colours that are used on the posters. Commonly, Black, White and Red are the three staple colours used as these three colours represent passion, lust, danger and romance. All of these are themes within Film Noir, and I used these effectively to construct a realistic Film Noir style poster.

What have you learned from your audience feedback? 

 One afternoon we gathered in a classroom in school and showed our Film Noir to an audience of media studies students. Everyone was given a post-it note and asked if they could write down some feedback after viewing the film. (See 'audience feedback'.) I then took this feedback and analysed it to give myself a better look at what areas our film excelled in and what we could have done to improve it. 

 It is clear to see that our film had a good reaction which pleased us greatly. It was satisfying to see that all our hard work had paid off with the end product. 

 Areas that our audience enjoyed included; Camera shots, lighting and sound effects, whilst areas we could have improved on involved the acting skills and a slightly clearer story line. We weighed up the pro's and cons of changing these factors to improve our film but concluded that it would be impossible to undertake as it would mean finding new actors and re-filming the whole film all over again. Also, this was a minority opinion and the majority of the audience had no quarrels with the acting or storyline. 

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

Technology we used in the process of planning/filming our Film Noir, Le Mortel Liaison: 

- Microsoft Word 

- YouTube

- Adobe Photoshop 

- Photography studio/lighting 

- Canon 500d camera 

- Sony Vegas editing software 

- Alienware laptop 

- iTunes 

- Windows Media Player 

Microsoft Word: This played a huge part of our pre-planning and production. We used this program to type out all our scripts, actors directions, lighting notes and sound effect placements. We had to know how to use all the different program features, from paragraphing tools, table inserts and highlighting tools to Word Art and diagram inserts. I also used Microsoft Word to type out my film review as this was the most practical program to do this in. 

YouTube: We used this video hosting site to upload our film to for viewing on our blogs and to make it easier to send the film to people to get their feedback. 

Adobe Photoshop/Photography Studio/Canon 500d Camera: This program is what I used to edit all my photos and posters in. The simple reason being that it is the easiest program in which to do so. However, at first I found the program quite hard to use and it took me a lot of practice before I was able to produce pleasing results which were good enough to be used as final products. All the photos in the character profiles I edited in Photoshop, using black and white and contrasting filters to achieve the desired effects. The photography studio was operated with the assistance of my group, all of whom study photography and had a good knowledge of how to use the lights. Here we achieved effective shadow work which added to the Film Noir effect. The Canon 500d camera belonged to Matt, although we all took turns at using it for the filming with the assistance of a tripod to avoid shaking footage. 

Sony Vegas Editing Software/ Alienware laptop: This is the software we used to edit our film. We chose to do this in our own time out of school using the laptop because it was a step up from the equipment available at school. Sony Vegas is a very powerful program that is used by many leading editors to produce stunning results. Seeing as we had it available to us, it was our natural choice of editing software. For example, we could edit the black and white contrast of our entire film in one go by selecting all the film clips using the 'CTRL' 'C' combination and then selecting the contrasting level in the edit bar. By sliding this up and down, it would instantly render the film the shade of black and white we wanted. Another example of this software working to our advantage was when we realised that our film was several minutes too long to be submitted. We were faced with the problem of cropping certain bits out to shorten the whole thing. Sony Vegas made it easy to shift out film over the deleted clips without going out of sync, resulting in us having to carefully align all our sound effects, dialogue and video clips all over again, wasting valuable editing time. The only downside to this software was how long it took to render the finished film; a wait time of around 25 minutes for just a 6 minute long film. However this was quickly evened out by the fact that this program gave us a high quality finished product. 

iTunes: We used this program to store, sort and play all our sound effects and background music. The highly organised filing system this program provided us with was ideal for keeping track of where our music was. We could even have our sounds stored in the order that they were used in the film to make things easier for us. 

Windows Media Player: We used this media playback software to present our film to our audience. This is the default software on most computers and so was our natural choice. 

FILM: Le Mortel Liaison

This is the final version of my A Level Media Studies coursework film - 'Le Mortel Liaison'

Audience Feedback

In order for us to gather audience feedback, we organised an after school showing of our film and asked people to write down some feedback. In addition to this, I sent some people who have no association with my school or media class the link to our film on-line and asked for their feedback as an unbiased source. Here is the feedback that I collected:

''Having seen a few professional Film Noir's before, I wasn't sure what to expect before seeing Le Mortel Liaison, but the result was great. The film followed all the codes and conventions of Film Noir and had some great camera shots that made me believe that it could have been shot by professional film makers!'' - Daniel  


''The sound used during the film was amazing! It reflected the mood perfectly and complimented the acting really well. It could have been improved by using better actors, but that didn't affect the quality of the film too much.''  - Rufus


''I wouldn't call myself a fan of the Film Noir genre, and so I warned Raya, Luke, Matt and Emilie that their film would have to be special in order to impress me! I was a little bit confused about the storyline, but I soon caught on. I enjoyed the film a lot, especially the twisted ending!''  - Danny


''The black and white filter adds so much atmosphere to the film! It really enhanced the way I looked at the scenes as an audience member!'' - Jess 


''The storyline was well planned out and kept me guessing the whole way through! Brilliant use of a twist at the end for suspense! Would never have guessed what was going to happen!'' - Jack 


''A really well planned and edited film! Very impressive when you consider the short amount of time the group had to organise things! The access they had to higher quality editing equipment is noticeable as it gives them a much more professional finish!'' - Bethany 


Personally I am extremely satisfied with the feedback that we received. It shows that all the hard work and planning we put into our film has paid off. The way that the audience noted that the editing skills, use of music and camera angles had a big influence on their feedback is very interesting as it shows how well the film captured the audiences attention and made for very valuable feedback.

Sound Effects, Dialogue and Music

Sound Effects

As with every film, we needed to use sound effects to make our production seem more realistic. These sounds needed to be free to use and also royalty free. We had a short list of sounds we needed to find, which were; Gun shots, traffic noise, office sounds, telephone ringing and people talking. We sourced these sounds from a selection of websites listed below.

http://www.audiomicro.com/free-sound-effects

http://soundbible.com/tags-gun.html

http://www.grsites.com/archive/sounds/

http://www.audiomicro.com/free-sound-effects/free-electronics

Dialogue

We had some concerns about the strength of our camera's mic and discussed overdubbing our dialogue, however we decided not to overdub as this could have led to a poor quality edit with lag and delay. It turned out that the mic built into the camera was more than strong enough. We used a Canon 500d for all our filming. 

Voice Overs 

To achieve an acceptable standard of audio quality, we decided to record the voice overs in a studio using an Apple mac, Logic Pro and a high quality condenser microphone with a pop filter.   

Music

Our film needed background music in order to create a feeling of adrenalin, suspense and atmosphere. The tracks we chose were not royalty free, however we bypassed this using the ''Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976 which allows for 'Fair Use' of all the songs."  We posted this disclaimer on our YouTube video and acknowledged that we held  no copyright to the music.

To start with we used a piece of music entitled 'Underwater' from the 'Big Fish' soundtrack. This was chosen as it had a slow, building up feel but also had tones of a minor key to it, giving the beginning a sense of forboding to show something bad is going to happen. We also decided to use some music from the soundtrack of the popular video game 'LA Noire' due to the fact that it fitted the Film Noir style well. This music was mainly in a minor key to blend in with the action. For the end scene of our film, we used a song called 'Every Dream Comes To An End' by an artist called UNKLE whom we sourced on YouTube. This was chosen because the music suited our ending due to the fact that it included strings and slow, sad piano chords.

Le Mortel Liaison - FILM REVIEW

To aid reading, here is my review's text.

Le Mortel Liaison- Film Review

Producer/Distributor: RELM Productions

Directors: Matthew Williams, Emilie Cherry, Raya Renney, Luke Jones

Certificate: 12a

Running time: 6 minutes approx

Plot

Detective Barnaby Frisco (played by Luke Jones) returns to work after personal leave following the death of his partner, Bones Goodwin (Matthew Williams.) What follows is a twisted tale of fighting, anger and betrayal over the love of Frisco’s wife, Adrianna (Emilie Cherry.)

Review

 RELM Production’s first feature length film has been a long time coming. This up and coming Film Company, spawned from the Knights Templar Acadamy have kept us all in suspense ever since they announced plans to release their first production. ‘Le Mortel Liaison’ is a bold attempt to revive the Film Noir genre that was so vibrant and successful in the 1940’s. Bold casting decisions from the producers have come up trumps with actors that slip perfectly into their roles as dark, shadowy characters. In a short amount of time, we as an audience are taken on a rollercoaster of a ride that exposes us to an emotional melting pot. The most convincing of which is the portrayal of Adrianna Frisco by Emilie Cherry, who plays a perfect Femme Fatale. 

 Lies, fighting, love and deceit are all displayed perfectly in this debut feature presentation which is sure to take its place in the Noir hall of fame in years to come.

The scenes flow together brilliantly, creating a visual puzzle for the audience to piece together. Smooth transitions and swift locations changes add to the fast pace of this detective thriller.

The sound isn’t perfect, but when you look at this in the grand scheme of things, it doesn’t affect the brilliance of this piece of cinema. The cliff-hanger ending leaves room for a sequel, something that would be greeted with much enthusiasm. Le Mortel Liaison 2 anyone?

Problems whilst filming

Even with all the careful planning and preparation that went into our filming, we still ran into several problems that were beyond our control. An example of this is the heavy rain we encountered when we originally planned to film the church yard scene. As a group we decided it wasn't worth damaging our equipment trying to get the film shot. We ran out of luck the next time we attempted to film this scene too, when we ran out of light and due to this we were unable to continue filming. However these were just mere hiccups in our schedule and we managed to still get everything done on time, an example of how keeping calm and quick re-organisation is key to keeping on track.

Filming Schedule

DATE	TIME	PLANNED TO DO	ACHIEVED
Thursday 23rd February	9am – 12pm	Both office scenes	Both office scenes.
Sunday 26th February	4pm - 7pm	Bedroom Scene and church scene	Bedroom Scene. Church scene postponed as raining.
Tuesday 28thFebruary	11am - 1pm	Tunnel Murder Scene	Tunnel murder scene.
Tuesday 28thFebruary	5pm - 7pm	Intro and Church scene	Intro. Church scene postponed as got too dark to film.
Thursday 1st March	9am - 12pm	Church scene	Church scene.
Monday 5th March	2pm - 3pm	Voiceover for introduction and going to work scene.	Both voiceovers.

The final script for 'Le Mortel Liaison'

Film Noir script for ‘Le Mortel Liaison’

PROLOGUE

<echo, reverb sounds>

MATT:

‘’I cant help it, I love her!’’

LUKE:

‘’Not like I do!’’

(gun shot)

TITLE SEQUENCING – (Exterior shots of area)

~~~~~

ACT 1

~~~~~

SCENE 1

Montage of Luke getting ready.

Mirror – steamed up, clearing. Cutting between Luke and Emilie getting ready. 

- Cutting face with shaver.

- Pouring water, spilling.

- Burning toast.

Emilie is getting ready. Focus on pendant on the table. Mirror shot of her putting it on. Luke approaches from behind. Focus on feet, low angle shot. 

LUKE:

(into mirror) ‘’I’m going.’’

EMILIE:

‘’Nervous?’’

LUKE:

‘’Why should I be?’’

EMILIE:

(sigh) ‘’Just be careful.’’

LUKE:

(at doorway) ‘’I always am.’’ (closes door and gets into car)

ANONYMOUS VOICE OVER

‘’it was detective Frisco’s first day back. He had been on leave for… personal reasons. “

<Montage during voiceover and then music >

· in the car; shots inside and front of car

· walking into station/office - shot from behind, tracking forward

· through corridor

· shot opening door, light behind him, turning lights on.

SCENE 2

<Music cuts/fades out> sits at desk, and gets adjusted/climatised to room.

Raya knocks on door, see him turning around and then point of view seeing Raya by door.

RAYA:

“How are you coping without him, Frisco?”

LUKE:

“not a day goes by when I don’t think of him”

RAYA:

“Mm, it can’t be easy/it must be hard”

LUKE:

“It doesn’t get any easier”

RAYA:

“They still haven’t caught him…”

LUKE:

“No…not yet” *angered*

===“*thump on desk* We’ll catch him, don’t you worry” <looks at photo of Goodwin>

*PHONE RINGING*

LUKE:

(into phone) “Frisco (pause) I’m on it.”

SCENE 3

--- Transition cut to murder scene: tunnel, including establishing shots of the industrial area, leading to tunnel. ---

Detective Frisco goes up to body, kneels down by it. <Over the shoulder shot>.

Inspects body, goes to hand, note rolls out of hand. <close up on hand>

<close up slow motion of necklace falling out of the note as he opens it> <reaction shot>

Frisco picks up the necklace and inspects it.

<close up of necklace in Frisco’s hand.>

< Mid range shot of Frisco> standing still, holding the necklace.

Noise at end of tunnel, footsteps. <long shot of tunnel, darkness>

LUKE:

<shouting> “Who’s there?”

Noise of footsteps running away/ figure in darkness

Luke runs to end of tunnel, gives up. <close up of reaction>

~~~~~~~~~~~~

ACT 2

~~~~~~~~~~~~

SCENE 1

---Back to office----

<high angle shot> Frisco at desk, deep in thought.

· Note and necklace at desk, cigar in ashtray, smoking.

<time lapse shot> clock changing time, static/fade change. Showing Frisco in same place.

<Quick shots> now showing frustration, slides papers off desk, shouting.

<point of view shot> picture of them in church, showing hand picking up photo.

<close up on face>

LUKE:

*murmurs* “the church”.

SCENE 2

<Establishing shots of church, low angle>

Frisco running onto scene. Breathless, unsure of where to go. Looks around and moves to decided location (bell tower or church interior)

Finds wife tied up.

LUKE:

“Are you okay? What happened? Who did this?” No answer from Emilie, just head down.

Matt comes up from behind and knocks him out. <Blurry background then Black out.>

<Close up of head on floor>

<Disorientated shots, ceiling etc> Passes out again.

Bones is above Frisco, watching him. <Start out of focus, moves into focus>

MATT:

“Hello old friend. I’ve seen you in better states. (ad lib: explains how he’s still alive, his wife’s gone behind his back and the plan to get him here)

<close up of Luke clenching fist and getting angry>

They both start to fight, lots of quick shots of punches etc.

Luke strangles Matt, then shot from behind, Luke slumps off.

Shot of Emilie with gun.

END CREDITS

*It should be noted that there were several changes in the script during the editing process where it was necessary to cut small bits out in order to fit within the allotted time slot of 5 minutes. 

Roles within the group

To make the filming process run smoothly, it was important that we ran an organised schedule within the group and that everyone knew what their jobs were. To do this we came up with a list of tasks that each of us would undertake.


The whole group:

- Script writing: coming up with the plot for our film.
- Casting: Giving the actors their roles..
- Actors: Acting the parts given.


Emilie Cherry:

- Assistant Film Editor: Assisting Matt to edit the film.
- Location Scout: helping to find suitable locations that we can film in.
- Wardrobe Supervisor: deciding the costumes.

Matt Williams:

- Cinematography: making sure the shots looked good as well as filming.
- Film Editing: the main editor of the film.
- Music Supervisor: finding the music for our film.

Luke Jones:

- Main Actor
- Assistant Film Editor: Assisting Matt to edit the film.
- Location Scout: helping to find suitable locations that we can film in.

Raya Renney:

- Secondary Cinematography: making sure the shots looked good as well as filming.
- Assistant Film Editor: Assisting Matt to edit the film.
- Property Assistant: finding suitable props.
- Location Scout: helping to find suitable locations that we can film in.

Researching and Designing a Film Noir poster

Every film is released with a poster to promote, spread the word and build up the excitement before the film release. The posters released alongside Film Noir's were often hand drawn due to the fact that in the 1950's computers were not often used for graphic design.

One of the main conventions of a Film Noir poster was to include a female femme fatale as the main feature. This is used to show that male gaze theory was involved heavily within Film Noir. I have used this convention in the design of my own poster in order to make it as authentic as possible.

Another convention of Film Noir posters is the colours that are used on the posters. Commonly, Black, White and Red are the three staple colours used as these three colours represent passion, lust, danger and romance. All of these are themes within Film Noir.

Here are some examples of Film Noir posters:

By comparing ideas from other posters, I worked on several designs before settling with this one as my final product.

  For the poster I used the character profile shot of Emilie as the main point of focus, the reason being, that she plays the role of the Femme Fatale and is therefore one of the most crucial characters in the film. Using Photoshop, I subtly blurred the photo of Emilie to add a sense of mystery, before air brushing the necklace so that it stood out. This was because of the role that the necklace plays in the plot. I wanted to highlight how important it was. I then inserted a completely black background as a canvas to add text. After putting the actors names along the top in a bold white text, I then created a red and white coloured title font placed towards the top of the poster. After adding the RELM logo, I decided to include a tag line at the bottom to get readers questioning the plot of the film and to get them hooked into watching it.