Jerome Cant and

James Duddy

A2 Advanced

Production booklet

Brief and Introduction

This year we have chosen to make a 5 minute film, a poster for the film and a radio trailer for the film. Last year we chose to do the opening to a thriller with a director’s commentary accompanying the film. We chose the 5 minute film because we have already practised creating a film and this year we hoped to further develop these skills. In our group this year is James Duddy and Jerome Cant. We chose to work together because we worked well as a team last year, and each have different strengths.

In the pre-production we planned to include:

•sources of inspiration, •Target audience research,•promotion research,•research existing products,•Treatment/synopsis,•Story boards

The production itself would include:•The short film in its entirety•A radio advert•A poster promoting the film

Target Audience

We thought that our target audience would be a middle class educated demographic, while also appealing to younger educated audiences. We think that this will be our target audience because their interests are more likely to encompass arthouse films that are not intended for a mainstream audience. An analogy of this is red wine drinkers compared to WKD drinkers. WKD is advertised for the masses, but usually lower class men but predominantly women and the people who drink it accept how it is. Whereas red wine has little advertising and the drinkers appreciate different flavors and types of wine. the drinkers will also form their own opinion of the wine and respond to it, much like they would with a media text. This demographic will be more likely to try out different genres of film and respond to it through their own background and life experiences. this ties in nicely with the active audiences theory and we want the audience to decode our text and to challenge it or to have a personal response, and not to directly influence the way the behave in a passive audience style. I am not claiming to be trying to appeal to wine drinkers, but it is a good example of the ways in which different demographics respond to products in different ways and how it can be applied to the media world.

The more educated demographic will also be able to decode the text and connotations in the film and hopefully they will evoke an emotional response in the audience as we are going to try and portray the fragility of life, and the value placed by people on material possessions, how love can be uncontrollable and how one thing can tip someone over the edge into a spiral of depression.

We will appeal to this audience through branding, expectation and aspiration. We will create an upper class, sophisticated image for the production and this will be headed by

the ancillary task of the poster where we will go for a sleek and simple image like an advert for jewelry much like the image on the left. The picture is advertising an online jewelry company called £expensive the minimalistic style and simple writing oozes with class and elegance and this will help to create an image for the production and give people a high expectation for the piece, which we hope we will meet. We will create an aspiration of class and grander with the necklace in the poster, but with the characters faces inside the necklace itself and the image of class and sophistication that the educated middle class often aspire to. in this sense we are conforming to the conventions by appealing to an audience in the same way that other companies do, for example Jack wills advertises themselves as “Outfitters for the gentry” attracting the middle class that wish to project an image of sophistication and wealth.

Synopsis

We are going to produce a ‘neo film noir’. A film noir is an ‘old school’ Hollywood type of film often described as a highly stylised crime drama. Film noir has key elements such as a ‘femme fatale’ who is an exceedingly attractive woman who controls the male protagonist. Narration is also a key feature in a film noir and the stories are often told after the event to allow the main character to narrate his feelings and what is going on as the plot thickens.

Our narrative is about a man who falls in love with a femme fatale and she encourages him to break into an ex lover’s house.He gets caught and is sent to prison, and then when he is released from prison he finds himself isolated in a lonely world - the woman has only been using him and never really loved him in the first place. We wanted the emotions of the character to be powerful and for the audience to connect with the character on an emotional level so we decided to have the main character - Johhny - hang himself. A conventional technique used in film noir is narration so we want to open the film with Johnny standing on the chair talking about what he did and why. We thought this would make the audience sympathies with him and it also gives us a powerful way of narrating the film and the emotional disposition of the character can be portrayed more easily.

Three characters will be in the film, Johnny, the femme fatale and the ex–lover.

Research into similar media products

We have research similar media products and have discovered that there are few other productions that are similar, and almost no modern mainstream films that derive from the Film noir Genre. We watched In Bruges and deconstructed the film. In Bruges is a British film, predominantly funded by E4 We liked the way that the main character was isolated through the use of camera angles, for example close ups portraying emotion and wide shots making the character small and vulnerable. Music was also cleverly used to create a sad atmosphere or sometimes even no music at all at some points making the scenes far more hard hitting, as we are used to having emotive music playing in the background. Yet the distinct lack of music makes the scenes feel far more intense. Whilst we admired this technique we decided not to incorporate it into our film because we felt that if it did not have the desired effect then we would have problems. The language used in the film was rather colorful and we wished to avoid this as we thought that it became excessive after a while and the audience might become desensitized to all the other emotive language that we wanted to use. We also drew inspiration from how they portrayed the fragility of life, through not only the narrative but also through the camera angles used. there were close ups showing the emotion of the protagonist and displaying his response to the terrible crime that he had committed and through the voice over narration of the thoughts of the character an emotional response is evoked from the audience which is definitely something we wish to achieve in our production.

In Bruges was nominated for an Oscar. It also received another 13 wins & 30 nominations including winning the British Independent Film Award and a Golden Globe. The film went on to take a disappointing $459,575 in its opening weekend in the US. In the film’s total lifetime it has taken in worldwide an impressive $33,361,229 which is unusual for a more arty niche film. This could be explained by the “ Tarantino effect” in which the more mainstream audience has become more interested in the arty films because of the amount of critical acclaim and and press attention that Tarantino’s arty films have received. Most of this money,$9,659,983 was pulled in from the UK compared to the next largest country the US pulling in $7,800,824. showing that there is a large audience for this type of film in the UK, which is where we wish to distribute the film. It is interesting that this British film was not as successful in the American market

Deathproof is another arty film that we have looked at. We liked the creative, different approach to film that the production had and the attention to the mise en scene and how the story is portrayed through it. The film spent a lot of time in post production as Quentin Tarantino put part of the film in black and white, and put grain filters over the film to create an art-house and stylistic look. The look was created through a series of grain filters, black and white and a sudden switch to color. The way the film is viewed is also interesting as it has a very slow start with a sudden change in pace and then returns to being slow again, which is unconventional. yet we found very little that we could incorporate into our film as it was very different to the film noir genre. We also found the film to be surprisingly superficial with little thought or emotion provoked and we strongly discussed weather Tarantino was becoming the film industries version of Damien hurst, churning out films of any quality and receiving high critical acclaim because he is

seen as the critics favorite and even the critics are afraid to break the ranks and challenge his productions. In a sense after watching the film we got a sense of what we didn't want our film to look like and tried to learn from the mistakes that we found such as the lack of meaning in the narrative and lack of depth in plot

Deathproof was a surprising flop only pulling in 50 million dollars, but costing $53 million to produce. Planet terror was released in conjunction with Deathproof as a double feature, which is included in the monetary figures. It was released in the cinemas under the title “Grindhouse” The film pulled in more viewers than In Bruges, but did not break even. On ‘Metacritic’ one of the main film critic’s sites Deathproof scored 77/100 points, but a user score of only 73/100 whereas In Bruges scored 67/100 from the critics and 83/100 from the users. this shows that the audience preferred in Bruges and disagreed with the critics. To me the discrepancy between the critic’s scores and the audience scores suggests that the critics are becoming out of touch with the audience. To me the difference in the two films scores suggests that the lack in plot depth in Deathproof let it down and possibly that it tried to hard to be different and stylistic and the audience were put off by it, compared to in bruges deep emotive plot and strong message to be decoded.

Double Indemnity is a classic example of an excellent film noir and from this we have learnt how important the script, cinematography and lighting is in this genre. We wanted to use techniques like the narration throughout the film as it was an easy way of clearly conveying the narrative to the audience and it would allow us to use some conventional Film Noir language such as. The lighting in black and white can be exceedingly effective and evoke strong emotive responses if used correctly. We aimed to use available light, strengthened by a few lamps and torches to create the high contrast lighting required for film noir.

We decided to try and move our film into the modern era and take a simple story about a man who was driven into prison for crimes committed for passion. He ends up hanging himself This is challenging the convention to a small extent as more often than not the storyline of a film noir is quite complex, as in Double Indemnity's case. Double indemnity's story is complex but it has all the elements that make a good film noir - the Femme fatale, emotive speeches and long cuts. This film was made in 1946 and so the majority of the modern audience will not have heard of it. This means that the audience will not directly link it to other film noir and if they enjoy our piece then they may be inclined to go and watch some of these old Film Noirs that helped shape films into what they are today and discover how Orson Welles and Billy Wilder changed and shaped film in the 40’s and 50’s.

Ancillary Pieces

Half way through our film we began to look at what types of media we would use in our ancillary tasks, we chose radio and a film poster. Judging from the audience research we did we had an idea of our audience: middle class to upper class adults / older teenagers - 18-35 years old. We also looked at other contemporary film noir posters such as the maltese falcon, double indemnity and other films advertised for the age group we were aiming for. An example would be The Lake House produced in 2006 with Keanu Reeves and Sarah Bullock, Directed by Alejandro Agresti. We also looked at Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, we found that these posters were some of the best we found after sifting through so many posters we came across these four that gave us the most influence to create our poster.

The posters here all contain the two main

characters - both male and female - the two posters above are film noir posters. Both of them have the male and female characters close to on another. In the Maltese Falcon there is more emphasis on the male being a more prominent profile than the female. In both cases the male is holding a gun. It shows the audience that the male is a killer and protecting female as the gun is aimed away from the female and is staring into the distance.

Double Indemnity oozes noir conventions with Venetian blind lighting on the male, again hinting how in noir the male is shown to be a dark, brooding character. The female is in a dominant posture, as well as her being comfortable with the male holding a gun - portrays her as a dominant figure, where as the Maltese Falcon portrays the female as an object of desire. This is also reminiscent of Laura Mulvey’s theory of the male gaze.

In the Lake House poster we see the two characters in a more loving pose, showing the intextuality of the film - with Keanu being in the past this is shown with him in black and white. Whereas Sarah Bullock is shown in the present as she is in colour. The title resembles a lake house with ‘The’ above the rest of the text could again connoting a lake house on a pontoon.

America Psycho’s font is the most prominent in the poster - the font used shows the word ‘Psycho’ in as torn in half - connoting the state of the mind of a Psycho. The male is shown as looking on to the female with desire. Suggesting obsession of the female - who is shown in bed in a bra. As being sexually suggestive it also shows here as being vulnerable. The male is shown in red as it connotes love, passion but also anger and madness.

I will use elements of these conventions when advertising to the targeted audience in creating our poster.

We also wanted to add in the idea of making it like an advertisement to jewelry to add more sophistication and class to the poster, while still keeping to the original connotations of a Film Noir Poster.

I had been working on Adobe Photoshop CS4 before our A2 course, during the summer I took a work experience course where I learnt how to work with the program. I was shown websites of how to hone your skills – much like www.Photoshopplanet.com here I found a tutorial focused on creating film posters – by composting inside silhouettes http://www.planetphotoshop.com/compositing-inside-silhouettes.html you can watch the Tutorial here, to see how it works. I thought that the technique used could work particularly well.

The tutorial shows how to fit the images of the male and female into the image of the dove, as well as keeping texture of the dove’s wings.

Here is our end result:

We chose to create a radio advert for our secondary ancillary task. There is a saying that goes “radio makes better TV” and idea in which radio implements the audience’s imagination to perceive what is being said on the radio and allows each individual to conjure up their own “perfect advert” as they have to imagine it. It also

means that you can make the audience perceive one message, when in fact selling them an entirely different package all together. Meaning that you can deliberately misrepresent a product to increase sales. There are three films – through advertising and editing who have done this

Burn after reading

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMWu6i7l5ec

Here is it easy to think that the film involves spies and action , when in fact the film was a slow burning comedy.

Inglourious B*sterds

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5sQhTVz5IjQ

Here, the film is shown to be a hard rock action film, the music played connotes this. The bloody titles and gun fights in the film are shown and edited cleverly to fast paced. In fact the film is again a slow burning action/ drama. With more emphasis on the political view Tarantino holds and storyline instead of an action film killing brutally killing Nazis. The film is deliberately misrepresented to achieve a higher audience.

In Bruges

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KoE9edjEDCI

Again, the music connotes a fast paced action comedy. But the editing has in fact shown off most of the action parts of the film, as well as some comic moments to entice the audience member to watch it. As a result the audience member can misinterpret the film to being what they were shown it would be. When in fact the film has much more dark humor , and focuses on the character development of Collin Farell’s character.

It is possible if these films were shown as they are, they may have received less numbers at the box office. As a result of audience’s misinterpreting what the film is about, they all received a large amount of money at the box office, and may not have been as highly received by the public.

In creating our radio advert we aimed for the audience to interpret the film as an action film. The voice used was directed in a certain way to show enthusiasm and breathless excitement about the film. This juxtaposed with edited pieces of the voice from the film – combined with fast tempo music. Enabled us to create an advert that made the audience misinterpret the genre and style of our film to gain a higher audience taking. Just as these three films did.

Audience Research

For our audience research we decided to create a questionnaire and post it on Facebook and email it to some of our contacts we thought that this would be a better way to reach the target audience than going onto berkhamsted high street and handing out questionnaires. The form we created was on google docs because it is a simple and easy way to collate the results. The form we sent out is here: http://tinyurl.com/yezmuu8

We did not manage to pull in a huge response with 27 in total but if you put this into context with adverts on TV claiming that 90% of people agree that you get longer lasting eye lash definition with their product the fine print at the bottom often states that they have only asked 100 - 150 people and for a professional company to only ask this amount of people, is it really Accurate? is it false advertising? but if the company feels it appropriate to ask just over 100 people then is it necessary for two amateur producers to ask 100? personally i would have liked round about 100 responses but in the time frame and data collation it was simply un-realistic to attempt to achieve this level of reply because we needed to start production

The first question is about age, and we chose to include this to show what age range the results the results are coming from and if we are mainly attracting our target audience. This ties in with the second question which is on gender, which will show us what demographic of gender we are appealing to.

Unfortunately we did not manage to get a varied range of ages answering the questionnaire with the vast majority of the people answering the question being in the 16-20 age category. This is probably de to the fact that we placed the questionnaire on Facebook where this is the primary age group of all our friends it is therefore not surprising that the main group of people is in this age bracket. This is not perfect, a varied age rage would have been far better but this age group is part of our target audience and the results are still relevant to our production.

Gender on the other hand was far more pleasing as we received a roughly even spread of male and females responding the questionnaire this even spread is good

because we want to see if the females will be interested in the film noir genre or weather there would be a discrepancy in interests between genders.

We chose to ask people if they have previously watched a film noir and gave a choice of three Famous film Noirs we asked this to see how many people had seen any of these classic films and we included Sin city as it is a modern ‘neo-noir’ and unsurprisingly 67% of people had watched sin city because of the levels of critical acclaim and publicity it had when it came out. More surprisingly was the levels of people that have seen The maltase falcon or Double Indemnity we were expecting a lower number of people to have seen them, especially because of the low age demographic 16-20 that responded to the questionnaire. Only 30% of people had never watched a film noir which is good, because then they will know what to expect and what to look for in our production. Next we asked people to define Film Noir. we got a varied response with the most popular result being “Black film?” and words such as “dark” “crime” and “black and white” featured strongly and apart from the 3 people that copy pasted from wikipedia only about 40% of people accurately defined the genre which is interesting and it also shows that we may be able to push the boat a little in our production as people do not know precisely what a film noir is, equally we could choose to go the other way and try to show people a classic version of a film noir and show them what is conventionally done within the genre but I think that we will still attempt to modernize the genre and bring it into the 20th century.

The next Question was important as we asked weather the audience would be interested in watching a short film noir and thankfully the response was overwhelmingly positive with only three people saying that they were not interested in watching a film noir. This showed us that the audience wanted to watch our idea and it was not just us wanting to produce one.Next we asked how people preferred to watch films. we asked this to find out what the preference of the age group that responded is and to see if we could accommodate for this to make them more likely to watch our production. A surprisingly large amount of people said that they prefer to watch film in the cinema closely followed by dvd and unsurprisingly, and sadly

enough blu ray trailed in last. This is interesting, as with the more technologically advanced age group are obviously still not embracing the new blu ray format even after it has defeated HDDVD in the lowest profile format war in history. this question showed to us that if we were to distribute our production then it would be best to do so on DVD.

The next question we asked we hoped to discover what type of film was most popular at the moment and to see if it tied in with our production As you can see from the results 0 people said that their favorite genre was Film Noir. This was to be expected as popularity peaked in the late 40’s and the ‘noughties’ were dominated by comedy and action films although just because Film noir is not the popular genre is no reason not to produce the film, it just makes it more risky as if it is bad then it will create a bad image of film noir but it could work in reverse and as people have not seen many of the genre then they will be refreshed and enjoy something different from the usual films that they watch.

The final question we asked was to find out what radio station was most popular so we could tailor the advert so suit this audience and so we would know which

stations to put the advert on if we were going to distribute the production. Irritatingly enough 52% of people responded ‘other’ possibly due to us missing out a popular mainstream radio station that this 16-20 age group listen to yet equally they could listen to a varied range of niche stations. The other largest station that people listen to is Radio 1 which tends to have a more fast paced shows and has a popular main stream audience we will have to take this into account when producing our radio advert for the ancillary task.

Script

I stood on the chair, it was shaky - old- wooden, one of those chairs that is neglected, just a shape to fill up the space, the emptiness in this room was stil evident. the biting cold wasn’t helping. i began untying my belt. my fingers numb trying to undo the buckle. I wrapped it round my neck, it still smelt of stale beer and cigarette smoke. My body still remembered the pain of when it lashed my back.

3 of those years in the clink, wasted all because of her.

She was worth a stare, but she was trouble.

I didn’t care. she had eyes that pierced through your soul, her delicate scent, waves of golden hair. I was smitten

A black pool had opened at my feet, I dived in - knowing it had no bottom.

I considered her the most attractive, mysterious and the most interesting woman i’d ever met. And she was in complete accord with me.

All those years back, i thought she was the thing i needed. How did a guy like me get so lucky?

She’d put a veil over my my eyes.

She was like something else, like a cigarette. Offering you a way out of your dismal life, something that you then crave. Concious of that the very thing that makes you see life for what it is. Is the very thing that kills you from the inside out.

She used me like a glove, when she was cold - she’d call me, I didn’t care, I was addicted to her love, at least. What I thought it was.

She gave me the best time i’d ever had. A Goddess. Making me think she was all I needed.

But it was when she began to tease, she wanted more from me. To prove my love to her.

To do wrong.

It began petty, breaking into cars, stealing money. Giving the profits to her.

But slowly the crimes got bigger - mugging, breaking into houses.

After enough, my soul flickered - i said no.

I wished now that i held my ground. But how could I? When I yearned for her wanting.

I refused myself to the very thing that kept me going. And she rejected me.

And thats when my lust for her overtook.

I arrived at dusk.

The house belonged to some seedy floater. Not much more than a suitcase full of nothing between them and the gutters.

She told me me that she was once his. He smothered her in gifts and money. But he was cold and cruel to her. She wanted revenge.He had something of hers, a necklace. She wanted it back.

“I never think our moments without nausea”

I stood in the shadows . The house was one of these french style looking chateaus, but just like some french tart, had bits stuck on it to keep it looking beautiful.

He may have been dirt, but he had taste.

I hated him, his world. How can someone like him live a life like his without even glancing outside, take in a real breath of the world he lives in. He lives above the clouds, but only these clouds rain on the rest of us. I was about to give him the wake up call he needed.

The ground crunched beneath my feet, i almost forgot what a wet woodland smells like. My nose now only accustomed to the smell of smog, fumes and stale air. The cold air bites to the bone. Shadows flickered across the tall windows, like candle light.

I went around the back, the entire inside of house on display like a fish bowl. I chose my entrance carefully, a small window on the second floor beckoned to me. The house chose for me. I broke in.

I was quiet, in what looked like a playroom, but one that obviously the owner out grew.

I crept down the stairs

My eyes grew accustomed to the bright light quickly, my steps smothered by the claps of thunder. Lighting threw shadows across the wall as I walked down the corridor, cold steel digging into my leg.

Stay cool stay calm, it was time to prove to her your worth, that you wanted her back.

I walked into the lit room, and hit the lights.

It was a mess, two strangers fighting in the dark, fists flying- not knowing if they hit a target. the only thing that was going through my head was that one of us had to lose. I heard a crack, then nothing. I fumbled for the light switch. He lying stock still, eyes wide open, a feeling I'd never felt before bit into my stomach. It was the realisation that the world as i knew it was gone. I took the necklace from around his neck. His body still warm. The smell of death filling my nostrils.

I left out the front door, but a photo caught my eye, i stared at it for a second before i began to comprehend what i’d done. This, this bootlicking, slavish sleaze bag had a family. I’d just killed a father.

It wasn’t too long before the pigs caught my scent. They took me, questioned me. To the other crooks they had in i was a saint. I never told them about her, and the necklace. I was quiet i co-operated and did my time. Three years in the clink, all because of her. My family disowned me, first christmas mom and dad came, then just mom, then no one. Not even a card. She never came. But i never forgot about her. Her scent, her smooth skin, her golden hair.

I finally got out, December 2009.

I got to the nearest phone. I called her with the little money that i had left in my pocket, you know what that is. The stuff you never have enough of. Little silver things with the Queen’s picture that men slave for, commit crimes for, die for. It’s the stuff that has caused more trouble in the world than anything else ever invented. simply because there’s too little of it.

“Its me baby, I’m back”

“Johnny, its been so long, you never told me what happened”

“I got what you wanted honey, I wana give it to you”

I hoped that i could win her over, i had something she wanted. I wanted her.

She told me to meet her where i took her, I remembered. The first time i did something decent, and took her out for one night, we watched night become dawn, both of us wrapped up in coats sipping malt wine. The only time i felt my life was leading somewhere.

I saw the back of her head, that goddess.

“Baby”

“Johnny”

I opened my heart out to her, i told her what happened. There wasn’t a glimmer of empathy on her face. After i’d finished she just calmly lit another cigarette.

I lent in to feel her skin on my lips, she moved away. I was confused.

She told me how she’d moved on. “I can’t drop everything and come back to how i was.”

My insides were twisted, my heart in pieces.

“I’ve been through hell for you!”

She’d played me like a deck of cards. With all the odds stacked in her favour.

My hands clutching the necklace, i bit back the tears. the love i felt for this woman evaporated into the cold winter air. I’d had enough.

Dad's belt never seemed to be of use even as a belt who’d of know that the same piece of leather he threw off his jeans all those years ago in a fleet of passion with you mother in order to concieve you would be the same thing to end a pithy existence you called a life.

What a way to go Johnny.

Edit

This was the original draught, we printed this, ran through it and annotated it with emotions ideas and then in the final production we over ran so much of this had to be cut out as when we tried to keep it all in if felt almost claustrophobic and the audience had no time to absorb the meaning of the narration.

Storyboards will be provided on a different document.

Filming locations and Mise en Scene

For the opening shots we used the school library, with one of their old fashioned chairs, We tried to keep the bookshelves out of the shots, as we wanted to imply the scene was playing out in a private home. The audience would think that from the connotations provided by the mise-en-scene that it was an old fashioned building.

James was the only character in these shots, and he wore a suede trench coat with the lapel and collar sticking up, suit trousers that appeared smart/casual in black and white. this is the same with the shirt, he wore a white shirt to contrast with the black jacket. The shoes were important as they would become the focus of one of the shots, and he wore pointy black shoes this is to show that he has a sense of style and class regardless of his status in society. These shots would be re-used later on in the final scene of the film, and in the additional shots he would wear the same costume.

In the shots of the femme fatale

We wanted to have the femme fatale sitting in front of a fire in a long black evening gown,.smoking and having a drink in hand, as this is a convention in film noir. We chose to have a fire and candles in the frame to create a sense of intimacy that the protagonist longs for.

Emma, the femme fatale, will be wearing a black evening dress and heels, in full make up and hair down yet styled. Johnny will be wearing the usual Swede jacket with black trousers and leather shoes. The femme fatale will be dressed up to make her look more alluring and attractive, to show why Johnny is so attracted to her and to also show that she is elegant and sophisticated. Johnies costume will not be as formal showing that he is not of the same social background and it also connotes that she is the one that is in power in the scene as she is better dressed and more attractive.

Breaking and Entering.

The breaking and entering scene were shot at James's house. The lighting in these shots was essential, and we filmed each shot with the security lights on and off to see which looked best. We also needed to keep the same lights on within the house to maintain continuity between interior and exterior shots.. We also ensured that no-one was walking about the house while we were filming, so that our shots did not acquire erroneous shots or continuity errors.

Johnny will be wearing the same sued jacket as in the opening, but with different trousers and shoes, which will not be apparent in the black and white, but continuity is important and we want the scene to have the right atmosphere, anything that breaks continuity could spoil the whole production.

The other character in the scene would be the man that Johnny is robbing. We wanted to connote his wealth, not just by the grandeur of his home, but also by the clothes that he wore. He would wear a pinstripe suit, but with the jacket taken off and top button undone to make it look as if he is at home. He would also have to produce a cigar out of a box and in the end of the scene light a match to illuminate his face in the dark. When the character fell unconscious we planned to use a blood capsule to make him look injured and make sure the cigar was lying on the floor within the frame. We would have preferred an older actor but due to schedule limitations I played the part.

the meet up

We decided to film this on a Berkhamsted canal path, with a bench centered in the middle of the shot. This will hopefully create a sort of paradox with the beautiful setting but with a scene that will lead to the main characters death and we hope that this contrast of setting and events will be apparent to the audience

The hanging scene

In this scene we tried to film while it was raining, but this proved technically problematic, not least because of the difficulty in obtaining any pickup shots on a subsequent date. The hanging itself was filmed in the library by propping a boom mike pole up across two bookshelves and taping the belt to the boom mike pole, to make the belt look like it had been tied to a rafter. The dangling feet effect was achieved by James holding himself in a stress position using the arms of the chair to make his feet dangle over the edge.

We edited the saturation and gamma levels in post production to create a monochromatic high contrast image. This contorted a sad atmosphere, as well as being an accepted convention of film noir. The costume was the same as in the opening scene with the same suede jacket and raised collar. He wore an old fashioned belt because it was meant to be his father's. This is purposeful because of the contrast of his father who created him, and using one of his fathers possessions to end his life this is a stark and shocking idea and we hope that it will evoke an emotional response in the audience. We want to draw another contrast in the way that the shots are positioned and with some excellent cinematography and perfect lighting conditions we can create a beautiful scene personally depicting such a graphic and extreme ending to ones life and these contrasts will help to create a real atmospheric and emotional ending to the piece that will keep the audience

thinking and make them create a personal response to the ending that will be memorable and not just another forgettable short film.

Production of Our Film

We began with formulating the ideas through the storyboard we wrote, looking at the locations that we were going to shoot at. Inspired by Hitchcock we tried creating the film on a story board first, this was also heavily influenced by the graphic novel “The Watchmen” as each title in this novel is drawn cinematically. And when the film was created in 2009 the director mentions that they wanted some of the film shots to be in keeping with what was drawn. Most of the shots used in the film are in keeping with the story board, and there are only slight changes.

We shot our film after

school, through October till December. This gave us the ideal lighting for our outdoor shots as it meant that we could film after school and it would be dark. We chose to film in HD, to give our film a more professional edge. As well as the camera’s ability to pick up more detail within each shot it allowed us to film shots that a standard camera may have blurred or darkened. We initially filmed in colour – then in post production using Final Cut Pro on a Mac, de-saturated the images as well as adjusting the brightness and contrast on the clips to get the ideal shots that we had storyboarded.

The rest of our storyboard can be found here: http://issuu.com/svanstraten/docs/duddy-and-cant-a2-storyboard-2010

We wanted to maintain a certain quality in our film, we knew that if we had dialogue recorded via the HD Camcorder that it would sound too tinny and lower the professionalism of our film. We opted to use Cubase in the post production as well a mic recorder to create the voice over. The narrator was James – putting on a

“Brooklyn” accent. Trying to keep within the conventions of a film noir - the narrator tends to also be the protagonist of the film.

With some shots we drew up we found hard to replicate – however we made sure that we kept to the conventions of a film noir by using a tripod and filming at certain angles to allow scenes to unfold on screen. However we also wanted to express our artistic sides – in the scene where Johnny kills himself the different angle shots are used to convey Johnny’s emotion to the audience. We were limited by how high the tripod could go, as well as the length of the belt we used. In order to get this shot we suspended part of a Boom pole above the shot line, whilst James stood on books stacked on the chair. The music used in this scene was called “In McDonalds” by an music artist called Burial. This music was copyrighted however we emailed the company Burial was under - Hyperdub and they gave us consent to use this piece of music:

short evaluation required? The rest of our storyboard can be found here: http://issuu.com/svanstraten/docs/duddy-and-cant-a2-storyboard-2010

We wanted to maintain a certain quality in our film, we knew that if we had dialogue recorded via the HD Camcorder that it would sound too tinny and lower the professionalism of our film. We opted to use Cubase in the post production as well a mic recorder to create the voice over. The narrator was James – putting on a “Brooklyn” accent. Trying to keep within the conventions of a film noir - the narrator tends to also be the protagonist of the film.

With some shots we drew up we found hard to replicate – however we made sure that we kept to the conventions of a film noir by using a tripod and filming at certain angles to allow scenes to unfold on screen. However we also wanted to express our artistic sides – in the scene where Johnny kills himself the different angle shots are used to convey Johnny’s emotion to the audience. We were limited by how high the tripod could go, as well as the length of the belt we used. In order to get this shot we suspended part of a Boom pole above the shot line, whilst James stood on books stacked on the chair. The music used in this scene was called “In McDonalds” by an music artist called Burial. This music was copyrighted however we emailed the company Burial was under - Hyperdub and they gave us

Here is the full piece of music: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DOw62EREnCg

Choosing this piece of music was indeed a coincidence, after editing this scene together, using Final Cut, we wanted to see what the scene looked like with some music, coincidently choosing this song seemed to be the best choice we made as it really seemed to clink with this scene. After cutting the music down and playing with levels – still using Final Cut as well as Garage Band to trim and blend the song we created the backing music we needed. This music was used to achieve an emotional response from the audience.

The other piece of music we used was called Gymnopedie written by Eric Satie. This piece of music plays throughout our entire film. Our aim to create connotations associated with sophistication to those who appreciate film noir and classical pieces of music. We gathered information about copyright law – we could use this piece of music if we recorded it ourselves. So we borrowed one of our more musically talented friends and using a mic recorded their version.

In creating the credits we used as program called Live Type, which frankly, provided unneeded complication in creating credits for our film. The font choice was

to intertexually relate with the poster we used, again connoting sophistication, as well an artistic feel to the film.