Creating Ambience

Why Should I Go Home? from Chris Butler on Vimeo.

The purpose of amient music in film is to focus the audience and to create the desired atmosphere for their own piece which they can't necesarrly create using other features of production. It's mainly used in music production, esspecially classical\orchestral. If the piece is intended to be portrayed with a sad atmsosphere, the musician will play it in a 'Minor' key, if the piece of music is intended to create a happy, lively and quick tempo mood, the musician will play it in a major key. The hallmark that distinguishes major keys from minor is whether the third scale degree is major or minor. If the piece of ambient music fails to fit with the mood, the audience can be left either confused or uninterested, especially if the music contrasts with major and minor.

A example of how ambience can create a dark atmosphere:

dark impressionists: the route from mizhenskiy on Vimeo.

A relaxed, calm content atmoshere:

Ambience from Thomas Lie Larsen on Vimeo.

Copyright Issues

Copyright is a legal concept, it helps the creator of an original work piece have exclusive rights to it.
Our 'OTS' will have to include sound that we've made using a programme for example 'Sibelius' or we could use 'foleying' to enhance the quality of the sound. Copyright can be seen as both good and bad, the negative side is it will take more time and effort to create these sounds rather than finding a clip out of a wide variety online.
I should only use a work that's been protected by copyright with the copyright owner's permission.
However, Copyright does not protect ideas for a work. It is only when the work itself is fixed, for example in writing, that copyright automatically protects it. This means that you do not have to apply for copyright.
More about copyright: http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/copy.htm

Foleying micro essay

SoundWorks Collection: Gary Hecker - Veteran Foley Artist from Michael Coleman on Vimeo.

The art of foleying is the abilty to create sounds from objects that are irrelevant to what 'should of' made the sound used in film making, added in post production enhancing the quality of the sound. A common example of foleying are coconuts hitting a sand floor to interpret a horse galloping.
You can also get foleying machines like a rain box or a windmachine.
The purpose of foleying is to male the quality of sound better, it also makes the audience more aware of the diagetic sounds in the film which the non diagetic sound could of covered up. A lot of the sound you hear in the well known film 'Titanic' is added after by foleying, as they were filming on a boat and all the production team could pick up was the sound of the sea.

http://www.collegehumor.com/video/6525516/toy-warfare-music-video - How foleying can create an image
http://artinspired.pbworks.com/w/page/13819703/Soundtracks,%20Sound%20Effects%20and%20Foley - Art inspired sound effects and foleying.

Representation on visual conventions

Gun's and the use of smoke can represent danger, as in the old traditional films they weren't aloud to use blood. Signifying vilonce.

Semiotics and signifiers; red lips, signifying the femme fatal image.

Representation of the font in titles: The way the font has been displayed can have a deeper meaning and tell the audience a lot about the film.

The bold and dramatic sin city dvd case is striking for the concumers, apart from the title, the picture's been edited with a very low saturation-bringing attention to the title which could be the focal point of the image to signify a crime based film. The mode of adress the centered character is non direct, but is looking in the same direction as where the film title is, making the title stand out more. Obvious signifiers that this film is going to be crime orrientated are the guns the charaters are holding, the low saturation can also resemble the dark ambience,the costumes and the facial expressions are all indicators. The chariscuro lighting also symbols the film noir genre.



'Se7en' has a similar title on it's case like sin city, signifying crime, the way it's been written symbols blood indicating this film contains 'gore' the black background contrasts with the bold red making it stand out more.

Audience Theory

Demographics - National Readership Survey: Studying groups of people, the classifications are based on the occupation of the head of the house hold, grading from 'A-E' regarding social class. Typically, film noir's target audences 'D-B' and mostly male, the audience for our film noir is going to be 'D-B' but we're targeting it at a mostly female audience.

Mode of address - How does the media product talk to you? In film noir the 'MOA' is usually a warning to males to be aware of independant 'Femme Fatals.' Our mode of address is going to be along the same lines, but more of a warning to stay away from crime.

Audience Positioning - (Male gaze, Female gaze; who's perspective?) Which characters do you want the audience to support? Follow, empathise.. Mostly in traditional film noirs it's from the anti-hero's perspective. In our film noir it's going to be from both the femme fatal's perspective.

Effects models:

-The hypodermic needle model: The intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver.
-Two-step flow: The people with the most access to media, and highest media literacy explain and diffuse the content to others. This is a modern version of the hypodermic needle model.
-Uses and gratifications: People aren't helpless victims to the mass media, but use the media to get specific gratifications. (Diversion, personal relationships, personal identity, surveilliance.)
-Reception Theory: The meaning of a "text" is not inherent within the text itself, but the audience must elicit meaning based on their individual cultural background and life experiences.
Obstinate audience Theory: This theory assumes that there is a transactional communication between the audience and the media. The audience actively selects what messages to pay attention to. The Zimmerman-Bauer study found that the audience also participates communication by influencing the message.

Generally, typical film noir follows 'Hypodermic syringe' (the plot is simple) and also 'Uses and gratifications' (target men by creating a movie with an action, sexist stereotype.) Our film noir is going to follow the 'Reception theory' and 'Two-step follow.'

Audience decoding:
The Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies also proposed a model for the types of audience decoding. The audience member assumes the dominant hegemonic position when they recognise and agree with the full-preferred meaning offered by the media text. The oppositional hegemonic positionis established when the audience member understands the preferred meaning, but disagrees with it due to their own set of attitudes and beliefs. The negotiated hegemonic positon is established when the audience member opposes or has to adapt the preferred meaning. The forth type of audience response is reffered to as aberrant decoding. This is where the audience member reads the text in an unpredicted way, producing a deviant meaning.

In traditional film noir's they included a dominant hegemonic, where as neo noir's tend to include a oppositional hegemonic.

Film Noir Light interpretation photo task

Our task was to create a few film noir style photos showing our interpretation and understanding of lighting, often known as 'Chiaroscuro.' Before me and Bianca took the photo's we analysed some examples we found offline, then went into the photography studio to take our interpretation's, after I edited them on photoshop to add a more film noir style, including lowering saturation (making the colours black and white) adjusting the brightness and contrast, increasing the lightness of the colours and using the stamp tool to make some of the background darker.

Example 1:

Our interpretation:

Example 2:

Our interpretation:

Example 3:

Our interpretation:

Example 4:

Our Interpretation:

Example 5:

Our Interpretation:

Sypnosis for our OTS

For my practical, i'm going to work with Bianca, and we're going to do a opening title sequence to a sequel for the 1991 hit film 'Thelma and Louise.'
We want to answer everybody's question of what happened next?
We are going to borrow sylistic conventions from films such as 'Se7en' and the open title sequence from 'Casino Royale' and 'Artist' giving our opening sequence more of a neo noir feel to it.
Synopsis;
Our characters formally known as Thelma and Louise are giving under new identity's in England, living glamourus lives but still cautious and running from the law.

we want the OTS to provide an introduction to the plot, establish the enigma - why are they in London - who are they? something to hook the audience into the plot line

it is not neccessary to know Thelma and Louise to enjoy our film but those who do would be interested thus providing an opportuity for us to use borrowed interest.

So far, our first thought storyline for our OTS:

-A camera opens to two woman knocking back whiskey in a bar
-A door opens bell rings
-Everybody turns to the door
-See footsteps as they come in
-See feet as they sit at the bar next to our two main characters
-American male character says to bartender that he's looking for two women
-Thelma and Louise become cautious mentally preparing their background story
-Male character attempts to ask thelma and louise about the two female fugitives
-Thelma and louise decline any involvment with this man
-Shortly they both leave the bar, in to a black cab and frantically driving away
-Flash back to two years before
-Thelma and Louise stand up and brush themselves down
-Thelma asks 'where to now' and they set upon England.

My own definition

Shot/Reverse Shot: A Technique used in fliming to make the audience think that two characters are looking at eachother. One character, mostly off screen is looking at another character (or rarely object) Then the other character looks back at the original character.

180' Rule: Where The characters being filmed in the same scene should stay in the same position i.e (Right, Left) if they're reversed the audience could become confused.

Match on action: Two different actions that are matched, for example opening a door and walking through it.

Sound: Understanding how to use it

My initial thoughts about using sound in film:

Non diagetic -Sounds that has been edited into films; Narrative/Soundtrack/Sound effects
Diagetic -Natural Sounds

Sound in films is essential to everyone, it can give a cinema experience to a person whos partically or fully blind with audio discriptive.

Sounds in films can also portray the characters emotion.

Having analyzing The Bourne Unltimatum my thoughts are the most important aspect in sound is to keep the audiences interest maintained.

Do 'The Killers' and 'Double Indemnity' follow Torodov's Theory?

Toroduv's theory: Equilibrium, disruption, recognition, reaction and new equilibrium.

To answer this question I re-searched online the story of these two films.

Firstly, 'The killers.'

The killers was released on the 28th of Augest 1946, it's an American film-noir directed by Robert Siodmak and produced by Mark hellinger. You can click this link for a detailed plot.

I believe that this film follows the theory, as it start and ends with an equilibrium. For example, the start:
"Two hit men, Max and Al (William Conrad and Charles McGraw), come to a small town to kill gas station attendant Ole Andreson[2] (Burt Lancaster), aka "the Swede". The Swede's coworker warns him, but strangely, he makes no attempt to flee, and they kill him."

The End: "When Lupinsky asks the dying Big Jim why he had the Swede killed, Big Jim tells him he could not take the chance that another member of the gang might find the Swede, as he had. Kitty begs her husband to exonerate her in a deathbed confession, but he dies first."

Secondly, 'Double Indemnity'

Double Indemnity was released on the 6th of Sepetember, 1944. It was also an American film-noir directed by Billy Wilder and produced by Buddy Desylva and Joseph Sistrom. You can click here for a detailed plot.

The start of the film is a narrative, "The dictation becomes the story of the film, told in flashback." Because of this, I think that Double Indemnity doesn't follow Toroduv's Theory.

Film Noir Survey

Create your free online surveys with SurveyMonkey, the world's leading questionnaire tool.

I think my survey is relevant because it highlights what the audience feels, looks for and enjoys the most when watching film noirs.
I enjoy using survey monkey for questionnaires as it's quick, easy and efficient. There's a chance that people would be more likely to answer this survey than if I went up to them in a street as it targets them when they're not busy and also benefits people who are shy or finds it rude to be directly asked in the street to answer a survey.
Also, posting a survey on a blog if you have many followers or on a social network is effective and could gather a lot of attention.

Neo-Noir notes

We began the lesson with discussing a few Neo-noirs;

Blade Runner (Film)
Mulholland Drive (Film)
The Red Riding Trilodgy (T.V series)

Some other examples of Neo-noir;

Fatal Attraction
Basic Instinct
Sin City
The Black Dahlia

Then we were shown a few opening sequences from some Neo-noirs to get a clearer picture of what they are and to help contribute to our ideas towards our practical.

Also I made some notes when watching 'The Red Riding Trilodgy' on what's typical noir, and what's not typical.

Typical Noir:

-Dectective, typical job for anti-hero?
-Same job as his dad, "never been good enough."
-Use of over the top lighting
-Smoking
-It's not in black and white, however the camera seems to have a sepia filter, adding a noir effect?
-Narration for the main character (anti-hero)

Not Typical:

-Not black and white
-More experimenting with angles and non-diagetic music
-Set in a bleak, English setting -not in a huge city
-The lighting is more natural then edited
-There's blood shown

Film Noir Narrative Structure

We started off by looking at the basic Film Noir "Narrative Structure" which generally includes:

-

-Equilibrium

-Disruptive event

-Recognition of disruption

-Attempting to repair the disruption

-New equilibrium

Then we got spilt up into groups, my group was a group of 3 and were given 2 sheets of a mixed up narrative structure of a typical film noir, we had to order it to how we thought it fit and create a photo story board of our script.

1.

Buster Rayburn is in a prison cell.

His voice can over can be heard. 'Here I am again. They said I wouldn't make it outside. If only I didn't meet that dame.

2.

Buster is drunk in a bar on his own.

3.

..and is greeted by a gangsta who says that he has a job for him.

4.

Buster turns down the job.

5.

The gangsta's girlfriend Lacey Lane appears. Buster can't take his eyes off her.

6.

Back to Buster in jail.

Voice over. 'If only I walked away when I had the chance.'

7.

Buster is at the same bar drinking whisky. Lacey Lane appears and whispers seductively in his
ear.

8.

Lacey gives Buster a gun and a kiss.

9.

Buster shoots the gangster as he leaves his house one morning.

10.

Buster and Lacey meet in his dingy hotel room. She thanks him and says that she will run away with him that night.

11.

Buster waits for Lacey at the railway station.

12.

The cops turn up and arrest him. Lacey can be seen in the background. She has obviously reported him the the police.

13.

Back to Buster in jail. His voice over can be heard.

'You see dames always bring a man down. She won't hurt anymore suckers now.'

14.

Buster quickly grabs the policeman's gun and after a struggle..

15.

Manages to fire a shot and hit Lacey and she dies.

16.

Flash back to Buster walking out of jail.