Film Noir OTS: Mise-en-Scène: Costume and Props ideas

Mine and Chloe Smith's narrative is of a protagonist who gets dreams or episodes of premonition, like flash-forwards into his life. He only sees himself doing bad things (conventional Film Noir types things) such as, meeting a manipulative femme-fatale, killing a femme-fatales ex and getting into trouble. So that he doesn't forget what he's seen in his last premonitory dream, the protagonist films himself on cassette tapes and also draws sketches of the people he sees. 

Our opening title sequence will be of our protagonist filming himself talking after one of his dreams and then sorting out his tapes. On the cassettes we will write on the main casts' names as they are typically in the OTS of these films.We are undecided on how to show the title of the film but want them to fit with our neo-noir horror film noir theme of how psychotic we would like the sorting out of cassette tapes to look.

Props:
Props wise we will obviously need cassette tapes. I have managed to find 5 at my home but will also probably nip into a charity shop during the Christmas holidays to see if I can get some more for not much money. We will also need the sketches of the people he's seen, probably within a creepy-looking photo frame. Me and Chloe also said we'd like to have some cardboard boxes within the shot that will be taped up saying something to do with what'd be on the tapes inside the box, something like 'tapes me murdering somebody' so the audience gets more of a feel of what sort of flash-forwards he has. We may need some fairy lights or something for some lighting, as we're filming either in a shed or in a loft to give it a dark, derelict, and cold feel. All of these probs are easily accessible and won't be hard to gain before we start filming. 
In the SlideShare below (pages 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5) are some ideas of the sorts of things we could use.

Costume:

Traditional film noir dress would be a male in a suit of a 1940s style (as this was when film media was most popular and most produced) and a femme fatale character in a red or black laced, exposing and provocative dress. This was so that a male would instantly notice and be attracted to her. 

The Slideshare below (pages 6, 7, 8 and 9) are of possible dress ideas she could wear/wear similar. 

As mine and Chloe's production will be Neo-Noir  we can break these conventions and will for the male character but probably will keep the femme fatale similar to the original style as long as our actress does not mind. Obviously it'd be quite rude to request our actress to wear something she's not comfortable in so our first step would probably be to ask her if she has any red, black or laced dresses and hope she has one of them. 

Our main protagonist, a man who often sees snippets into significant parts of his life, will be slightly crazed by these weird goings on, for this reason his hair may be a bit messy as if he hadn't slept very well. Me and Chloe have also discussed our Everyman wearing a long white coat of a laboratory style but, although this would make him look more mad, I'm not sure how it would fit into the story as if he records his flash-forwards on a cassette tape there're no chemicals or anything messy involved where he may need a white lab coat. However for our opening title sequence you may only see the end of his sleeves handling the tapes. 

In the Slideshare below (pages 10, 11, 12 and 13) are possible items of clothing our Everyman could wear. 

For our femme fatale will be a women who may be seen for a couple of seconds if we have our recording in the opening title sequence of the protagonist being involved in the femme fatale in the snippet of the future he has seen. If we don't have a femme fatale the Film Noir element will be more lost however having one will involve more organisation into when to record who and when're who available for him to film. Also we've planned those who have study periods when we have Media Studies lessons to be the actors and actresses in our production, as these people will also be 16/17 it may be strange having a 16/17 year old looking into his future for him to be falling I love with another 16/17 year old as it would look like he liked people much younger than him or like it was the present; however there are ways of making people look older than they really are (e.g. heavier and more mature make up). Femme Fatales are usually wearing heavy make up involving lots of blacks and reds. 

In the Slideshare below (pages 14, 15, 16 and 17) are possible make up ideas me and Chloe could try and reproduce.

Props and Costume for mine and Chloe's Film Noir OTS from Emily Ventress

Reflective Comment: I am proud of this piece of work, it took a lot of time to write this up but am glad I did so. I know I need to do another write up of what we did actually use for our final thing but this gave us some really nice ideas when it came to filming. The make up of Beth Reid in the photo of our 'femme fatale' and Harry's costume ideas were used. The props of the tapes and the cardboard boxes were also used in our filming in my shed. I am glad I did this piece of work. 

Timeplan of our Opening Title Sequence

Week Beginning:

21st December 2015: I need to write up ideas on props and costume, Chloe Smith needs to write up ideas on location and set (lighting).
28th December 2015: Script written &; messaged Harry Colgan (the actor of our main protagonist) about meeting and possibly start filming?     
4th January 2016: I need to teach Chloe how to use iMovie and do a trail-run, discus what camera angles we would like to use
11th January 2016: I need to do a write up of typography and start thinking about ident, Chloe Smith needs to start thinking about typography 
18th January 2016: Photoshoot with Beth Reid (our femme fatale) and I will edit it to black, white & red. Chloe Smith and I need to film Harry speaking, I need to trail run make-up (tired looking). 
25th January 2016: Have started editing Harry footage. Harry & Chloe need to come round mine to film more scenes with things such as tapes, blades & books
1st February 2016: Be well into editing. Need to film more blades with Harry and do another voiceover of what's happening
8th February 2016: Edit edit edit sound sound sound
15th February 2016: DUE &; HANDED IN

Reflective Comment: This has obviously been worked around but was useful to keep us on track. Also we have been told we also have the half term break (the week beginning the 15th) to work on this as well so that takes the pressure off a little bit but I am proud me and Chloe have kept plodding through it and haven't left everything last minute, this was evident when we were the first in our class to have a rough cut to show our class to see early on what our peers thought. 

Priest (2011) Extract Sound Analysis

These are the recreated sound effects and how some of them were made.




Reflective Comment:
I am looking forward to continuing with this series of Vlogs and also helps me to keep track of where I'm at. From Ventress Class Vlogs #2 I like the work I did of the Priest work having the red lettering over the top and has opened my eyes into how many sound effects me and Chloe will need to do for our Noir OTS. Now that I've done all the sound effects I needed to do I need to compare with Chloe Smith the other half she's done and start working on our Noir OTS.

Art of the Title, Opening Title Sequence Analysis - Gone Girl (2014)

Gone Girl (2014) Opening Title Sequence: 
http://www.artofthetitle.com/title/gone-girl/

Title Design: Neil Kellerhouse
Editor: Kirk Baxter
Cinematography: Jeff Cronenweth
Music: Trent Reznor & Atticus Ross

We've been set a task to analyse an opening title sequence (OTS) from a website called Art of the Title (artofthetitle.com). This website has nearly 600 opening title sequences for the public to see. Most with a detailed analysis of the footage and the background story of it. The OTS I've chose to analyse is Gone Girl (2014), this however, doesn't currently have any analysis on Art of the Title. I have not seen the full film but Gone Girl is an American psychological thriller. It is about a man, Nick Dunne, who is the primary suspect in the sudden disappearance of his wife, Amy Pike. It is David Fincher (the Director's) highest grossing film, fetching a commercial success of over $368 million (£244 million). 

(1.,2. and 3. in SlideShare attached.) The first twenty-seven seconds of the opening title sequence are the logos and names of the film coorperations and companies, saying how they 'present..', these in include 20th Century Fox Film Coorperation and Recency Enterprises which is a Los Angeles-based entertainment company. This is a good thing to start off with as you almost know it'll be a good film if it's got these big names injected into the making of this film. It then goes on on to say 'A David Fincher Film' (4. in SlideShare attached) again giving the audience more reassurance they want to watch this movie more if they know other David Fincher films but alsoslightly unfrosts the glass of what genre the film is as Fincher seems to predominately produce sinister films to films that also make you think such as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, The Social Network and Alien 3. Whilst the text of 'A David Fincher Film' is on the screen the non-diegetic sound of a voice over starts playing. A male voice 'When I think of my wife, I always think of her head, I picture cracking her lovely skull, unspooling her brains, trying to get answers. The primal questions of any marriage: What are you thinking? How are you feeling? What have we done to each other?' This is during a large male hand is stroking a young blonde women's head. (5. in SlideShare attached) When he says 'trying to get answers' the women looks up, slight to the right of the camera and remains like this until he's finished his dialogue. (6. in SlideShare attatched).This is a very sinister start as we already know this man must have an obsession with his wife but also imagines himself 'cracking her lovely skull' this is a disturbing thing to say as your wife should be somebody you love and 'cracking her lovely skull and unspooling her brains' would be instantaneous death. He ends the sentence, however, with 'trying to get answers' this indicated she is hiding thing from him but as he sounds like somebody likely to be diagnosed with Psychopathy it is likely he may also have Paranoia and she may really have no answers for him to find. 

(7. in SlideShare attached) The screen then goes on to give us two more names (presumably the main actors) and then tells us to the title of the film on a blue tinted port or bay framed sea scape. (8. in SlideShare attached). After this there is derelict looking parts of a small town that looks likely to have gone into decline without rejuvenation. Each place we see in each shot there's a new name of the cast or crew. After fourteen pictures of fourteen places have been showed we pan up to a village clock face of the (9. in SlideShare attached) time saying five minutes to seven (presumably in the morning based on the colour of sky behind). Then going onto a man (I'd guess in his 30s) standing outside his house after just putting the bins out reading the time, looking around his street and sighing. As he walks back into his house the bottom left of the screen has text saying 
'JULY 5TH
THE MORNING OF'.
The opening title sequence ends on this. (10. in SlideShare attached).
Throughout eerie but forbidding music has been played throughout with a low tempo but quite a high tempo this adds to the tension but also as it's quite quiet makes us an audience feel vulnerable to what's about to happen.
This whole OTS has introduced two characters, the setting, the name of film, those who produced and directed, some of the cast and crew and also given a general feeling or atmosphere of how the film is likely to progress. I think it has been carried out and executed very well. 

Gone Girl (2014) from Emily Ventress

Reflective Comment:
I am really proud of this work, it took me quite a long time but I think reads well and is easy to follow of which bit I meant by using the embedded SlideShare of which bit of the opening title sequence I meant. I'm looking forward to using this OTS as inspiration for when we do our real Film Noir styled OTS.