Lighting Workshop - 30th November

What's on today?
Lighting, guerilla style: How can I light my film cheaply without a light kit? What lights go where? Why?  How can I manipulate light to create different effects and moods?

Your task:
1) Set up a shot with a subject at a desk using
a) three-point lighting
b) noir lighting

Feedback:
How distance of subject to lights, change of light strength, and change of angles alter the effects and mood of the shot.

Before you begin, you need to read this post from our friends at St George's North, where Dougal Fergusson gives us some more information about lighting in film. Many thanks to Dougal for this!

Shooting Film Noir - Part 2

Tasks:
1) Finish your noir scene scripts.

2) Storyboarding - As Christopher Columbus (director of the first two Harry Potter films) once said, “Making a movie without a storyboard is like throwing your money into a bottomless pit.”

Create a storyboard to go with your scripts, to give you a better idea of how to shoot your scene.  Look here and here to remind yourself of what elements to include in your storyboards, and how to lay them out.


You need more? Look at this tutorial:

You will find storyboard templates in the downloads section of your Figaro account:

\college\IB Film Studies\Screenplays and Storyboarding\template_storyboards.doc

Remember, when it comes to shot composition in your storyboards, think about both our purpose, and also the constraints of our filming location.

1) Purpose - to experiment with lighting and camera position to mimic a noir style.
2) Constraints
     - shooting indoor in fairly bare room with only one window and two doors.
     - very limited props for set design (table, chairs, phone)
     -no lighting or smoking of cigarettes allowed on school campus!!!

You will need to think carefully how to ensure that your shots create the ILLUSION of your setting. Think, for example, of how to use close ups and camera angles effectively to reveal just enough of your setting:

Look at how the angle and close-up position here shows a man, perhaps listening to a conversation in the next room, perhaps waiting for someone to enter...

Notice the use of shadow here too. We will need to find away to create these extreme shadows with our lighting.

Notice how the over-the-shoulder close-up shot here allows us to see the woman on the telphone, whilst keeping our view of the room restricted.





We will visit our "studio" tomorrow and set up our scenes, firstly experimenting with different ways of lighting the room and the subjects.

You will need to ensure you have in your group for tomorrow:
1) three table or desk lamps (1 100W, 260W)
2) a four-plug socket adaptor
3) costumes, hats, props


Fiming groups:
Double Jeapordy
Santos
Giuliana
Tomas
Ernesto
Ramiro

Touch of Evil
 Viveka
Manuel
Sabrina
Honorio
Carlos

WRITING A FILM NOIR SCENE - 21 November

Today's key word:

motif - a recurring element, theme or pattern in a film or text that has a wider significance

What's the purpose?

Preparing for your film shoot next week where you'll be shooting your own film noir scene, you'll need to understand how to write a typical noir scene.


You'll work in pairs today as scriptwriters, using a scene from what many critics consider to be the first noir film, The Maltese Falcon (Huston, 1941) as a starting point for your writing.


We'll use the best scripts next week to shoot your scenes.

1) Watch the trailer for The Maltese Falcon, to get a "feel" for the film:

Discuss as class: What recognizable FILM NOIR motifs can we find from watching the trailer?

Task 2: 

a) Watch the clip shown on the whiteboard from the opening scene of The Maltese Falcon, where Sam Spade (Bogart) meets  Ms Wanderlay (Astor) for the first time.

b) Read the following opening to a noir story.

What similarities do the two opening scenes have? What differences? Do you think the Wanderlay character is a reliable person in The Maltese Falcon? Why (not)? What about Sam Spade? Discuss in pairs and write a blog entry, using the same title as this entry, and labelling it Film Noir.

Scriptwriting pairs:

Santos and Ernesto

Manuel and Viveka

Ramiro and Tomas

Carlos and Sabrina

Giuliana and Honorio

Task 3:

Writing your own film noir scene. 

As you can see from what we've watched/read already, there are some essential motifs in Film Noir. You need to embrace these to give YOUR scene that authentic noir sensibility:

Batman - hero with identity issues

The first thing there's needs to be is an Anti-Hero. He could be a Private Detective - that's certainly one of the more popular options. (You could subvert this classic  motif by making your He a She.)

"Could I smoke a cigarette seductively before I look at these photos of my dead husband?"

You need to have a Femme Fatale. It's a classic motif in Noir. You know the type. Dressed all in black with legs up to here, she slinks into the PI's office, holding a cigarette on a long, long, holder, saying "Oh, Mr. Rockhammer, you're the only one who can help me find out who killed my extremely wealthy husband." Did she do it? Do I care? Where'd that saxophone music come from? Whatever her story is, whether she did it or not, she's definitely keeping some secrets.

The important thing is is that the world is very cynical. There aren't going to be any happy endings here, at least not for some people: it's usually a horrible place where the pessimistic notion of "anything that can go wrong will go horribly wrong" almost always applies, and it corrupts its inhabitants into perpetuating that nastiness against each other. More succinctly, trying to survive in one of these places is going to suck; humans are either bastards or morons or a combination of the two.

Plot:

Taking on board the private detective anti-hero, the plot may well involve an initial request from the femme fatale to find someone or have someone followed. Usually, though, the initial request turns out to be a lie.

Setting:

Bars are good, an alleyway too, as well as a private detective's office. Anywhere that can be dark and claustrophobic. REMEMBER your scene will be shot INSIDE though - so we can experiment with lighting.

With this background knowledge, you're ready to write your short scene. The final version will need to be posted on your blogs. You have the rest of the lesson to discuss and begin writing.

You will have twenty min of next lesson to complete and publish.

Take a look in the downloads section of Figaro for reminders of how to format your script:

college\IB Film Studies\Screenplays - Halloween document

Thanks to www.tvtropes.org from which I borrowed shamelessly.

Representation of characters - Mills/Pitt

In your analysis, one of the key things to consider is how characters are represented, and WHAT characters come to represent.

Casting of actors and actresses is, of course, key to this. Consider what image and ideas an actor like Brad Pitt has with the target audience for the film, for example:


Brad Pitt now

Brad Pitt in 1990s

Advertisement in 1990 that made Pitt famous

 What conclusions can we make about the image he brings? 

Compare this form of "new masculinity" with the older, more traditional symbol of male masculinity from before the 1990s - the "Marlboro Man":

Look at this picture

And read this article.(The part on MM - the Marloboro Man)

And this article.

How does the modern masculinity of Brad Pitt differ from traditional masculinity of the Marlboro Man? Write a paragraph in your blog, including images to help. (labels: Seven, Film Noir, Brad Pitt, Character)

Now watch the selected clips of Seven. How does the film play with Pitt's image of new masculinity?

Seven - Working towards A Textual Analysis

Review:

• Discuss with a partner the key things you have learnt so far about Seven in terms of film language (eg. use of camera, lighting, sound, editing, set design), genre and representation of characters.
• Create a brief list and be prepared to feedback.

Today
Before you begin planning your paired oral presentations on an extract from Seven, we need to consider more important elements of the whole film in greater detail. You will respond to a series of questions today which will help you to do that, posting all answers on your blog.

1) Genre
"The film is a mix of taut thriller, engaging mystery, and gruesome horror show, and it’s so howlingly bleak that the evil deviance at the center never gets any easier to stomach. At its blackened heart, it’s a cop drama, a thriller about a pair of mismatched detectives developing a mutual respect as they pursue a ruthless serial killer, but it’s so far beyond the boilerplate dramas you expect from the genre that it ceases to be just another cat-and-mouse game and becomes instead a haunting walk through a cruel world feeding on its on waste." taken from Pajiba


Reading the above, and using your own knowledge of genre, what genre(s) does Seven belong to? You will need to provide evidence for your choices. You can use filmsite.org to help.

2) Sociocultural and Historical Factors
Find out all you can about the term "Fin de Siecle". What does it mean? How can this term help us to understand the film Seven, and the choice of content? (You may want to look at the following:
http://www.oldandsold.com/articles30/french-painting-18.shtml to help).

More about Noir

Today

• Identifying Noir elements in Seven, and their effects
• Deciding on your oral textual analysis

Remember to keep making notes on conventions of noir as you watch Seven. Use the worksheerts to help you. Remember to keep track of the plot using the Murder Chart.

(Find these worksheets by accessing the following folders in the download section of your Figaro account: 

college\IB Film Studies\Film Noir)
So far, the feedback from the class, your ability to identify and explain the effects of different elements in Seven, has been really very good. This means I expect great things from your oral presentations on Seven!

Seven - Oral analysis:

what you can expect if you do not prepare
you Oral presentations thoroughly

• It will count towards 50% of your exam grade for the third trimester.

(The other 50% will be based on your final documentary and the documentation you provide (script and production journals).

• You will work in pairs, and be assessed together. So you need to ensure you both work together effectively, dividing up the work equally.
• You need to agree on an extract of no more than five minutes from Seven. You need to check with me and I will reserve that extract for you if it is acceptable.
• No two pairs can work on the same extract.
• Your oral presentation should last between seven and ten minutes, and you should not play your extract within this time.
• You can use screen shots or stills from your extract to better illustrate your ideas, although this is not necessary.
• You may bring in notes for reference and guidance, but you may NOT read from a prepared document.
• You need to all bring in pen drive with at least two GB of space to have a copy of the film you can study at home.
• You will have some class time to study, plan and practice, but you will be expected to work at home on this as well, as if you were preparing for an end of year exam in the exam hall.
• The oral presentation will be delivered in class during IB Film lessons, dates to be confirmed next week.
• The pairs are:
  Honorio and Ramiro
  Viveka and Carlos
  Giuliana and Tomas
  Santos and Manuel - chase scene: Mills vs Doe; reserved
  Sabrina and Ernesto

Any questions?

Neo Noir - Continuing the noir sensibility

What is neo noir?

It's a term (meaning, literally, "recent black") used to describe a body of films that carry on the stylistic and thematic traditions of the American noir films of the 1940s and 1950s. It's not really a genre (in the way, say, comedy or horror is), more a movement with certain conventions. Elements of noir can be found often in crime films, horror, science fiction, even romance.

We can split neo noir into two fairly distinct categories:

1) Modern films set in  the 1930s to 1950s which continue the noir sensibility by using and subverting plot, character and theme, as well as using stylistic conventions of camera, lighting, etc.

(In Chinatown (Polanski, 1974) darkness gives way to light in the 1930s LA desert setting. Notive how Jack Nicholson, the hard-boiled hero, is made to look vulnerable, even ridiculouswith his wounded nose.)



2) Modern films set in the modern/timeless world, which use and subvert themes, character types and conventions from the original noir films.

(Note the use of dutch angle in The Dark Knight (Nolan, 2008), a super hero film with a distinctly noir feel. Note also the bare, urban, industrial looking set).



In which category does Seven fit?

 Ideology of Neo-noir films
Neo-noir films address questions about guilt, redemption, the essence of human nature, and problems of knowledge, memory and identity. In the neo-noir universe, the lines between right and wrong and good and evil are blurred, and the detective and the criminal frequently mirror each other's most damaging personality traits. The neo-noir detective — more antihero than hero — is frequently a morally compromised and spiritually shaken individual whose pursuit of a criminal hides the search for lost or unattainable aspects of the self.  Neo-noir conveys ambiguity, disillusionment, and disorientation more effectively than even the most iconic films of the classic noir era. Able to self-consciously draw upon noir conventions and simultaneously subvert them, neo-noir directors push beyond the earlier genre's limitation.

Conventions of noir used/updated in Neo-noir (you highlighted manyof these last lesson when watching the opening of Seven):

• wide angles and deep focus (note in this shot from Act Of Violence (Zimmerman, 1948) how both the foreground of the man and pole, and the background of the station building are sharply outlined. What effect does this have?

• chiaroscuro: low-key lighting producing dramatic contrasts with light and dark and heavy shadows (note in the shot from Bladerunner (Scott, 1982), a science fiction noir thriller how both the hero and heroine are partly obscured by the shadows from the blinds. An excellent visual technique to show how trapped or enclosed the characters are.

• cold bluish colours reflecting alienation and technology  (notice in the shot from Seven how cold and clinical the feel is)
• dutch angles, low angles to show a distorted, chaotic world lacking moral clarity
• decaying, rundown urban city settings which seem like mazes or labyrinths
• downbeat atmosphere, reflected in the weather, or time of day
• closed framing
• complex storylines or narrative structures (eg. using flashbacks)
• voice-over narrations
• plots involving crime or investigations of crime (often murder)
• human nature at its most passionate, corrupt and destructive - crime motivated by greed, jealousy, etc
• flawed, alienated heroes and heroines
• archetypal characters—hardboiled detectives, femme fatales, corrupt policemen, jealous husbands
• ambivalent or bleak endings
• people striving against random, uncaring fate
• a sense of doom, a hopelessness in tone
• steadfast virtue ultimately rewarded and vice, in the absence of shame and redemption, severely punished in orginal noir (often subverted in neo-noir).

Task today:
As we continue our screening of Seven, add to your notes evidence from the film which shows any of the conventions mentioned above. (You will publish a full document, including appropriate screen shots when we have completed our viewing next week).