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.