Hiring Actors- The Problem

As I was given the task of trying to recruit actors, I decided to take inspiration from a former called Sam Shepherd; the student posted a listing on Starnow.co.uk.

After a fair amount of time, I later found out that unfortunately to post the listing, you must be over 18 years of age. Due to this, our group are unable to hire free, professional actors therefore we have decided to act ourselves. It will be harder to keep to the conventional Film Noir aspects with teenagers as the main characters so we now have more of a Neo Noir twist to the film.

Former student's blog: http://asmediastudiessamshepherd2013.blogspot.co.uk/

Opening Title Sequence of I Wake Up Screaming

To get an idea on how to film our opening title sequence, I analysed the Film Noir 'I Wake Up Screaming' to see how generic Film Noirs create opening title sequences.

In the minute long OTS, the Fox ident is shown for 12 seconds and then there are 7 different credits shown in an urban city. The second credit is the title of the film and the fifth includes all studio idents.

The sound used is performed by an orchestra, it starts off similar to horror-like music; the music is then at a slow tempo which gradually increases throughout. This may be hard to replicate in our production as we are unable to create an orchestra ourselves.

The camera used is black and white, this is because it is filmed in 1941-a simple editing technique could be used to replicate this. Also, only one shot of the New York skyline is used throughout the sequence.

Mise en scene used in the OTS includes low key lighting and a location of an urban city (New York). It may be hard to take a photo of an urban city's skyline, but the low key lighting will be easy to replicate in our Film Noir.

The editing includes a fade from black to begin the title sequence, each credit is spelled out in lights that are superimposed over the New York skyline. Superimposing writing over an image may be difficult but after researching, we should be able to include this in our sequence.

Here is a screenshot of the Title in the Opening Title Sequence

Deciding our Narrative Structure

When deciding on what narrative structure as a group, we had sheets that had definitions of possible narrative structures and from this we decided if they were suitable for our idea and if they would be good for it as a whole.

These were out two options. We decided that the 'Vladimir Propp' narrative wouldn't work for ours, as there is far too many characters compared to the amount that we plan to use, however we might include some of the character ideas. After looking at the 'Enigma Code', we've decided that this would be a suitable and effective narrative to follow. The sense of mystery is perfect for our story and would make the audience question the events of the opening which is exactly the idea.

Beginning Narrative Idea

For our final piece in Media Studies I am working with Heather McDonald and Josh Coe, and we have started to plan a narrative for it and tried out different ideas for a storyline. To start, we discussed ideas for a story and talked about how many characters we would have and what the general idea would be. From this we were then able to write out a general synopsis of what our story is.This is just a starting idea so we will build on this idea to develop and improve it in multiple ways. The name for the Everyman at this time is Micky.

'Micky is staring in the mirror with a gun... Flashback:

He was a successful person, but he had a big secret.

He employs an assistant (femme-fatal) who finds out his secret but agrees to keep quiet by blackmailing Micky.

Leaves him broke.

In his anger he kills her.'

Consequences Creating a Narrative Task