Use.. Develop.. Challenge..
From our presentation, we were told to think about the Evaluation question, about what conventions we are going to use, devlop and challenge in our opening sequence.
Adriana drew this table to illustrate the conventions we would be using, developing and challanging; using the information I had given here based on my knowledge of films that I watched and also from my individual presentation.
Today, we were asked to show our presentations to our teacher based on the corrections and improvements we were asked to make.
•The first thing that was indicated to the group was that we need to draw a table of the conventions, and say, what we would use, develop and change.
Here Ms said to me that the slide which talks about the male protagonists is not linked with a picture it is in the mise-en-scene text box. So Ms suggested to me that I should fit a text box with the correction.
The mistake I made here was using the same picture in my presentation, which I should have just removed.
As an assignment I have been asked to look at match on action and how I would like to incorporate this into my opening sequence. So to give a better understanding of what math on action is I have extracted a couple of clips from you tube.
How match on action is used in this shot- As the female walks up to the bookshelf it then cuts to her picking up the book and flicking through the pages, while she is doing this we see a over the shoulder shot of her "reading" and then a close- up of her holding the book.This editing technique is done to show a continuous flow of action that is taking place. This shot is done for a couple seconds to probably emphasise the change as it then returns to an over the shoulder shot.
The definition of Match on Action: is a shot that connects an action so that it appears continuous. The action should start from one shot and then end in the following shot that has just been cut.
This editing technique is vital as it shows continuous flow of action is taking place; I could use the editing technique in my opening sequence in scene 4 as the female circle the chair can use match on action to show her from the four stages she will take as she circles the chair. E.g. from her back,the side, and the front. These three cuts will show that her action is continuous; making the scene engaging.
IDEA --) To represent the husband in the opening sequence at first we had the idea of the husband sitting tied up on a chair.
In this slide what i did was i used more visuals as Ms suggested before as it was too much writing:
After presenting our powerpoint presentation to our teacher as a collective we were given good and bad points as to what worked well and what could have improved:
WWW: - What went well
•A lot of vocabulary used- the presentation is clear and simple
•As a group we understand how to make a good opening sequence
•Ms. liked the idea and how we all collaborated our ideas to fit together smoothly
•The conventions shows how we are going to reinforce them in our opening sequence, which shows that we understood how to stick to the conventions of film noir
•We are not sticking to the cliché, which is good
Ideas Ms Suggested to us:
•As film noir is usually in black and white due to the time it was set in ms suggested that to get the red on the nails of the female and the red heels that we are planning on using- we can use a special affect called “Chromakey” however if we wanted to use this feature we would need to do a little research on this to see how it is done. Ms also gave us a prime example from the film Sin city.
(Here are two examples of the chromakey effect from the film sin city.)
•Photograph of the investigator, instead of using a male character as it may show too much in the opening sequence
•It was also suggested to us that we should take out the echo effect of the room and then put a dissolve in scene 2
•And also the whole idea about the female character being schizophrenic, it was suggested that she should just be an evil character as the “smurk” that she will have on her face will already show this. So by giving the female character a schizophrenic personality this may confuse the audience
Ms thought our presentation and idea would work with these changes or improvements
Everyone in the group was given a title slide to do.
Jamilla- - Conventions
Victoria- - Setting
Mica- - Storyboard
Adriana- - Characters
Draft of storyboard.
While incorporating everyone's idea together we then came up with our new story board; however some of the features that were originally in the storyboard were kept the same such as the diary entry the narration and so forth. These were kept the same specifically so that we stuck to the conventions of Film Noir. 
Scene 1: Establishing shot of the room using the echo effect.
scene 2: Extreme close-up of a female flicking the diary pages with a soft voice of the woman narrating.
Scene 3: The woman walks into the room with a diagetic sound of heels. There is a close up of her legs.
Scene 4:The female circles around the chair- on the chair there is a notepad zoom in to: ‘she’s done it again’ on the notepad
Scene5: From the notepad we dissolve into her diary. She continues talking, and turns the page. She sees the picture and gives a mischievous smirk.
Scene 6: Low angle of her shoes when she is walking which tilts up slowly (up her body) finally to the face there is another echo effect on her face.
Scene 7:POV shot of her looking at the collage of pictures of men with ‘X’ s on them. She adds the picture to the collage and we her pen she points the picture to his face-contemplating
Scene8: We zoom out from the collage then pan to the desk where the woman shuts the diary leaving her hand with a large ring on top
Throughout this processes of getting our storyboard together we made various changes, as we were all individually come up with new and improved ideas about what will happen in our opening sequence.
One of the main changes that were made was the order as to how our opening sequence is going to start. Originally out idea was to start it off with a close up shot of the females hand as she flicks through her Diary, this would have been done to show uncertainty and to indicate to the audinece that something is wrong with her.
We then decided that we may not use another echo effect; even though the initial idea of this was to show that she is a schizophrenic, and another purpose of the diary was to show that she has done something out of the ordinary or something in which she should not have done (referring to female character)
In scene 8 originally we were going to have the pages of the female characters diary flicking until it clode itself shut. Due to logical reasons this would have been a huge filming problem as it would have been hard to find a way to do this.
When I first devised my storyboard I did take this into consideration as a potential problem although I thought this may have been an effective way to end the opening sequence so I decided not to change it.
The purpouse of getting into groups was to come up with an idea and present it on a power point presentation as to what idea we have choosen and our new exisiting idea as a whole. We were then given a task shhet with requirements as to what we should include in our new presentations and this was:
i)A clear description of what is goin to happen in 2 minutes
ii)Conventions of the genre: how are you reinforcing or challenging them into the opening sequence
iii)What films were we inspired by and what will we be taking from them (using videos)
iv) Characters-who wil be in it/ who will act
v) Setting- where will you film this?
vi) Storyboard- what is going to happen and camera angles.
During our second meeting as a group we were each allocated a slide to do for these specific reasons.
Conventions and the inspirartional of films, are the two powerpoint slides I decided to do as Film Noir was originally my idea and I had already had previous knowledge of the genre.
Adriana- was given the characters slide to do,as she felt comfortable taking on this role
Setting- Victoria
Mica- storyboard
Based on my first presentation I was then put into a group with my class peers and they are:
Mica
Adriana
Victoria
As a group we decided to take on my idea of Film Noir as it is original and it it said to be something that not a lot of people do.
the first thing we did as a group was looked at the story board and to see how we can incorporate everyone's original idea into the opening sequence.
At first we all briefly discussed what all our presentations and genre's were about; and from this we then went onto discussing as a collective what we would want from everyone Else's presentation.
Mica- The upbeat music which contrasts what i happening; in the opening sequence
Victoria- the non-diagetic sound of heels.
Adriana- pictures in a diary, picture falls out she picks it up sticks it on a wall and this picture is of her husban. So basically the whole collage idea. 
This is a quick drawing of the collage that we decided to use from Adriana's main idea. Here we decided that we are going to have a collage of photos, with a red "X" on them. The purpose of this is to engage the audince on the build up of suspence during the opening sequence.
However as a group these are the important features we discussed:
Adding more things to the storyboard to make it more effective
In the stroyboard emphasise her permiscuity. We talked about having a vague flash just of the inspector to stick to the convention of having an inspector.
When looking at the storyboard I had done on my own the group thought it was quite limited and would not be effective, so we decided to should come up with ideas on how we can improve the storyboard, whilst keeping the conventions in mind.
On this slide I was told that the information on the slide is to long so therefore i would have to make my idea more clearer by using bullet points.
I then went to seek help about what I could do to improve this presentation before I presented it and I was told that I had to shorten a couple of my slides and to be a more more specific especially in mr story board. Here i was given constructive critisms feedback from my teacher and she told me that i needed to cut down on what iwrote and only mention the specific and important information.
Due to my late start in the course, at first I was unaware as to what to include in my presentation; even though i was given a sheet giving me exact details I first came up with a presentation that lacked alot of detail. And the feedback I first received was that my understanding of the genre was limited, and this was what my first draft of my presentaion looked liked,
