Conducting a questionnaire

As a group we wanted some feedback about film noir to help us with our project. The feedback would be gained through primary research in the form of a questionnaire, as this way we could tailor the questions to ensure we would gain the useful answers we wanted. Emily devised the questionnaire and went out to ask people for answers. She asked 7 people in the 16-25 age range as they are the main cinema audience and they are who we would be aiming our noir towards. She also asked people aged 40, 28 and 14 to see if our film would appeal to a wider audience range as well. My job was to analyse the results and below is a table showing what I found out explaining how the information we gained from each question was useful to us.
We will attempt to incorporate our findings when creating our opening sequence to make it more appealing to our target audience of people aged between 15 and 25. The question about black and white films (question 2) will be particularly useful when we are in the editing suit and are choosing to add any effects to our film. Our results show that black and white films aren’t a popular choice and that they would turn off/over the TV if they saw one was on. Our role in creating our title sequence is to get people to stay tuned in and watch on to resolve the enigma(s), but if our audience would choose not to watch it just because it was in black and white, then perhaps we shouldn’t add that effect. Question number 5 also proved interesting with the results as it shows how people can be interested and ‘hooked’ in a film opening even if there isn’t any music to accompany it. We will still use music in our opening piece as we feel it’s the key to creating the right noir atmosphere, though it is useful to know that we won’t be turning away our audience if we chose to have loud sound effects, plain speech or dead silence instead. Although the resuls we gained were useful, there were still some things we could have done to gain even better results. Firstly we could have asked a bigger sample of people to gain more accurate results with defined replies on each question. However, I think the outcome would still contain similar results, and wouldn’t be of any further use to us. Also, we could have more questions requiring a more detailed answer (open questions) to gain more feedback from each person we gave the questionnaire to. But they may not have been as keen to fill it out if they had noticed how detailed it was. Overall, I am pleased with the results we discovered as they’ll be very useful to us in the future.

Looking at opening sequences

So, what makes a good opening sequence? There are many different things that a title sequence must have to ensure it's quality, and since I'm creating my own sequence, this research would be very useful to me. Below I have come up with a list of 7 key points to consider:

• Cinematography: A mixture of interesting shots must be used to capture the audience's attention.
• Narrative: The opening must have an enigma(s) or a mystery attached to ensure the audience will want to watch on.
• Sound: Dialogue, music and sound effects can all be used to set a certain atmosphere and interest the audience.
• Characters: The main character(s) in the film must be interesting and well set-up in the opening. The audience must be able to relate to them and establish a relationship with them.
• Mise-en-scene: This includes the location, props, costumes, performance ad lighting. They must all be carefully thought out to create the right impression and atmosphere.
• Editing: The pace, rhythm, transitions, titles and special effects must also be carefully planned to introduce the film well and keep the audience's attention.
• Genre: The opening must include the correct characteristics that meet its genre e.g. a noir opening would include shadows, darkness, dodgy characters etc. to ensure the audience know what they're watching.

Below I have analysed 2 film openings that have inspired and are related to my film noir opening. As well as watching each film opening myself, I found the IMDB website very useful - http://www.imdb.com/

'Resurrection Man' - Marc Evans - 1998

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h-iKzpGR0Uo

* Click on the link above to watch the first 9 minutes of the film on YouTube*

'Resurrection Man' is a neo-noir film and this is clearly demonstrated in the title sequence. The titles enter on-screen in time with the music, which is deep with loud drum beats that make it almost sound military. The main character is first seen walking in slow motion down his garden path. The way he carries himself confidently, his gold jewellery and his black costume shows he is wealthy but a bad guy in the film. The desaturated colour and the dated cars parked along the street set the time period, and the low angle shots on the main character reinforce his importance. The screen then switches to an image of an elderly lady who the audience are led to believe is the man's mother. Her costumes and surroundings suggest she is just normal, but since the whole screen is filled with the image of her, it suggests she is quite an important character in this film and may re-appear again. The scene where the little boy (who we are led to think is the man when he was younger) is lit with a piercingly-bright blue light that flashes on the boy's face. The other 2 men are poorly lit to show their insignificance, and the close-up shots of the boy reinforce who we should be focusing on. Then there are the bright lights of the 'Cinema' that is displayed in a disorientating trombone shot with unsuitably happy music. As the atmosphere has been set very cynically so far, this confuses the audience into the genre of the film, and the significance of the 'Cinema'.

Every way the character is portrayed in this opening, says something about him and who he is. This is why I chose to analyse this opening as it is all about establishing who the main character is, and introducing him to the audience. In our film noir opening, we want the focus to be on introducing our main character, so it was useful to watch this as it cleverly shows how the whole mise-en-scene (costume and props particularly), music and cinematography shots can present someone in a certain way.
'Seven' - David Fincher - 1995
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY&feature=related

*Click on the link above to watch the opening title sequence on YouTube*

This film is also a neo-noir film as it was made fairly recently, but the style and plot pull it more into the thriller/horror genre. The film opening is renown for setting the example to many other films and tv programmes that follow with a similar idea. The way the character is shown fiddling with photographs, words on paper and various other things that leave an image of murder and cruelty in our minds. The character's identity isn't shown as all the audience sees is his/her's bandaged fingers messing around with things on a desk. This opening sequence inspired me as it sets up so many enigmas that make you want to watch to answer the many questions you have. What are they doing? Who are they? Why are they doing this? Where are they? What's going to happen? ...and many more. I hope to gain this sort of reaction from my film noir audience as our main character reveals the contents of the 'mysterious package'.

The cinematography mainly consists of close-ups and extreme close-ups so that the audience don't see anything but what the main character is doing, and they can't pull away to focus on anything else in the scene. The location isn't established and there are so many things going on that the audience are unclear on what they're doing. Also, the screen doesn't hold one shot long enough for the audience to look carefully at what's happening, as the shots quickly follow after each other with a fading transition. The majority of shots are coloured with a yellow-orange effect, which I think is a strange choice as they are usually used to give a warming homely effect to a scene. However in this case, the colours look univiting and spooky. The titles that appear break up the action. The handwritten font style and the flickering about of the words matches the action as the character is hand-making something. The background changes between black and brown as the the text appears in white. In our film we hope to do something similar with the background as it makes the titles part of the sequence, rather than putting them over the action. It also makes sure the audience reads them as each name appears by themselves.

The music choice for the sequence is simple yet strange and mysterious. This matches the action shown and adds to the atmosphere of the scene. There are no diegetic sounds, which makes the audience concerned about the location even more and also creates a sense of loneliness and secrecy. I thnk the music is well chosen and I hope that our music choice will reflect the action as it did in this film opening. The titles also appear in time with the music, which is something our group want to consider as it shows that the music was carefully selected to match.

I enjoyed watching this film opening as it looks very simple yet is very effective. The mise-en-scene involves many props but no costume as the character isn't shown. The tinting of the colour and the creepy music all contribute to the atmosphere, and although the location isn't revealed with an establishing shot, it adds to the enigma.

Group progress and discussions

In order to reach conclusions about our film noir opening, we meet up in our group to discuss ideas and answer any problems. Below are notes on what we discussed during our meetings along with the general progress we made towards creating our finished sequence:

• Wednesday 7th January - Emily about locations for our film noir opening. We each took a copy of the first script draft from Josh and mentioned anything else we wanted to be included. We all discussed what shots should be used where in the script and finalised a list of individual pre-production tasks to be getting on with. As editor, I asked about when we wanted the titles to appear and we decided that the main title would go at the end and the personnel titles at the beginning. We also decided who would play each character and decided on Chris to be the main person.
• Wednesday 14th January - Chris was finishing the storyboard whilst Emily produced a list of costumes and props we each needed to fetch, and discussed who would get each one. We also looked at what the main character would be wearing in each location (woods and in the dark room). We all went to go and look at our chosen location, Alexandra Park, to take pictures, look at where the main character would be running from and to think about where the camera could be positioned to get the best shots possible.
• Thursday 22nd January - Chris scanned the finished draft of the storyboard into the computer to create an animatic. We each prepared something to say to the class in tomorrow's presentation speech (except I was off ill so I did mine at home).
• Friday 23rd January - Today we did our speech to the rest of our media class and showed them our finished animatic. We answered any questions they gave us and considered their comments. One of the things someone mentioned was that it may be too much to film with too little time to show it all. We took this on board and will consider shortening the scrips and including less of our ideas to make it more simple, yet still with the same desired effect.
• Wednesday 28th January - We finalised all our pre-production work and Josh asked if there were any issues we found with the script. Emily reminded us of what props and costumes we needed to bring in individually, and I suggested that we used a small glass block (which I have at home) if the college cafe couldn't supply any ice-cubes to us. I also took the questionnaire results away to write up an analysis on them, whilst Chris thought about what we would do in wet weather conditions. We decided that if it was rainy on the day of the shoot, we would have to take the camera kit out during the half term holidays, or film the following week. Or we could use an umbrella to shelter the camera , though this would limit our filming abilities and we doubt the media department would allow it, though the rainy effect would add to the atmosphere of our film! We all went to the college library during break to search for sound effects CD's that could us in our film. We took out 4 in total with footsteps, outdoor atmosphere noise, indoor atmosphere noise and gunshots on each. We would listen to them tomorrow. ONLY 1 WEEK LEFT UNTIL OUR FILMING DAY - WEDNESDAY 4TH!
• Thursday 29th January - Today we spilt up as a group as Emily and Josh remained in the media classroom to look over the pre-production work and finish a birds-eyed view map of our Alexandra Park location, whilst Chris and I went into the editing suit to listen to our music choices. We came up with a shortlist of 4 possible music pieces, each from the CD albums that Chris and Josh found at home and brought in. We listened to the sound effect tracks and decided that the gunshots would be useful, but the footsteps didn't sound very realistic so we would try and record our own on the day.
• Wednesday 4th February - Today was our filming day and the weather was perfect for it. However the ground was icy and (in places) slippery with mud, and it was freezing cold being outside for hours. We all gathered at the media department where Chris had arrived early to take out all the kit we needed. We spent about 30mins checking everything worked and asking any last minute questions before leaving for Alexandra Park at 10am. The park is only 10mins walk away so no transport was required. Emily left the group at 2pm though we carried on filming until 2.30pm. We ensured we got all our shots from the storyboard and extras just in case. Once we'd captured all our footage and viewed it from the camera, we returned to college to give back some of the kit (microphone etc). We took the camera to the library and logged our best shots so it would be easier once we were in the editing suite.
• Thursday 5th February - We went into the editing suite to view our best shots on the computer and to check that everything was working. We finished our animatic and decided on a piece of music we wanted to use. WE chose 'Mausam and Escape' by A R Rahman as we all agreed it's suitability to our noir.
• Wednesday 11th February - Today we filmed the rest of our footage from the media studio. We began filming at about 9.30am once we'd all arrived and checked the kit was working. We arranged and lit the set to create a film noir approach, and used a piece of card to create a Venetian blind lighting effect. We were only given maximum 3 hours to film all of footage in the studio, so we ended up being finished at about 1.30pm. Altogether we took about the same amount of time to film in the studio as in the wood, and we captured a total of 25mins footage - though we won't use it all!
• Wednesday 25th February - Today we went into the editing suite to capture our woods footage onto the computer. Josh and Emily then logged the best shots from our studio footage whilst Chris and I began a rough-cut of the woods footage.
• Wednesday 4th March - We all continued with our editing and added the music to our footage. We also captured our studio footage and realised that one of our shots containing synchronised sound would have to be taken again as the volume was too quiet.
• Thursday 5th March - Me, Chris and Josh went into the editing suit at 12 today to sort out our music and get some extra editing done.
• Wednesday 11th March - Chris, Josh and Emily went to the studio today to film our synchronised speech close-up shot of Chris at the desk speaking his first line of dialogue. Whilst I stayed in the editing suite to rearrange the music. We finished our rough cut today though we are reconsidering the order of our shots and thinking about where we would position transitions effects and titles (though we didn't add them today). Emily also recorded Chris's voice over and the various sound effects we might need to include - e.g. Chris's coat zip, the desk lamp switch and shuffling money.
• Wednesday 18th March - Today we finished our rough cut of our film and began to apply titles. After showing our finished rough cut to class members and Jon (our media teacher), we were advised that we should change our music as it was setting a too manic atmosphere and it was looking like a movie trailer, rather than a film opening. Therefore, we took a copy of our timeline and applied our second music choice 'Clues'. As a group we all found that this piece of calmer, more noir style music better suited our noir opening than our first choice.
• Wednesday 25th March - Today we started a new sequence with the same 'Clues' music but with all our studio scenes in the beginning and our woods scenes at the end. We found this presented more of an enigma straight away, rather than confusing the audience about what's going on. This is our 3rd sequence we have made, and we all agreed as a group that this is the best one simple because it meet the noir codes and conventions, and looks less like a film trailer and more like a film opening sequence. We began to apply titles to our scenes and changed our minds about the final film title 'Shadows Present'. before we had the film name appearing on a piece of paper attached to the package. though after following advice that this shot looked 'too student-like and unprofessional' we decided that an ordinary title would look best. Chris, Josh and I stayed in the editing suite through lunch time today as Chris was looking for a good gunshot sound effect (with a silencer) so that it sounded like it was shot inside a room, rather than outside. And Josh and I were fiddling around with the titles to ensure they worked well with our footage. We also applied church bells to the beginning of our sequence as we felt they gave connotations of death and funerals.
• Wednesday 1st April - Today we decided to try out a new sequence layout for our film by adding new titles in between the action to break it up a bit but keep up the pace. We also experimented with the film transitions ('tumbler', 'spin', 'blur' etc.) We liked the 'blur' effect on the titles as they would disorientate the audience and the fitted in well with the noir theme. We then screened our opening to 2 people in our class who hadn't seen it before. They're response was useful and we took their opinions into account when putting the final finishing touches to our film.
• Wednesday 22nd April - Today was the last editing session we had left to finish our opening sequence. We finished applying titles and used feedback from group members about how to reduce the hissing noise in the background of our voice over. For this we applied a 'Constant Power' fade onto the end of each sound bar so that the hissing noise blended in and couldn't be heard as loudly. We then screened our film to Jon, our media teacher, who suggested we should ensure the font style and size of each title was the same. This would add continuity to our film and make it seem more professional and less 'studenty'. Simple things like this are quick and easy to correct but are still important as they can often be really noticeable to the audience. At about 12 o'clock we had finished our film completely and began to render the file so it could be written to a DVD. We could have spent another few weeks tweaking and changing little things about our film, but as a group we're happy with the standard of film we've produced and I'm particularly pleased that no drastic errors occured throughout our entire project. We worked well as a group and although we often spent too long on decision making, we still managed to end up with a good finished noir style film opening within the deadline. As editor I've learnt lots about how to use the editing software 'Adobe Pro' to make the best of our footage, and am pleased with the end result.

Who's in the group?

When creating the film noir opening, we got into a group of 4. Each of us have 1 specific role that we take responsibility for, though we all take part in decisions and ideas for every area.

Chris: Director and actor (the main character in our opening) - responsible for the entire film and to make sure everything runs smoothly and how we planned. Also the main cinematography person.
Emily: Art director - responsible for the mise-en-scene, gathering props and finding a suitable location.
Josh: Writer and producer (and actor for the 'Shadow' character) - responsible for writing the script, producing call sheets and a production schedule.
Me: Editor and Sound (and dead girl in the beginning): responsible for gathering suitable music and sound effects needed, editing the film and applying a certian editing style, and choosing appropriate titles.

We have decided to all take part in the cinematography, though Chris and Josh will do most of the camera positioning.

The film noir opening - initial ideas

Before diving straight in to planning a film noir opening, we each individually came up with a synopsis as an idea. Then, when we got into a group of 4, we shared our individual ideas and combined them to design a final idea.

The synopsis idea for my own film noir:
- In the beginning the audience sees a man (person A) who has been kidknapped and is locked up.
- The audience sees flashbacks to the person A being followed and captured by another character (person B). Person B’s identity isn’t given away in this scene.
- Then the screen switches to the beginning of the story. Person A is sitting in a café with his wife (person C). Person A receives a phone call about his relative dying and that he’s inherited lots of money.
- The audience then see person A and C walking home from the café after the good news. They seem happy to have inherited lots of money, but they don’t look like they need it. When they arrive home at their large house, they find a blackmail letter on their doormat.
- Person A is very worried about this and furiously burns the letter on the fire. Person C doesn’t seem worried at all, which makes the audience feel suspicious of her.
- The next day, person A discovers person C is missing, and he goes out to look for her. Person A discovers person C murdered in a dark alleyway.
- Person A walks slowely back to his house after discovering person C. He realises he is being followed by someone and this is the scene that we see at the beginning.
- Person B turns out to be person A’s brother, who hasn’t inherited as much money as peron A. Person B is about to kill person A, but then person A offers to give all of his inheritance share, and more, to person B. Person B acceots his offer and runs off. The audience then see person B being taken away by the police for murdering person C. Person A gets all his money back and spends it on a posh grave for his wife, person C.

A detailed synopsis of my opening scene (the first two points shown above)
- Person A is walking through the town high street at night time. There aren’t many people about, and the street lamps light where person A is walking. The shot changes to an over-the-shoulder shot of person A walking along and feeling cautious.
- The camera follows person A briskly walking home, and he keeps on checking behind him, as he can hear footsteps.
- Person A stops walking and turns right around to check if anybody is really there, or if he’s imagining it all. There is nobody behind him so he turns back around to walk onwards. Then person B appears right infront of his face, and the screen instantly turns to person A alone in a room. The audience only catch a glimpse of what person B looks like. His face could be covered or he could be wearing a mask to confuse the audience. Compared to person B, person A is very well dressed and you can tell they are very wealthy.
- The screen then switches to person A chained to a chair in the middle of a room. The shot could produce shadows through a Venetion blind? But the overall lighting will be very low, and the amount of furniture in the room will be limited too. This wil reflect person A’s lonely emotions at this point.
- The audience will then see person A looking up as a silhouette of person B enters the room. That will be the end of the scene, and the story will go to the very beginning.

A rough treatment for the opening sequence – ECMS etc.
- Editing: the opening sequence will consist of many short and snappy shots of person A walking along.
- Cinematography: there will be an over-the-shoulder shot as person A walks along, and a long shot to show how alone person A is on the street and once he is kidknapped. There will be extreme close-ups of person A’s face to show his emotions and facial expressions in great detail.
- Mise-en-scene: the street where person A is walking along will be empty of people, and street lights will give the scene an orangey glow. Person A’s costume will portray the image of wealth e.g. a suit, or many designer labels on his clothes. The room where person A is being kidknapped in won’t be shown as much if a clever lighting is used e.g. only highlighting person A (his face in a spotlight).
- Sound: I would use a tense, up-beat piece of music that will cover the entire opening sequence. This will reflect person A’s anxious and tense feelings as he is walking through the street, and will make the audience feel as person A feels. The music would be a modern track to ensure the film can be classed as a contemporary/neo noir.

How my idea was combined into the final group idea
Once in our groups, everyone came with their own ideas to incorporate into the final idea. We began by reading each others ideas first, and then picking out the best pieces from each. The ideas that we decided to use from mine was the dark room scene with light shiny through a Venetian blind, and a chase scene where someone is being followed.