Continuety task.

   

At the start of the school year, we were given the task of making our own OTS to a film noir which gave us a little practice before we film our big OTS. I enjoyed making this continuity task and glad that i now have the evidence on this blog. We had to make sure we included a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down on a chair opposite another character and they then exchange a few lines of dialogue - and we included all of these!

Here is the storyboard of our continuety task which we tried to follow to the best we could:


Untitled from Olivia Smith on Vimeo.

Planning

We all inputted out ideas and tried to make most of them fit together without the storyline being too complicated. It could have any story but it had to look traditional and fit to the brief. Our story would be that somebody was murdered and there was only one witness - a very emotional lady. A detective would have to try and figure out the murder and catch the criminal. We didn't need to think about the whole story because we were only meant to be filming the first 2-3 minutes. We had to think of a name, so eventually we thought of 'Stranger'. The name could be about the whole film not just the OTS so it would be okay if the word 'stranger' didn't link to the OTS in any way.

Roles

- I provided the costumes and assisted on the filming and over looked while filming. I imputed ideas and gave an over-view of the mise-en-scene.
- Emily was in charge of the filming
- Sam and Jenni were acting in the OTS
- All of us inputted ideas equally

Filming

We didn't actually film it in black and white, but the spotlight created shadows. We also had to make sure that no modern technology or objects were present in the shots. There wasn't many lines and those lines were shown using a jump shot to-and-fro between the detective and the witness (fem fetale). When it was someones turn to say a line, we shot it from the person opposites shoulder, this would let the audience feel as if they were in the characters shoes and gave a face-on shot of the person speaking.  WE used a tripod to make sure we got smooth and steady shots. Emily was very good at timing and control. None of the shots were too fast or too slow. It took us about an hour to film.

Mise-en-scene

We decided to film in an empty drama room which was big and spacious and there is a slight echo when you speak - adds to the atmosphere.I supplied the clothes for the filming (50's coats and hat) but still trying to fit in with the glamorous but mysterious look. None of these clothes were modern, so we had no chance of a continuity error when i came to the right era. We tried to make the mise-en-scene look as realistic as possible which was helped by not having many wide shots which could show a lot of continuity errors. The background for the interrogation was a big board with paper clipping stapled to it, which didn't matter because these clippings weren't readable. We were also lucky to have a full black floor in the room where we filmed. The light shone off this floor but still creating a dark and atmospheric feeling. The spotlight was very bright and the floor was very dark. We found chairs in the room which didn't really seem very 1950s but because they were dark-coloured, they didn't matter too much. They were only fully seen when the detective is about to sit down on one.
We were very lucky to have a spot light right above where we were filming which we used to our advantage. WE made sure that this light wasn't directly on one character - it was right in the middle of them both.

Editing and sound

Editing the film was quite simple. We added the black and white effect making it typical film noir with contrast. There wasn't too much to the editing as we had already stopped the clips where we should have when we filmed it, so it made the editing process much simpler than it could have been. We edited in the title with no sound behind it onto a black background.  The dialogue was loud enough for us not to have to re-record it and there is the slight sound of footsteps when the detective speaks which we also didn't have to edit in. It took us about an hour to edit.

Audience
If we were making a whole film instead of just the OTS, i believe that our audience would be teenagers and older, male and female. This is because the distress of the woman we see in the OTS is very dramatic and strong, and i think a child wouldn't find this pleasant. I definitely wouldn't be a 'U' as the subject is of a murder.


Here are the other people's blogs i worked with: Emily Dimas, Jenni Dack, Sam High