'The Exchange' Brief and Storyboard

Storyboard by Amy Meitiner.

The brief was to shoot and edit a short sequence in the style of a film noir thriller involving the exchange of an important item from one character to another. This sequence must be shot in no more than 12 shots. No dialogue is to be used. The footage will then be edited and appropriate music and titles will be added.

'The Exchange' Film

Intitial Treatment

Storyline: A male is walking towards a darkened tunnel to meet up with another male to exchange some money for drugs. He starts by walking along the park by himself looking shady. He walks around the corner towards the tunnel. You then the second male emerge from the dark tunnel looking twice as shady. The first male walks towards him and they exchange an approving nod. They then exchange the money and drugs over. And then they nod once more to seal the deal. The second male disappears into the shadows of the tunnel. The first male walks off in to the distance. He goes to meet a girl waiting for him at the gazebo just uphill from the tunnel. He shows her the ‘goods’ and she smiles and kisses him on the cheek, then walks away leaving him alone feeling hard done by. His motive was to get the girl via the drugs.

Characters & Representation: Male one: Ben Halliday.
He is the antagonist. He is getting into dodgy dealings for reasons we don’t really know until the end of the film when we see him meeting the female at the end. He is the modern day antagonist, but with underlying noir ethics.

Male two: Cameron Mears
He is the modern day anti hero of the film. He is the drug dealer of the production. In noir terms he would be the man who gets the antagonist into trouble, even without knowing it.

Girl: Kira Knight
She is the femme fatale. Even though she’s not in the scenes till right at the end, you can tell that she’s done the typical job of getting the male to do whatever she wants for her. He has got the drugs for her, to impress her, and all he gets in return is a peck on the cheek. Typical femme fatale.

Cinematography:
Because we are using a modern story line to make it have the classic noir feel we will use things like camera angles, music and costume to bring it into the film. The camera angles will be askew to make the scene seem more awkward and hard to take in, like Dutch tilt, like in classic noir films. We shall use loads of high and low angle shots to make characters look superior and inferior. Also the depth of focus to create the illusion of confusion.

Mis – en - scene:
The performance of the actors has to be very blunt yet subtle. It has to be obvious what they’re doing for the audience but secretive enough to be dodgy dealings going on. The location will be quite open, it’s as if you don’t know what’s happening, just seems like a normal day with normal people. But the tunnel gives away the shadiness of the operation. It looks like a dodgy area and that’s where the exchange happens. Sort of like an alley way in a noir classic. As it’s modern we have the location and the acting of the characters to rely on to give it the noir feel. Plus the camera shots (explained above).9-


Props, Costumes & Make-Up
The only props we need are, a small clear re-sealable bag containing sugar/flour, money and cigarettes. The small bag will represent cocaine for the “drug-exchange” and the money is to be given when the cocaine is handed to the character. Using drugs as the exchange in this sequence, much like film noir, touches on contemporary issues (in this instance drugs) as do the cigarettes and how the people who smoke are perceived.

The costumes we will use in this sequence will have elements of modern-day fashion mixed with the noir styles, colours and fit. The “femme fatale” of the sequence will be wearing a red dress with flat, black, patent leather boots; a smart-casual, yet mysterious look. The character buying the “cocaine” will wear darker colours, a blazer, dark jeans etc and lastly, the drug-”dealer” will be wearing similar clothing to the cocaine recipient.

Make-up in the sequence isn’t really the main focus. The usual powder will be used for the camera but the make-up style on the femme fatale is the main focus. Foundation and powder will be used but simplistic dramatic black eye-liner and mascara will also create the image of power and mystery. She’ll also wear red lipstick with is representative of women during the noir era too and widely used in the films shot back then.

Music: For our sequence we’ll need to track down some noir-type music with a modern twist. Lyrics in the music would need to be really specific so ideally, we’d need an instrumental piece… At first thought, an instrumental Amy Winehouse song would have been a great contemporary noir feel though without lyrics, the music sounds too up-beat and happy so we needed to explore other options or go for a quite angular, less noir piece of music that still sets the mood.

By Kira Knight, Group Art Director

'The Exchange' Evaluation and Feedback

The initial impressions of 'The Exchange', was that we had chosen a good location which was a tunnel - very apt for a film noir. However the audience (our class) did not like the music, they felt it was too abrupt and our group agreed. This could have been avoided during editing, whereby rather than simply stopped the music when the shot cut, we should have slowly faded it out. We also wern't that pleased with the title screen, we and the of the class found it too long, which is another thing that could have been easily put right during editing by simply reducing the amount of time the titles were on screen or by speeding it up. We also felt in hindsight that we did not use enough close ups, which we only discovered once we were into the editing phase. From this we learned that it is better to film a lot of varied shots, more than we actually need, so that when it's time to edit, we will have a vast selection to choose from. In short, it's better to have too many shots then not enough as they can always be wittled down during the editing process. Kira Knight's role within the group was to be the art-directer meaning is was down to her to decide the costume and props. She picked a red dress for the femme fatale, the character she played, and a big black bag for Ben's character. Her choice was well recieved by the rest of our group as well as the class, as it really coincides with the film noir look that we were going for.