Initial Idea for My Own Film Noir

The scene opens in the early hours of the morning around 4am, in the front room of a house. From the various alcohol bottles and cans strewn around the room and young people in their early 20’s either passed out on the floor or occupying the sofa, looking ill, it is clear that there has been a party. A rather bedraggled guy called Dan gets up and tells the room that he is going to bed, as he leaves the room and descends the stairs, the camera follows him. He walks into the master bedroom, and falls onto the bed exhausted, but then realises that there is already someone inside so he pulls back the cover. A young man named Cameron lies inside dead covered in blood – he has been murdered. A close up of Dan’s reaction followed by a big white flash of light leads to a flash-back sequence of the party in its early stages and the possible killers and motives.

I'd want the overall story to be about the investigation into Cameron's death, as a key aspect of film noir is crime. I'd want all the characters that were introduced in the flashbacks to be the suspects that would be investigated throughout the film. All of which I'd want to be unsavoury and not very nice individuals, much like the evil characters seen throughout noir. I want a femme-fatale charcter too and I'd make sure that she was dressed accordingly; red dress, lips and nails, revealing dress and a bad, amoral attitude.

Primary Research

We asked ten random people, aged 15 - 21] their views of films so we could could an idea what would attract our audience for our film opening we are making. We found out from the results that horror and thriller put together are popular. Even though romance came out on top, together horror and thriller came as the next popular. They believed that an opening of a film is important and a cliffhanger ending is good. [which is perfect because this is what we planned to do] Not many people had heard of noir, which meant we had to cater to their needs more. For example giving in a very modern twist to noir characteristics so it was still interesting to the young audience we are trying to attract. Themes of film were all quite popular, but murder, parties and fights came out on top. Two of those, murder and parties, is what sort of theme we want to use for our film anyhow.
So from our results, the film we are planning to make should be perfect for the audience we are making our opening for.

by Kira knight, Art Director

Group Film Noir Script: Version 1

EXT. HOUSE. NIGHT
A row of detached houses all similar in appearance, sit side by side. They are old and run down, much like the surrounding area. It is the early hours of the morning so it is very dark and completely silent, the only light comes from the street lights standing in front of the houses and one solitary house which has all the downstairs lights on.

INT. HOUSE. LOUNGE. NIGHT
The room is large, with two large stained sofas opposite each other. It is clear that a family live here from the photo on the wall. However seven clearly intoxicated young adults lay around the room. Three of them crowd on one sofa while one very ill man lays spread out over the other. The rest of them lay or sit on the floor. Low diegetic music plays from the stereo. It is clear that there has been a party. Alcoholic cans and bottles litter the floor – all of them empty. One very uncomfortable looking guy named DAN, propped up against the side of the sofa, stands up.

DAN
(Irritably)
Fuck this; I’m off to find a bed.

GIRL ON SOFA
There’s no beds left.

DAN
I don’t care. I’ll push someone out if I have too. I’m not sleeping on that floor, someone puked on it – I can smell it.

GIRL ON SOFA
Well good luck, Dan.

DAN
Night.

DAN leaves the room.

INT. HOUSE. HALLWAY. NIGHT

DAN walks out of the lounge and stumbles up the stairs. The hallway too is littered with bottles and cans. DAN tries his hardest to avoid them on the stairs.

INT. AMY’S HOUSE. SPARE ROOM. NIGHT

DAN enters the spare room, looking exhausted – the bed appears to be empty, breathing a happy sigh DAN throws himself happily onto the bed. He realises there is someone inside.

DAN
Sorry man, I didn’t realise there was anyone in here.

DAN pulls back the covers to find CAMERON inside covered in blood. He is dead, and has obviously been murdered.

NB. We originally filmed this, however when we viewed the shots back, they didn't seem right so we decided to come up with a new idea and to refilm in a new relocation - that's how we came to our final script and film.

Pre-Production Paperwork for Health & Safety and Location

Pre-production Paperwork for Our Intial Idea

Above are the intital shotlists for the first sequence we filmed, written by myself, Amy Meitiner, Group Producer.

Sheets Logged by Kira Knight, Art Director and by Myself, Amy Meitiner, Producer

Treatment for Cinematography. Version 1

The cinematography for this piece will be different at different parts of the film opening, at the start when the party is dying down the camera work will be normal with long shots, close ups and different angles to show the emotions and conversations, it is like this until the body of cameron is discovered, the flashbacks then start. For the flashbacks the camera shots will all be point of view to show what the character Dan is showing as it is his flashback, the shots will long a lot of the time to get everything that is happening, and they will be shot from different places where the action is taking place, they will be in any area a person could be to see the action. The shots are all point of view to show the craziness and drunkenness of the party and to make sure the audience don’t see anything that Dan doesn’t see as we are seeing what he has seen at the party. All the shots will be wobbly and wonky to show it is from the view point of a drunken Dan. At the end of the film the shots will return to not being point-of-view to show that the flashbacks have stopped, there will be more close-ups to show the emotions of the people when the dead body of cameron is discovered and when Dan is discovered with the body.

by Cameron Mears, Cinematographer

NB, this was for the first film we need. But we decided not to use this.

More Info on the Re-shoot

Whilst we were happy to reshoot a second time, and in hindsight got alot done; our cinematographer did not attend so his role had to be shared amoungst the rest of the group. Kira Knight the Art Director, took it apon herself to write the cinematography treatment. And when Kira Knight and Ben Halliday, the main characters in our film sequence, were in shot I filmed them, and vice-versa when I was in shot.




I also took on his role to write the new shot lists:

Group Meetings: How we went from our draft, Versions 1, to 'Killing Conscience'

Our first group meeting was when we started the project to get our initial ideas together. But after we had got all our ideas in we had to keep meeting or talking every now and then to make sure we where on the same page as each other, understood what was going on and when we were filming next etc.
It was also very helpful if anyone had any other ideas that we could have added into the shoot. Because everydy we realised there was new things we could pop into it to make it better.

After our first shoot, we looked back on the footage and realised it was nothing like how we wanted it to be. It was really dissapointing and we started to panic. As that shoot had taken us about 10 hours to do, and we were running out of time till it had to be finished. We had a meeting and we had to decide what to do. As we knew we couldn't have stuck with just the footage we had or our film opening would look terrible. So we came up with another day, time and location for our next filming session. We had to come up with a whole new idea that would be just as good as our last one, but also work. It also had to be a reachable target for the time we had left.

Luckily it all worked out. The panic was finally over.

In the editing stage we had to have more meetings of how to piece everything together that we had filmed. But because there was four of us, we couldn't all bundle round one computer as there were other things we had to do. So we had two at a time round a computer. Ben at all times as he was the main editor. When we were not editing we decided we should do blog work and finish off little tweaks that we needed. Before the editing we all decided on what kind of idea of what we wanted it to be. But as the editing went on we'd all sit together at a certain point and screen it so we could all decide how it looked. This process really worked as we finished it and we all loved how it looked. And in between we got work done which was perfect.

by kira knight, Art Director

Call Sheet For Contemporary Film Noir Opening

Call Sheet For Contemporary Film Noir Opening

Version 1: Draft
Date: Monday 15th February 2010
Location: Cameron Mears' house, Shafto Road.
Directions: From town, go to Norwich Road all the way down to Bramford Road, which you follow straight to Shafto Road.


Call Times
Meet in town with equipment at 4pm.
Travel to Camerons house and get there by 4:30pm
Shooting begins at 4:45pm
Expected to end by 10pm


Crew
Directing: shared role
Sound man: N/A
Production assistants: Shared role


Talent
Cameron Mears : victim, deceased
Amy Meitiner: suspect, bullying victim
kira knight: suspect, jilted lover
Ben Halliday: suspect, drug dealer


Equipment:
Sony DV1 Camera
Standard tripod for Sony DV1 camera


Props
Alcohol, Sofa, Beds, Drugs, Ipod Docking System.


Second day of shooting - Version 2 - Final Idea

Date: Wednesday 10th March 2010
Location: Ben hallidays house, Holbrook

Directions: 92 bus from Cattle Market bus station, takes you straight there.

Call Times
Meet at Cattle Market bus station at 9am
Travel to Bens house and get there by 9:35am
Shooting begins at 10:00am
Expected to end by 4:00pm

Crew
Directing: Ben halliday and Amy Meitiner
Sound man: N/A

Production assistants: Shared role

Talent
Amy Meitiner: suspect
kira knight: victim, deceased
Ben Halliday: suspect

Equipment:
Sony DV1 Camera
Standard tripod for Sony DV1 camera

Props
Alcohol, Sofa, Beds, cigerettes,

by kira knight, Art Directer

Synopsis for 'Killing Conscience'

The opening scene starts with a man in his late teens waking up in bed, next to a girl his own age. He gets up, and wearily opens the curtains to reveal that it's morning. He looks in the mirror and sees that there's blood on his cheek, upon realising that it's not his, he walks over to the girl in his bed. He tilts her head to find that her face is bruised and covered in blood - she is dead. He then has flashbacks from the night before, which was a party around is house. During this time we see the dead girl, Kira from the point of view of the young man, Ben. It seems that night everyone had a problem with her, making her death very suspicious indeed and the rest of the party-goers possible suspects.

When the police arrive and question Ben about how she ended up in his bed he is unable to answer due to the large amount of alcohol and drugs he consumed at the party that night. His DNA is all over her and is he subsquently arrested. Having no memory other than that of the bitty flashbacks of the beginning of the night, he begins to even doubt his own innocence. The rest of the films follows the police's investigation as they try to piece together the enigma of how a girl can be beaten to death at a party full of people without anyone seeing or hearing a thing. They question the partygoers - all of whom say they saw nothing. Everyone at that party had a problem with Kira but the police can't arest everyone. Could the key to Kira's death be found far inside the recesses of Ben's memory? Only time will tell...

'Killing Conscience' Final Script

INT. BEN’S BEDROOM. BED’S HOUSE. MORNING

The room is dark as the curtains are closed on the large window that takes up the whole of the central wall. Clothes lay strewn across the floor; coins, cigarettes and their packets litter the side of a large desk to the left side of the room. To the right, against the wall is a single bed with two inhabitants sleeping under the duvet. One is a boy in his late teens named BEN, his head leans against the head of a girl of a similar age named KIRA.

CUT TO:

INT. BEN’S BEDROOM. BED’S HOUSE. MORNING

BEN wakes up, he rubs his eyes wearily and slowly gets out of bed, walks over to the window and opens the curtains. Sunlight floods the room.
CUT TO:

INT. BEN’S BEDROOM. BED’S HOUSE. MORNING

Upon the desk is a mirror which Ben looks into sleepily, he realises that he has blood on his face and proceeds to rub it off, but it doesn’t.

CUT TO:

INT. BEN’S BEDROOM. BED’S HOUSE. MORNING

BEN realises that the blood is not his. He is shocked and turns to look at KIRA.

CUT TO:

INT. BEN’S BEDROOM. BED’S HOUSE. MORNING

BEN anxiously walks over to KIRA in the bed who still hasn’t moved. She appears to be fine so he rolls her over so that he can see the right side of her body.

CUT TO:

INT. BEN’S BEDROOM. BED’S HOUSE. MORNING

The right side of her face is covered with a large bruise to her eye and cheek, and her lip is cut and laced with dried blood.

CUT TO:

INT. BEN’S BEDROOM. BED’S HOUSE. MORNING

BEN looks indifferent and suspiciously walks over to the window and closes the curtains. He then starts to pace up and down the length of the room repeatedly. His voice over starts whilst he is pacing.

BEN
(Voiceover)
What a stupid bitch! I fucking new something like this would happen. How did she even end up in my bed?! I told her no a million times. No one even wanted her here anyway. Looks like we got what we wanted.

FADE TO FLASHBACK:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. STAIRS. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
BEN walks down the stairs. AMY sits on the right side of the stairs, mid way down. she looks ill. Ben taps her caringly on the head.
CUT TO:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. LOUNGE. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
BEN sees AMY and KIRA sit on a sofa next to each other. KIRA pours a shot.
CUT TO:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. LOUNGE. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
On the left side of the room is another sofa. BEN sees CAMERON and EMILY sit on it with their legs entwined, flirting.
CUT TO:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. LOUNGE. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
KIRA comes up to BEN drunkenly clutching a bottle of vodka.
KIRA
(Inebriated)
Hey babe, you look so good tonight! Do you wanna dance or something?
BEN
(Disgustedly)
You’ve had too much to drink!
KIRA
(Frenzied)
Too much?! Not enough! I mean just…
AMY appears in front of BEN and shoves KIRA hard out of the way bitchily. AMY looks directly at BEN.
AMY
(Smugly)
Come dance with me!
CUT TO:
INT. BEN’S BEDROOM. BED’S HOUSE. MORNING – PRESENT DAY
BEN walks over to the desk and picks up one of the cigarette packs, gets out a cigarette and then sits on the edge of the bed. Meanwhile KIRA’S voice is heard as a voiceover.
KIRA
(Echoed and overlapping)
What have you done to me? I feel so alone. I just wanted a friend. You hurt me.

CUT TO:
INT. BEN’S BEDROOM. BED’S HOUSE. MORNING – PRESENT DAY
BEN sits on the edge of the bed with a cigarette in his mouth.
BEN
(Voiceover, concerned)
My god, what the hell am I going to do? I barely remember a thing! Anyone could have done this – even me…
He searches for a lighter – patting down his pockets and looking around – but doesn’t find one so he takes it out of his mouth. He rubs his neck tensely then stares pensively into the air.
CUT TO:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. LOUNGE. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
BEN sees KIRA sits on the sofa that she had previously done with AMY. However this time she is sitting with MADELEINE and sobs mercilessly on her shoulder. Then she stops and stands up defiantly and walks out of the room.
CUT TO:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. LOUNGE. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
BEN sees EMILY and CAMERON standing in the doorway of the room flirting with each other. KIRA appears from the corridor. She walks over to CAMERON, grabs him and kneels in front of him, begging him for his attention.
CUT TO:
EXT. BED’S HOUSE. GARDEN. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
BEN leans out of his bedroom window for a cigarette, as she goes to light his cigarette, he sees EMILY and CAMERON in the garden below. They intimately embrace. However KIRA runs out into the garden from inside the house and pushes them apart. EMILY stands back in horror as KIRA violently slaps CAMERON.
CUT TO:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. HALLWAY. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
BEN sees CAMERON walk up the stairs with a bottle of alcohol in his hand. He stumbles drunkenly.
CUT TO:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. LOUNGE. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
BEN looks wearily into a large mirror hanging on the living room’s wall. He rubs his face indicating that it has been a long night. KIRA bounds up behind him bright eyed and bushy tailed – a far cry from the state that she was in in the previous scene. This angers BEN. He turns around.
CUT.
BEN stares at KIRA, who looks fanatical.
KIRA
(Excited)
Are you ready for your dance yet babe?
BEN
(Fustrated)
Look, I told you before!
KIRA
(Frantic)
What have I done?!
CUT TO:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. LOUNGE. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
AMY sits spread out on the left side of the room against the wall. She is drinking. BEN sits on a bean bag opposite it and KIRA lays on the floor with her eyes closed in-between. BEN looks at AMY.
BEN
(Concerned)
Do you think she’s ok?
AMY turns to look at him.
AMY
Who cares!? She’s a dirty mess.
Just as she finishes speaking AMY throws a cigarette packet at KIRA. This rouses KIRA and she opens her eyes.
KIRA
(Infuriated)
Leave me alone, you dirty skank!!
KIRA gets up and leaves.
CUT TO:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. LOUNGE. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
BEN sees various people throughout his lounge feeling the effects of his party; EMILY passed out on the sofa on the left side of the room, a boy being sick into a bucket and on the other sofa loads of girls still drinking.
CUT TO:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. LOUNGE. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
KIRA sits curled up in the corner of the room, sobbing and clutching a near empty bottle of vodka.
CUT TO:
INT. BED’S HOUSE. LOUNGE. FLASHBACK OF THE NIGHT BEFORE
The lights flicker on and off, and the room appears to spin to BEN as he sees everyone dancing to loud music.
CUT TO:
INT. BEN’S BEDROOM. BED’S HOUSE. MORNING
BEN sits on the edge of the bed; he stares forward, deep in thought. He hears loud footsteps coming towards him and then the bedroom door opening so he turns his head to see who it is.
INT. BEN’S BEDROOM. BED’S HOUSE. MORNING
The door handle slowly turns, and opens an inch.
END.

By Myself, Amy Meitiner, Group Director and Producer

'Killing Conscience' Final Storyboard

Drawn and written by Cameron Mears

'Killing Conscience' Treatment For The Mise-en-Scene

The props used : alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, ‘soup’ sick, bed, sofas, system, blood, make up for the bruises

The Alcohol and cigarettes are typical of noir tendencies, we wanted to keep some classic noir conventions in there so people who watch our opening can identify what type of film it is.
The drugs and the ipod docking system give it a modern kick to keep up with the contemporary feel of our opening.

Costume and make up = We want to keep the costume casual, like everyday wear of young adults but we wanted to add a noir flair. We will do this buy keeping the shades of clothing dark, for example blacks, greys and dark/navy blues. Or women with red lipstick and red nails. Not all charecters will dress this way because we need the modern edge once again, to keep the contemporary feel. If we had more charecters and time we would deffinitly keep to these guidlines perfectly. But seeing as we have minimal amount of 'main' charecters we will stick to the guidelines as much as possibly can.


We also will use costume make up for the 'femme fatale' to look beaten up and hurt. I will buy some purple lipstick mixed with eyeliner to create a bruised effect on the cheekbones and above the eye. And buy some costume blood to give the extra drama effect.

Location = Camerons house
- kitchen
- bedroom
- bathroom
- study

Second Location = Bens house
- bedroom
- living room


by Kira Knight, Group Art Director

'Killing Conscience' Editing Treatment

The editing for this piece will be clean and use continuity editing up until the flashbacks where, to create the effect of disorientation, things aren’t in order, shots are skewed etc. Editing to create flashbacks isn’t intended to look cliché so we’ll go about it differently – when zooming into the guy’s face (when he finds the body) a bright flash will be edited in to the scene to tell the audience we’re going into the character’s mind. The light will slowly fade into the scene where we see the suspects and the reason they may have committed the murder. As this is a flashback of a drunken party, the editing can feature continuity editing, jump cuts, discontinuity editing to disorientate the audience. The music we will reflect the action but also the noir characteristics of the piece. Upon zooming out of the guy’s face, the bright light will appear again and the zoom out will be sped up to invoke a sense of panic.

As the action is quite detailed, the opening titles will be placed before the starting scene. The typeface will be simple, but also reflect (along with colour) the noir feel of things.

Sound and music

The main focus of this post is to justify the sound and music we’ve chosen for our Film Noir Opening piece. To open, we’ve chosen a really soft, downbeat piece of music for the titles that sound-bridges into the first scene. This, in my opinion, creates an effective juxtaposition of sorts between the innocence of the white used in the title along with the scene of the character waking up compared to the silent shot of finding the girl in the bed bruised and bloodied.Next, we have the voice-overs. The reason we collectively decided to include a voice over is because we felt that the audience may be slightly confused and needed some insight into the character’s mind. I think the way it turned out is really effective. It compliments the scene, clarifies what’s happening, sets the audience up for the flashbacks and improves their relationship with the character. The voice-over of the girl is one of my favourites though, and the way it’s edited, in my opinion is really effective. We applied heavy reverb to her voice and added delay and a really eerie echo which is not only frighteningly ghostly, but makes the audience wonder why the male character is hearing this and makes them question his innocence.Finally, the music we used for the flashbacks, is a piece by an artist named Peaches. The music had a very grimy, seedy electro feel to it and we liked that it had very subtly appropriate lyrics. The line; “seems you got a little bit more than you asked for” also builds the sequence up and builds suspension and awe, things we definitely wanted to create in this opening body of work. Unfortunately, the music, named ‘More’, we used for the flashback sequences is not royalty-free so we will have to research how to propose to XL Recordings/Kitty-Yo, the owners of the song, for permission to use the material, organise to pay royalties, etc.

by Ben Halliday, Group Editor

Cinematography Treatment For 'Killing Conscience'

Cinematography in our film is going to be vital in our film. The type of shots we use will help distinguish the type of film we are trying to convey to our audience.

The opening shots willl all be in the bedroom. These shots will be used with a tripod to give a smooth feel. As at this point we are in real time so we will use continuity. In this, we will also use high and low angle shots of the charecters to give the impression of the charecter that we want. For example There will be a high angle shot of our charecter 'Ben' sitting on the bed with a cigarette. This will make Ben look vunrable and lonely which is what we to portray. There will be a close up of 'kiras' body in the bed dead. It is important shot, and gives a lot of detail, which is what close ups are perfect for. The shot will need to linger to give a bigger impression of the fact she is beaten, bruised and dead.

In contrast to this the flashbacks we will use will be very gritty, uncontrolled shots. We will get this effect by using a hand held camera. The handheld camera will also make it as point of view shot from bens persepective of that night. We see it through his eyes. When we edit, we will then chop them up in different places to make them even more abnormal to the audience. There wont be any structure as such. Aka, no continuity. This because they are flasbacks of a very drunk not, and in reality when people remember things it will be at different times and not in order how the night has gone. So we want to make it seem like this with our mixed up shots in different places. The shots will seem uncomfortable and confusing. Which was a convention of classic film noirs.

by kira knight, Art Director

Editing Notes for Music and Sound

The main focus of this post is to justify the sound and music we’ve chosen for our Film Noir Opening piece. We’ve chosen a really soft, downbeat piece of music that still has quite a dark quality for the titles that sound-bridges into the first scene. This, in my opinion, creates an effective juxtaposition of sorts between the heavy, electronic, upbeat music used for the flashbacks that people won't expect. I used a royalty free sample courtesy of Apple. I added; a bitcrusher, distortion, reverb and an echo to create a really nasty sinister tone to it whilst keeping that really tragic kind of melody it has. In my opinion, it does sound really noir, but updated, which is essentially the key to our entire piece of work.

Next, we have the voice-overs. The reason we collectively decided to include a voice over is because we felt that the audience may be slightly confused and needed some insight into the character’s mind. I think the way it turned out is really effective. It compliments the scene, clarifies what’s happening, sets the audience up for the flashbacks and improves their relationship with the character. The voice-over of the girl is one of my favourites though, and the way it’s edited, in my opinion is really effective. We applied heavy reverb to her voice and added delay and a really eerie echo which is not only frighteningly ghostly, but makes the audience wonder why the male character is hearing this and makes them question his innocence.

Finally, the music we used for the flashbacks, is a piece by an artist named Peaches. The music had a very grimy, seedy electro feel to it and we liked that it had very subtly appropriate lyrics. The line; “seems you got a little bit more than you asked for” also builds the sequence up and builds suspension and awe, things we definitely wanted to create in this opening body of work. Unfortunately, the music, named ‘More’, we used for the flashback sequences is not royalty-free so we will have to research how to propose to XL Recordings/Kitty-Yo, the owners of the song, for permission to use the material, organise to pay royalties, etc.

By Ben Halliday, by Group Editor

More Notes on Editing

Here's a really short video I threw together at home to give some idea the editing techniques we used in our Film Noir Opening; A Killing Conscience:




by Ben Halliday, Group Editor

Editing Notes for the Titles

For A Killing Conscience, our Film Noir Opening Sequence, we've chosen a really simple typeface and layout that clearly displays all information whilst keeping that noir feel.


First, we experimented with flashy reflective titles that whooshed, spun and flew across the screen with white backgrounds and modern black, glossy text which we all thought looked amazing, not stopping to think; "does this have anything to do with our noir?". Well, after screening our opening sequence to an audience, we realised that the glossy, professional titles don't work with our piece - some actually said they were confused because the titles set the film up to be something
it's not. We couldn't help but agree and swifty deleted the title sequence in search of a new one.


Old Title:




Collectively, we sat around as I went through title ideas
I thought would be appropriate and we ended up finding a really sleek, simple, noir-themed one which is dark and shady and it fits out work perfectly. On a black background, the text appears to be typed as letters appear one-by-one on screen. The typeface and colour we decided to use is white Gill Sans which is a modern approach to the old noir typewriter style typeface. Information such as the production company, acknowledgments, and name of our film are displayed seperately, which I really like; it gives the audience time to digest and fully-read the information and looks a lot better than trying to pack everything on in one go.


Here's a screen-shot of the title style we've decided to go with:

by Ben Halliday, Group Editor

The music we used and what how we would get around the copyright.

Royalty free music would have ideally been our first choice, though we were so deadset on this song because of the noir feel, the lyrics and tone. So, in order to use this piece of music, research, communication and permission is key.Upon research, I've found that we need to obtain two licences; A synchronisation licence and a master use licence. The synchronisation licence must be gained from the National Music Publishers' Association (NMPA) who holds rights to a large number of songwriter's, artists and producers' work. To obtain this, I would need to mail the legal team working the company and propose to use this particular song, explain our film, and negotiate royalties with them. I would need the master use to reproduce the recording in our noir. We would need to clear this right with both XL Recordings/Kitty-Yo Recordings as they own the recording we're proposing to use. Similarly to the synchronisation license, we would need to contact the business affairs departments of these record labels and, again, negotiate prices and propose.Fees are determined by how long the song is used, how many times the song is used, how it will be used, and where the film is distributed. For us, as students, reduced fees are available. In our proposal, we would need to provide a synopsis of the film and it's budget, explain how we intend to use the song and how our body of work will be distributed. Now knowledgeable of how we could use the song "More" in our piece, we can switftly move on to complete other areas of post-production!

By editor, Ben Halliday