With the final cut of our OTS just finished, we decided that it was time to go out and get some audience feedback that we can use when evaluating our OTS.
For this to work, we needed succint and suitable questions that we could pose to individuals as well as larger audiences. They needed to be phrased in such a way that they weren't daunting to those without experience in media, and they had to extract useful information. I wrote down some questions, and then we added to and tweaked them to ensure that they were sound.
Here is a list of the questions we used:
What are your first impressions of the film? Did any specific moment stand out to you?
How tense did the OTS make you feel on a scale of 1 - 10? 10 being the most tense.
Did you find the ambiguity and mystery of the piece intriguing? Did you feel curious enough to continue watching the film?
Which character did you feel had the most power?
Based on what you have seen, who would you recommend the film to? What age-group?
At what kind of venue would you expect the film to be shown, Art House or Mainstream cinemas?
How did the film's visual style make you feel? How did this contribute to the overall atmosphere of the film?
Aside from film-noir, what genre would you classify the film as, based on what you have seen?
After writing these questions, we asked a few people from our media class to watch the final cut of our OTS and then answer some questions whilst being recorded. These individual sessions allowed us to get in-depth views and opinions from people who knew what they were talking about in terms of the construction of the OTS.
Whilst we know that this in-depth, media-conscious feedback will help us a great deal when we come to evaluate, we are also aware that we will need to hear the opinions of general viewers in order to attain a more accurate overview of the film's reception. Yesterday, Tom and I showed the film to our AS Literature class (ages 16-17), and then I asked them the above questions, re-phrased slightly to address the entire group. James, Daniel and I have another audience feedback session with a Year 11 form group (ages 15-16) planned for Monday morning, which will hopefully allow us an insight into the opinions of a slightly younger audience.
Footage of the individual feedback sessions and also those with a group audience will be uploaded and posted soon.
Daniel has posted our OTS to the National Preservation Forum, of which he is a part, so that we can get some feedback from mostly middle-class people up to the age of 60, and James is posting it to Playstuff, where most users are students or academic creatives within the age bracket of 18-40, who hould be able to give some good, articulated views.
The most noticeable change between theses two cuts has to be that of the Femme Fatale's voice. As described in a previous post, we quickly discovered that this character did not appear authorative enough, which was largely down to the intonation of the voice. To solve the problem, Tom and I sampled several voices, chose an actress who could create the right tone, and then recorded her speaking the lines so that we could replace the original audio with the new.
The sound has also undergone considerable changes, with the sound of the rain featuring less due to a drop in volume, and the dramatic, non-diegetic background music made more prominent to increase tension. On top of this, sections of the Victim speaking were reomved, largely due to time constraints, and, of course, the acting credits were added at appropriate moments in a font that seemed both classic and bold.
Throughout the time we've been working as a team to produce our actual OTS, we have also been working individually in different areas of research and development, which enabled each of us to focus on specific areas when we presented our ideas to the class. By working to our individual strengths, we were able to combine areas of speciality to create an informed and accurate film-noir OTS.
The delegation of research and development tasks can be seen in the work we have posted to our respective blogs.
Although we did overlap on certain areas of research, such as Semiotics, film classification, continuity ideas and target audiences, the above links show which members took a main focus in these areas.
When we first established our basic ideas for the constituents of our OTS, we decided not to label it immediately. If we had chosen a final title for our piece before actually creating it, we may have ended up working backwards and shaping our ideas around the title, and what it implied. I think this would have resulted in a piece with one central theme or focus and little else. In order to avoid this, we left the naming of the film until after it was created. We very much wanted our title to be generated naturally; the OTS would inspire a title, not the other way round.
Our OTS introduces the Femme-Fatale as the film's main antagonist, the Goon as her 'right-hand-man', and the Victim as an unimportant individal who has unfortunately got into trouble with the Femme Fatale's crime syndicate, and is suffering the consequences. Theoretically, the actual film would then go on to introduce the main protagonist, perhaps a private investigator, and would follow his progress as he infiltrates the syndicate in order to uncover the truth of the given situation, perhaps a murder, but ends up in too deep, and struggles to cope with the problems that arise.
On my desk at home, I had a piece of paper which I would use to jot down any title ideas that came into my head. I had already looked at a list of film-noir titles, and so knew what sort of name would fit. As the name of a film-noir/psychological thriller hybrid, the title would need to be both ambiguous and daunting; possibly alluding to an important plot element, but not something that would spoil the film. Here is a list of some words I jotted down:
I paired some of the words together to create two possible titles: Riot Cipher and Clarity Tact. I liked the pairing of words, because it left a certain mystery as to how they were linked. Riot Cipher, for exmaple, juxtaposes something chaotic and something that requires order and precision, and this could work to make people wonder about the film and become curious enough to watch it. Despite this, I didn't think either of these titles would work for the OTS, because they didn't seem to fit with the themes of the OTS at all, and would seem detached from our piece, possibly resulting in audience confusion.
James produced this 3D title animation for the end of our OTS, but it was replaced by normal, 2D text on the general consensus that it was too lucid, and shattered the subtlety that our OTS had established up until that point.
A week or so ago, when we realised our production was coming to a head, we decided to have a group brain-storming session for our film title. This involved sitting around a computer, suggesting words that related to our OTS, and then typing them into Thesaurus.com in the hope of discovering an appropriate synonym. After a while, I suggested the word, 'Chain' as a metaphor for the crime-syndicate; the main protagonist would be uncovering links between different sections of the syndicate, trying to find weaknesses along the way that he could use to his advantage. It was Tom who then developed this idea, suggesting 'Chainbound' as a single world. This made even more sense as a metaphor for the situation the protagonist would find himself in; whilst trying to uncover the weak links in the crime-syndicate, he would become bound by certain problems, and would struggle to escape. Also, the name doesn't appear to have been used previously, which will give our OTS an even further sense of originality.
Recently, I watched a box-set of 'THREE MUST-SEE MOVIES' from 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment. This included Fight Club, The Usual Suspects and Memento. All three films could be described as thrillers; they all combine mystery, pacing, and a twisting plot in order to evoke tension.
Browsing through various DVD extras, I was surprised to find that both The Usual Suspects and Memento were regarded as works of film-noir. On further investigation, I found that all three of the movies in the set were labelled under the genre of 'Neo Noir' on The Internet Movie Database. As a prefix, 'Neo' means 'new,' and is usually used in the case of something being revived or reinvented. With this understanding, it is easier to see why these films fit under the neo-noir genre; they contain certain elements present in original film-noir, but do not attempt to replicate classic film-noir. After making sense of neo-noir, I was further intrigued by the current popularity of neo-noir as opposed to classic-noir or immitations of classic-noir. In order to establish exactly what neo-noir has to offer to modern cinema, I first needed to clarify what it directly borrows from original noir.
The most commonly borrowed aspects of film-noir are the dark, malevolent atmosphere and the flawed, morally ambiguous chracters. Crime-based narratives provide a firm platform upon which these elements of film-noir can flourish, which explains why so many neo-noir films revolve around stories of heists, murder and gang warfare. So if neo-noir borrows on both narrative and thematic fronts, then the only true source of originality is in style and context.
Even this poster for the theatrical release of Blade Runner emulates the style of those that were used for classic film-noir.
Neo-noir has a certain amount of charm that other genres lack, because the films it describes portray film-noir in a new and unique light. The most obvious, and perhaps the most famous example of this is that of Ridley Scott's 1982 film Blade Runner. The narrative follows almost all of the traditional film-noir conventions, but is set in Los Angeles in the year 2019. The film is particularly clever in the way that it integrates the rudimentary film-noir plot elements into the futuristic setting. Where the classic film-noir take on the plot may have been: a cop must hunt down and kill a group of highly-dangerous escaped convicts, the neo-noir take is: a 'Blade Runner' must hunt down and retire (kill) a group of Replicants (androids). Whether the directors of neo-noir films are conscious of it or not, they are carrying film noir influences into new and unique areas.
Suprisingly, the most prominent of all these 'new areas' seems to be that of intellectual thought. As directors synthesise film-noir and other cultural influences, they soon find themselves with an expansive melting-pot of ideas that need to be explored. More often than not, this results in more compelling and philososphical films that contain a specific moral, or are designed to make the audience think in a certain way. The above clip from the ending of Blade Runner illustrates this trend perfectly, as the main antagonist discusses the nature of his own life as a Replicant.
Another good example is that of Memento (below), which directly challenges the viewer to make sense from the unconventionally arranged narrative. The film's protagonist suffers from a mental conditions which prevents him from making new memories. As a result, he can only remember things for a short amount of time, and relies on notes, pictures and tattoos to guide him. The film begins with the protagonist shooting someone, and then the rest of the film is made up of clips chartering the protagonist's progress up until this point, all in reverse order. This method works incredibly well, because each new scene brings a sense of both satisfaction and mystery; you discover what led to the beginning of the previous scene, but are left wondering what led to the current one. Some people state that Momento is a non-linear film, however, as Director Christopher Nolan points out, the film is most definitely linear, because if the narrative did not follow a set path, the entire structure of the film would fall apart.
Even more interestingly, there is no real reason to restrict neo-noir to the confines of the medium of film. With the ever-expanding world of media distribution, it is no surprise that noir influences find their way into video games and music videos. The video for Franz Ferdinand's 'Walk Away' (below) is a prime example from 0:50 onwards, utilizing the film-noir style and stock-characters to tell a clichéd tale in a short space of time. The video is definitely a work of post-modernism, as it clearly exaggerates the conventions of noir (particularly the shadows on the wall at 1:44) but also goes against general conventions, revealing the filming studio at the end for dramatic effect.
Another manifestation of the neo-noir trend is Rockstar Games' Max Payneseries of video games, which, so far, has taken a gritty look at present-day crime. Interestingly, Rockstar are also currently working with Team Bondi on a game called L.A. Noire. The website claims that the game will be "an interactive detective story set in the classic noir period of the late 1940's". If the game lives up to these claims, and to the quality of the announcement trailer (below), it will be sure to stand out from the crowd; I am sure that gaming audiences will welcome a game that combines free-roaming, mission-based action with an immersive and distinct time period.
It seems, then, that film-noir was never really left behind at the end of the 50s. Noir is no longer just a genre or style; it has become a meme in the true sense of the word. It has embedded itself in the roots of popular culture, and its influences can be found spread across all areas of entertaining media. With regular deveopments in media technology, such as 3D viewing, the reaches of noir can only be extended.
Perhaps film-noir will re-establish itself as a cinematic trend in the coming years, or perhaps it will remain as an underlying and pervading influence, but either way, noir looks set to stay.
As an A-Level student interested in all things philosophical, Media gives me the opportunity to pull popular culture apart and explore the industry and its conventions. With an interest in drama, I like to write both creatively and analytically, and have experience in amateur filming and editing.
