Call Sheet For Contemporary Film Noir Opening

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

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

script for noir film opening [first draft]

First script draft [changed idea through filming]

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.

By Amy Meitiner, producer

noir opening 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, editor

noir opening mis-en-scene art director treatment

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

new synopsis idea.

The scene opens with kira and ben in bed together, it seems like they're sleeping. Ben wakes up opens the curtains and looks in the mirror and se's something on its cheek. It's blood. He walks over to kira and pushes her over. Her face is bloodied and bruised. He doesn't know what to do, so he paces around. He starts to have flashbacks of the night before. These include ones of kira getting upset and asking him to hook up. But he says no. He then goes back into reality. But starts to think again.. More flashbacks come to him. He doesn't know what to do. He snaps back into reality. Someone walks down the hall and opens the door.

synopsis for noir film opening

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. 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.

By Amy Meitiner, producer

Treatment for the exchange

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)

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.

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.