Opening credits

These are the credits (in order of apperance and relitive font size) to appear at the start of the film at the bottom of the screen as the detectives walk in:

• Albert Rendle
• Thomas Popay
• Costume design-Luke Swain
• edited by- Samuel Valente
• Producers- Albert Rendle
• director- Samuel Valente

This style and apperance of the opening credits was inspired by the opening credits to "Drive"

Provisional Research and Planning Mark

You need to revisit research posts and explore further target audience, editing, mise en scene, locations, camera compostition, sound, light, branding, use of titles, genre indicators, key moments. Create an animatic using your storyboard materials and comments on its strengths. You need to evidence your music research and choices. Post on the history of your genre. Make sure you haven't posted something without commenting on it fully. Where would a picture or a title benefit your research? 12/20

history of crime drama

Timeline
1900's

1930's

1940-50's

1960-70's

The 80's

 brought about several new versions of the mystery film as well as the re-emergence of the film noir genre from the 40's, in a new style of film known as Neo-noir erotic thrillers, this added to the moody atmosphere with more sexuality being explored in the films and more and used a lot of sexually explicit scenes, the best film of this genre was Sea of Love with Al Pacino. Other film styles that became popular in this time period was military and Police films, which were complex films based around military matters, cover-ups and conspiracies, some of these films include State of Play, The general's daughter and Bloodwork. These also led to the introduction of period piece films based around LA in the 40's and 50's, these often had some message about current problems. LA confidential was probably the best of these films because it won 2 academy awards and was nominated for 9.
The 60's and 70's was were the period of 30's films were being made tributes, with many films going back to the old times of more classic detectives like Sherlock Holmes, but the lead film in this period was Chinatown by Roman Polanski, this film is considered as one of the best mystery films ever made and it won 9 awards. The film was also credited with providing more awareness of the water issues involving Los Angeles during the 1910's.
Humphrey Bogart was one of the major actors and influencing figures of this genre, as he was able to fit into the cruel and violent world many of these films were based in, the clip above was from one of his films 'In a lonely place' this film was one of the first psychological films.
During the 40's and 50's the genre took a much darker tone due to the second world war. This lead to an increase in macho, tough guy detectives who were almost as bad as the bad guys they were meant to be catching, the genre began adding new crimes such as corruption, making them appeal more to the audiences as corruption was a major issue in the US at this time and tales of corrupt businesses during the second world war fuelled this idea.
In the 1930's many films came out with a detective that used Denouement, which is were the detective pools together all the clues to discover who the real bad guy is, this time period was also a period of so-called Gentlemen detectives who don't use violence but intelligence to solve murders, they normally carry no weapons and have eccentric personality's, however this style of detective only survived until 40's as the relative success as films like 'The Kennel Murder Case' were very popular and successful. But the introduction of tough detectives who used more brute force made audiences more excited.
This is one of the very first examples of mystery films, despite Sherlock Holmes being unrecognisable, it was one of the first films to be based on a book or novel, most mystery films of this period were being based on novels such as Agatha Christie's Miss Marple and Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes.
The crime/mystery genre is a sub-genre of crime films, in which a investigator has to unravel a mystery, usually based around some kind of murder. The earliest mystery film was a 30 second film of the classic Sherlock Holmes, made in 1900 and registered in 1903 by Arthur Martin.

Media makeup tutorial

we used gelatine to create a fake layer of flesh on the face of the actor playing the dead body, we did this by placing the gelatine in a bowl with hot water  allowing the gelatine to absorb the water so that when the gelatine is placed in the microwave (for 10 seconds) to melt it does not burn. once the gelatine has melted we had to wait a little while for it to cool down so that it would not be runny but instead would be like a gloppy slimy substance which is very sticky; if the substance was too runny it wouldn't stick to the dead persons face instead it would just run of onto the floor. it is important to get the consistency of the gelatine correct; if the gelatine has cooled down too much it will form a solid structure again and won't be able to be placed onto the dead persons face (unless re-heated) and if the gelatine is still really runny then it won't stay on the dead persons face. once the gelatine is at the correct consistency it can be placed onto the dead persons face or any other area which wants to be seen as a cut/scare, the gelatine should be applied using a t-spoon the gelatine should then be left to set on the face but whilst it sets you have to use the back of the t-spoon to grab the sticky gelatine and lift it up this adds the texture to the flesh and also looks like skin has been pulled off. After adding the texture to the gelatine the gelatine should be in a solid form on the face of the dead person by now so the actual makeup can now be added. The first layer of makeup we used was the red as that is the lightest colour and can be covered easily by a darker colour. next we used blue and red together to form purple which we then added to the create the second layer this made the gelatine then look like flesh with blood underneath also it allowed us to make half of the dead persons face look bruised. lastly we added a tiny amount of black which outlined the gelatine making the flesh stand out more also it  made the gelatine look darker (as blood is not bright red it is normally dark red) also the black made the bruise come alive to make it more realistic.

crime genre research

Film diary 3

 

On Friday 10/01/14 i am going to be filming/ taking pictures of how i made the make up for the dead body to do this i am using my video camera which can film and take pictures.

At the moment in the lessons we are editing the footage that we have filmed already so that we can see what we need to re-film (if we do need to). In the editing we are cutting the shots down so that they flow smoothly when played (one shot links well with the other) we are also getting rid of bad footage that is either too wobbly or doesn't link well with the other shots around it.

influences and issues of film production

we planned to go last weekend which was the 7/12/13 and film the rest of the film that we needed however we could not as Sam fell ill and had to go to hospital so we couldn't film that weekend we could have done it the next day but i was busy doing family things and Sam was still ill. We now plan to go this weekend 14/12/13 and hopefully get all the filming done. Another problem that set us back was the fact that our main actor Albert could not make it and he was our main actor and we were using his camera so we couldn't film at all last weekend. when we did go out and film 17/11/13 we couldn't find any police tape which meant we had to delay further however we managed to go to B&Q and find some electrical wire tape which when cut in half looked similar to police tape we also managed to find a instillation suit which looks similar to forensic suits so we used that to create a crime scene feel towards the audience. Our media lessons switch between two classes and only one of those classes has the right computer software to edit our footage so it is taking longer than usual to edit our film together which is setting us back even further.

Filming vlog

This filming vlog will be about setting up the case for filming

Film diary

so far we have filmed the opening shots of our film and one of the last shots this is because we had to borrow a police vest and we had a limited time to use and film the vest so we filmed all the shots that the vest would be in so we can carry on filming without the vest another day. we practiced each shot at a different angle with a different method of doing a continuous shot, methods like trying to use a bike to follow the characters as they walk in to the crime scene or using a tripod and holding it by hand trying to keep it steady as the camera follows the characters or maybe just holding the camera on its own seeing which one would be the most steady. as it turns out it was more steady using the tripod because with the bike it was too low and still too bumpy and using the camera with just your hands was too wobbly so the tripod added balance to the camera so we went with that. we couldn't find any police tape to tape off the crime scene so we used electric warning tap and cut it in half so it would only say caution on it and it looked really good it even fooled people walking past to think that it was a real crime scene.

Filming vlog

This filming vlog will be about Setting up the crime scene for filming

Filming problems we faced

we ended up not being able to go film part of our film on Friday or Saturday so we ended up filming on Sunday instead we were able to get the first and last shot done it took us a while because we had to try and get it as steady as possible so we were basically doing the same shot over and over again seeing which one was better we found that using a tripod and carrying it backwards because it allowed balance whilst walking backwards so there would be less wobble.

Timeline

6th September - Started AS level media coursework

First time we learnt about the course and what kind of media product we would have to make, also set up the blog, learnt about how to analyse opening 2 minutes.

11th October - Preliminary task completed

Learnt several filming techniques including shot reverse shot and Match on action, it was also our first use of the school cameras.

9th November - Initial filming shots and planning shot ideas

Produced ideas about how to use our location to the best we can, also decided what kind of shots we will use and how we are going to film.we went to our film locations and practise filming the shots and scenes that we plan to use in our actual filming this is so that if we make a mistake we have time to think about it and make changes if need be so that when our actual filming comes round we know exactly what we want to do so we will be more organised this way we don't waste any time and this means the extras in our film will be happier as we wouldn't have wasted any of their time whilst filming.

17th November - First filming weekend

30 seconds of filming produced. Began editing in class over the week, also tried to come up with institution name and the font we will be using.

7th December - Final filming weekend where we filmed most of the shots during the day and the flashback shots in the evenings.

Monday 10th December - We have now got our filming footage and we are now editing the footage and trimming it so that each shot has good continuity. We produced about 6 minutes of footage and is currently being edited down to 2 minutes in class, we also produced our own non-diegetic sound for use in the film.

Script

Witness: please! Come quick, I've found a body by the bridge, I think he fell.

Cut

Detective 2: you should really stop smoking you know.

Detective 1: My family thinks so too, Maybe a new year’s resolution?

Officer enters scene

Detective 1: Morning officer.

Officer: Sir, the body’s over there in the corner, initial reports are here along with forensics reports,

, this looks like a weird one sir.

Detective 1: Alright, I’ll take a look.

Cut

Detective 1: What’s this?

Throws/catch cut

Detective 1: What’s in there?

Detective 2: Diamonds.

Detective 1: Looks like robbery wasn't the motive.

Cut

Detective 1: What’s this? Huh, foreign licence.

Cut

Detective 2: So what was the killer actually after then?

Cut

Detective 1: I don’t know but I plan to find out, there’s a blood trail over there, looks like something was dripping the victim’s blood.

Cut

Detective 2: Let’s see where this leads.

Cut

Detective 1:  What’s that? Looks like a briefcase or something.

Cut

Detective 2: there it is

Cut

Detective 2: So what do you think happened?

Detective 1:  Well…

Narration of flashback begins

Detective 1:  The killer knew the victim would be there, so he waited for him and simply took him by surprise and pushed him off the bridge later throwing the case in the river.

Narration of flashback ends

Detective 2: that makes sense, but what’s in the case?

Detective 1:  Let’s find out.

Cut to opening of case

Detective 2: Shit.