Design Practice 2: Film: Inspiration and Brainstoming (Week One - Editor Role)(Part Two)

We all began by reading and coming to grips with our allocated script 'shift', which is basically the classic government conspiracy story, where the main character knows some information he shouldn't and is desperately trying to get that information into the public eye. We were glad to receive this script as it is was less restricted as some of the others and got us exited with the possibility's of the genre. 

We viewed the previous groups adaptation of 'shift' to draw influence and to eye up the level of quality, while viewing there version I suggested that seeing as our story was set in the thriller/adventure genre and dealt with crime and conspiracy, why not go for a film noir style. Everyone agreed that this would be a good idea and that it would differentiate us from the rest, the script literally begs to be set in a 1920's crime-filled New York, our main character would be represented perfectly as the cliche loner detective of that time period.

Just a quick poster to give you an image of what were thinking

So now we knew what visual style and genre we wanted our films to be, it was only fitting that we searched for other film noir movies to incorporate and draw influence from into are project, our producer Jordon has made a mood board to represent this:

I am in the process of analysing clips from this list http://www.imdb.com/chart/filmnoir, for editing influence, so far this is what I've got:

Interesting Edits:

Grainy, Typing text, Long one shots, Wiping Text, Disappearing into Circle Text, Falling Over Text, Block Style Text, Zooming In, Layered Videos, Fade To Black and use of Opacity.

Interesting Edit:

Fade to next clip with opacity, Long panning shot, Narration over clips, low volumed music,High Volumed Voices, High and Low shot.

Interesting Edits:

Fade in and out of black, Old London text, Narration, Jump cuts, A lot of setting the scene shots, blending next scene in the other by opacity, interchanging between faces while talking.

Inspiration for a Film Noir chase scene:

Notice the formula of interchangeable camera edits of long shots mixed in with close ups, This is what we could replicate In our film to create that classic film noir chase scene, I believe the way in which it's shot and edited almost creates a fun atmosphere rather than tense one

Inspiration for post modern Film Noir:

Sin City is the perfect example of film noir amped up for a post modern century. the juxtaposition of the rich B&W with digitally-hued Technicolor makes it hard to take your eyes off the screen. Only seeing splashes of colour at certain moments creates a great effect for  a comic book environment and the special effects of white flashes would all work great in our film noir project, going for a post modern approach would make editing more interesting for me.

Flashbacks, Ladders and Narration

Finally three elements form The walking Hills (1949) Piqued by interest, I feel like what they did with the flashback to mix up the linear timeline of the film was great, using a flashback would really allow me to be creative with my editing. I know it's not in a editors job description but i really really like that ladder slide as a way of escaping :) Finally the style of narration is spot-on.