Update On Our Roles (Word Up Studios)

This is and update post on our roles/involvement in our final production, As you can see that my main roles haven't really changed but it is just a reminder of what else I need to do to complete our opening title sequence. The soundtrack is completed (the 'Nightmare Scene' theme and 'Dark Blues' track is now finally completed after hours and hours of experimentation). Props and Costumes Are all done I'll give you an update post on how we found the costumes and props that we used. Aerial camera operator, I wouldn't class this as a main role as we didn't actually use this in our final production, however we used it some of the behind the scenes work, to show an aerial view of the Lumberjack's 'home' location for the nightmare scene. 

All I really need to do now is the foleying, hopefully in the next couple of days I will have a list on this blog of all the different foleying sounds we need and how to create them , however due to me not having the final production I wouldn't be able to do that, And once Jack has finished the editing or there is enough footage I could use to begin foleying I will be instantly researching foleying techniques.

Jack

• Co-Director
• Script Writer
• Editor
• Casting Director

Fabian

• Co-Director
• Location Manager
• Director of Cinematography
• Camera Man
• Lead Technician (Lighting and Equipment)

Wil

• Composer
• Costume Manager
• Prop Manager
• Aerial footage
• Director of Foley

Courtesy to Jack Cullum for assigning the roles 

Dark Blues (Final Version) (Word Up Studios)-OTS

So this is the final version of Dark Blues, Our main soundtrack of the opening title sequence for our film noir. For this version I added drums and changed the instruments in some parts as eventhough  the instruments that I changed suited the style of blues I thought that it didn't really sound dark it gave a quite a cheesy sound so I kept the melody but changed the instrument that it was played on. The melody, which was originally played on an e clavichord, is now played on a glass instrument which creates ambient atmospheric sound. We final version of this soundtrack will be this version or the last version I sent out, which we'll decide as a group which one we prefer.

Dark Guitar / Nightmare (Final Version) (Word Up Studios)-OTS

This is the final version of the soundtrack for the nightmare scene, Not much has changed from the last version, however for this version I recorded this using a different software called  Audacity' as I thought it gave a better quality of  sound using the microphones we have at school, compared to 'Ableton'. Despite this I will definitely use 'Ableton' when recording the Dark Blues track as it gives me more of a range of different instruments to build up different layers and timbres.

Creating the soundtrack for this scene has been fairly difficult as I struggled on getting the right sound, As we started using different instruments (such as Strings), Different scales to give a certain mood/atmosphere and even different tones an pitches. However I think this is my favourite version as I think it relates to the scene well.

Props - What We've Got (OTS Little Red Riding Hood)

So after unsuccessfully looking around for a blanket and pillows, I managed to find this blanket and pillow on line, I showed a few different blanket style to Jack and Fabian and we decide that we wanted to have a blanket which looked quite dull and suited our character, as he is supposed to be a 'homeless man' and i thought that this style worked well for that. We also didn't want to have the colours too vibrant and avoid red colours as we only want specific objects to be red to help direct our narrative.

Finding as pillow as we were just looking for a standard white pillow that was cheap enough to buy and could be easily roughed up. Again I found this on line as, I couldn't a cheap white one we could used. However I think this would work well as part of the mise-en-scene in the Lumberjack's 'home', even though it seems clean now, We will rough it up a bit to suit our character and the look we want

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So, overall these two products cost around £13, which I think is reasonably cheap considering the style of the blanket. This will feature in some of the footage we will film soon, and then we can see if the blanket and pillow works well or not in the scenes or not. But I personally think that they will represent the lumberjack well, as a distraught man.

Dark Blues #2 (Word Up Studios)-OTS

For this piece of experimentation I use the pervious version of the 'Dark Blues' soundtrack and add different layers I added lower notes to represent a dark mood and changed the dynamics in some parts to build up tension in parts, I was considering to add other parts such as guitar parts as they can give a dark sound and they feature in both of my inspiration pieces.

Me Working On Dark Blues

I used some generic features of blues in this piece using 7th chords and using the blues scale, as well as keeping it slow paced and parts which are off beat. But using these features in a different way to make it sound dark to tie in with our film noir soundscape.

Different Layers For Dark Blues

For recording this soundtrack I used Ableton as it gives me a variety of different effects and instruments in needed to create the soundtrack and add different timbres to give a dark atmosphere and mood. I think the next one I could add a guitar part and a drums, but to add inspiration from a blues drums track to stick with the stylistic features of blues.

Dark Blues #1 (Word Up Studios)-OTS

To keep the conventions of a film noir we wanted to have a blues piece, but I decided that we should  make the soundtrack in the style of dark blues, so it ties in with our film noir. I got inspiration from  Castanets-No Trouble and So what I have done is tried to create the sound but put my own style on it and adapt it to suit our film noir. This is just the basics i have create and over time I will post different versions and add different layers to make it sound similar but still unique enough to be specific to our film. I was also inspired by the famous John Murphy-In a House, In a Heartbeat also known as the '28 weeks Later' soundtrack as I wanted to create some thing simple but builds up tension by adding layers and including Distortion guitars to create the angst and tension for our opening title sequence.
Here's What I Got Inspiration From:

• Hozier - Arsonist's Lullaby.
• Castanets-No Trouble
• John Murphy-In a House, In a Heartbeat
• Ben Howard - Oats In The Water (Slightly I used similar instrumentation)

How To Make Fake Blood (OTS Little Red Riding Hood)

First Recipe - Liquid Recipe

1. 1 cup of corn starch
2. 1 tablespoon of water
3. 2 tablespoons of red food colouring
4. Few drops of green food colouring 
5. Mix all the ingredients together and adjust the quantity of red and green food colour.

Second Recipe - Best Recipe

1. 1/2 cup Tropical fruit punch 
2. 1 cup corn syrup
3. 2 tablespoons of red food coloring
4. 1 tablespoon of chocolate syrup
5. 2 tablespoons of cornstarch
6. 1 tablespoon of powdered cocoa

Third Recipe

1. Add 8 ounces of water to the blender.
2. Add 16 ounces of powdered sugar to the blender (you can find a 16 ounce box of sugar at the store). Blend it up. You may need to turn the blender on and off a few times to make sure it blends well.
3. Add 1 ounce of red food coloring (you can also purchase a 1 ounce jar at the store). Blend it up. Make sure it blends well.
4. Add 1 tablespoon of cocoa powder. Blend it up. Make sure it blends well.
5. Use a spoon to scoop out some of the fake blood. Drip it on a paper towel our your hand.

We can test all these recipes out to see which ones work the best and gives the best colour and consistency so we will be able to see it still, even when we have a black and white filter over it.

Props - Based On Our Test Footage (OTS Little Red Riding Hood)

Herbal Cigarettes - Honeyrose
We will use Herbal Cigarettes in our film noir, this will be used by most of the characters and especially the main characters (Femme Fetale, Lumberjack and the Bad Wolf). We wanted to give a realistic feel to the story and wanted to use something almost exact to the cigarette which wouldn't damage our health, so we researched products that we could use and we found these:

Blankets
We will use a tartan blanket in order to show that this the lumberjack's home, and eventhough we're not trying to give he impression that he is homeless we are tying to show that his life has ruined and feels secluded from everyone else. Obviously we won't buy a new blanket as that would be costly when as we will only destroy it any way as we want him to live in a disgusting environment and not a homely places I'll probably buy an old blanket from a second hand shop to give it that destroyed look.

Pillows
Like the blankets probably use old pillows as they will suit our character. While looking for the blankets i will try and find some old pillows possibly only one or 2 different coloured ones as obviously the lumberjack wouldn't of paid for them so he would have found them, so it is unlikely he would've got a matching pair.

Rubbish
We could probably find some bits of card and rubbish which could use to create a worn down house, this shows that the lumberjack is lower class and has to live in a destroyed house as this shows, what is been reflected inside, as is a stable human being he has collapsed and hit a low point as what has happened in the past.

Red Hood
This prop is essential to the opening title sequence as the name of the sequence is called "Little Red Riding Hood", so it makes sense to have a red hood for our femme fetale. It is also a key prop to the narrative as is used for a piece of forshadowing of whats going to happen later on in the story.

Nightmare #3 (Word Up Studios)-OTS

I have worked on the soundtrack for the nightmare scene and as a group we feel that this piece will set the mood and atmosphere which we wanted to achieve. From previous pieces experimentation, we discussed that we wanted the piece to be simplistic with only a single acoustic guitar, I also recorded another guitar piece, but we thought it sounded bit western and we wanted it to be a bit slower and lower in pitch it is supposed to sound quite sombre and the other one had some high part which stuck out whereas Word Up Studios and I thought it would've sounded better if it all blended into one.

Aerial Footage - Location Footage (OTS Little Red Riding Hood)

This is the aerial footage I filmed while shooting some test footage at our waking up scene location. For this I was using an Syma 5XC, which i got for christmas, We didn't want to use it for our actual film noir, but we thought we could use it to film our location used in our scenes. As it would of been a shame to not use it in our production. This is our first location and as you can see it includes a destroyed house with woods directly outside suitable for our narrative. As you can I'm not the best flier and it isn't the best footage but for the price and what we used it for, shows our location quite well. I would of liked to have recorded more places but as it has a little memory space and battery little then we kind of restricted on what we can film, so we tried to keep the footage as relevant as possible to where we are filming and our main location in the woods.