Costume Femme Fatale Deconstruction

Inspiration: The Femme Fatale

Make up

My first inspiration for part of the costume is the make up and hair style from Sin city posters featuring the femme fatales. Much emphasis is on the colour of red, especially red lipstick which stands out on the monochrome background.

The femme fatale is the dangerous seductress who causes trouble for the protagonist, and sometimes is the antagonist in a film noir, and red is often used as a representation of blood and danger but also lust and romance suitable for a femme fatale. 

Femme fatale make up:

• Simple soft curls
• Dark eyes, winged eyeliner 
• red lipstick 
• Pale complexion

Costume: Inspiration 

Marilyn Monroe was the was the glamorous fashion icon. In the 1940/50s women often wearing form fitting clothes, something Monroe fully embraced the classic little black dress, much like an elegant femme fatale . I wanted to base the femme fatale appearance around her as she had a glamorous which would have influenced many women's fashion choice.   

   

I can see from this deconstruction that our femme fatale character doesn't have to be dressed elaborately,as the style is quite simple, but tight fitting or long and flowing to conform with the dress style of women in the 1940 and 50s.          

Deconstruction of Female Actors

 

Film Noir Female Characters

Lead Female actor:The main lead woman is known as the 'femme fatale'.The femme fatale's role is to block the male lead in his pursuit of solving a crime/problem. They are promiscuous women who are seductresses for the male characters, they are glamourised as the sultry, dramatic double-dealing women who are the cause of an issue- either through a betrayal or double-crossing. When working against the femme fatale she is normally stopped, or destroys the main lead man, resulting in a not so happy ending.  

The 'Good Girl': To contrast with the 'femme fatale' the view of the traditional family woman is introduced. A 'normal' reinforces the innocence of the 'Good girl' and highlights the allure of the femme fatale which draw the audience towards her. She is often depicted out of place and a damsel in distress and the victim of circumstance.

Veronica Lake

  In 'Blue Dahlia' Lake's appeared as Joyce the estranged wife of Eddie Haywood, she plays the femme fatale who ends up helping the protagonist in his pursuit to fix an issue and leaves with him at the end, and it's suggested that their characters have a romantic relationship. 

Positive Audience Feedback for final draft of film opening

Peer Feedback Comments

These peer feedback comments didn't really have any improvement points but I got a good insight into what the audience thought was successful, and what we should keep.

 

 

I could decipher that "stereotype" also meant conventions and most film noirs are set in America, and we wanted to conform to this convention.

Positive:

• Use of sound- non-diegetic soundtrack and non-diegetic dialogue (voice over)
• Typography was appropriate and the transitions between them
• Most had identified the genre of Film Noir by the common conventions, and of those who didn't they still identified the element of crime.    
• Mise-en-scene conforming to Film Noir conventions
• effective use of black and white filter

Audience Feedback Improvements for final draft of film opening

Peer Feedback Comments

During a peer assessment of our film opening, we received an assortment comments, however the general feedback was very similar but I looked through to identify the improvements we could make. 

This group stood out for me as they brought forward the most concern and points of improvements. Though we can't go back and re-film or replace the cassette for them, we can amend the sound gap in final cut pro. This particular issue can be fixed by going back and looking through sound clips and seeing where this gap is, next the gap could be filled with the appropriate non-diegetic music.Though we must be mindful of that fact that altering the sound may diminish the dramatic effect of the loud 'boom' sound at the end, however this is a valid improvement that should be considered if the silence seemed out of place.          

 



 The improvements from this group were more doable than the ones from the last group, as I could adjust the exposure of light in the frame during this scene. Though many some groups had found it easier to tell that it was money in the scene than others. 

Overall feedback 

• Sound gap needs to be filled as it seems odd
• lighting and exposure on the money scene

Editing: Adding Titles Credits

Titles credits  

In accordance to the deconstruction I had done, I decided to use the titles that had previously been made by Xena and put them into place.

Like in my research I put the names of the actors first which I put in as soon as the opening begins.

 

Then after I had finished with the actor's titles I moved onto ordering the production team's titles, with the director and executive producer's names last, which adhered to my deconstruction.

 

 

 

 

 

After viewing all the titles in order, I noticed that each time the appeared seemed too sudden and contrasted too much with the texture of the background filter and soundtrack, which generated a smoothness to tones of the footage. 

 

 

 

To solve this issue I added cross dissolve transitions to the titles so it faded out and looked more like the deconstructions of film noir that I had done.       

 

The typography itself seemed quite intense than it had done when I viewed it as an isolated picture, so to sort this out I went into the lighting control and adjustments, and moved the highlights down by -11% to make it blend into the background just a little, so there wasn't such a big contrast. I then went back and did the same thing to all the other clips.

Once I had finished I went back to view the changes, which I was happy with, then I made sure that all the titles appeared before the one minute mark because I didn't want them dominated the frame through the action scenes- or scenes of tension.

Overall, I was satisfied with how the titles turned out and fit in with the conventions of film noir, and was generally integrated well.   

Deconstruction of Film Noir titles inspiration

Little Candy Heart Titles Deconstruction

 The only film noir/ neo-noir opening that I could find that had titles in the opening. In this film all the titles were in separate frames and central rather than integrated into the same frame that the scene is occurring in.  

 

 (0:31)

(0:33) 

(0:37)

(0:41)

 

I noticed that all the actors were mentioned first on a black glistening background. (0:45)

Then the musician 'original music written and composed' which we can't really use as we didn't compose any of the music soundtracks ourselves. However we can use this as one of our professional titles.
(0:49)    

'Director of photography ': is the leader of the crew on the film or television production and are responsible for achieving artistic and technical decisions on the project. 

We can use this as an anagram of our names as none of us were really in charge. (0:52)

 

'Written': refers to who wrote the script and storyboard for the film project. This means that we could use all our names or co-writer names for this section. (0:56)

'Executive producer' is the head producer of the creation of the film. (1:00)   

 'Director' leads the film's creation and technical crew and actors. (1:04)  

 

I've learnt from this opening is that all the credits should happen in the first minute of the opening.

Editing part 2 post production of Harlem Sunset

Editing

 During the next stage of editing we went back through the editing, in order to improve our fade to colour transition.

We added a clip on the end and deleted them, which left us with this blank frame, and I used blade to split it so I could move the two parts.    

 

• When I had moved one piece between these two transitions (as seen above)but I stretched the blank frame in order to trim it later in case the blank frame was too short. Which it was. This was so the transition became lengthened, giving it a cleaner finish than the last time I left it.  

• When we reviewed the clips where I had put the transitions I concluded that there wasn't enough emphasis on the collision of the shot of the shoe and the 'detective'. As a result using a YouTube converter that Xena had found, she was able to find non-copyrighted 'boom sounds' on a separate Mac. As a group we decided on the sound appropriate sound to use, and she was able to email the link to me in order for me to input it into the converter.    

• Later on after I had the 'boom sound' in place, the scene had looked good, however the non-diegetic sound had diminished the effect of the rest of the (climatic) scene and didn't do the rest of the scene justice with just one 'boom sound'. As a result I added three more, after every fade to colour transition and also at the end. 

• Once I added the 'boom sound' I noticed that they seemed out of place with our other sullen, slow paced, non-diegetic soundtrack. Using the YouTube converter we found suspense music, which the whole group had decided on and layered this onto the existing music track to build suspense once the protagonist (femme fatale) appears for the first time in the narrative.       

• To make sure that everything was in order I reviewed the footage with the blinking effects however I thought it seemed illogical to show the close up of the detective's face, with his eyes struggling to open, before the low angled shot of the protagonist. With this in mind I moved the clip of the close up shot after the low angled shot and was satisfied with it. 

After I had finished adding the sounds and effects to the last scene, this was the outcome of the whole opening. 

With the sound and the refined editing of the blinking effects, the scene had smoother transitions to make the blinking effects more realistic, and the sound added suspense which will lead up to the dramatic reveal of the true protagonist and narrator at the end.     

Editing post production of Harlem Sunset

Editing

Our first editing session with the group consisted of group contribution, and we during this we all contributed to the editing equally and no one was really taking the lead.

 

 On the other hand, I was the second to edit the footage that we had taken.

 

• In the beginning I started cropping and trimming the clips as we'd just ordered the clips in chronological order, and some of cropping and trimming had already been done, but I just finished it off so all the shots were conforming to the story board so the continuity wasn't disturbed.    



 

 

 

 

• After Hazel had edited in the blinking effects for our "revelation" scene where the main villain (femme fatale) is revealed. We realised that this clip had been too long and didn't have intervals of black, so the fade to colour transition happened too quickly. As the clips were too long we had to delete a few shots and trim them.

• Once I had dealt with the blinking effects I added a quick transition of fade to colour, between a shot of the suitcase on the floor wide open and the detective on the floor and then the close up to his face, this enabled us to smoothen transition between shots so it wasn't so sudden yet represented the detective's mind going in and out of consciousness.

• At first I had trouble adjusting the speed of the transition as I thought it happened too fast but made each frame too short.I realised I had to add the same shot twice over, so the transition could happen the speed it was going at without taking up frame time of the detective on the floor.       

During this editing session I was starting to get a better feel of final cut pro, and gradually began to explore the program, this led to being able to navigate my way through the software with ease and by the end I was became more confident using the program.

Harlem Sunset voice-over Script

Voice-over of Scarlett "Harlem Sunset" practical

 

Once we had the majority of the continuous editing was done, I got a sense of  how long the script had to be in order to fit in the last part of the final production of 'Harlem Sunset'.

 

 

 

Whilst writing I realised I couldn't write all the script all together in one block, as I needed certain parts to be isolated in order for it to be edited in to correspond with what is happening in the frame; during the "where's the money" as this is what another actor is saying on screen.    

 

Film Noir slang

• Snooper: detective or private detective 
• Kick: Complaint
• bracelets: Handcuffs

I wanted the script to contain film noir slang in, however I felt that too much would make it less natural so I stuck with only three so there is continuity in the use of film noir slang (as shown in previous script).  

Evaluation

The writing itself was easy as it fits the general narrative of the second half of the film opening, however I may have written too much, but if this is the case I can cut bits out if the sound track is too long. Though doing four different recordings could make the editing process easier as we can easily remove bits we don't need and re-order them, thus improving the continuity of our film opening.  



film-evaluations 22nd of december

22nd of December

 

On the 22nd of December we arrived at the location promptly at 10 o'clock in order to set up. As a group we decided that we wouldn't do any filming as we didn't have our actor who couldn't make it on the date, but we were together to take polaroid pictures and set up for the 2nd of January. We had planned to do the last scene which doesn't involve the detective, however due to the weather being unpredictable and wet, we decided against it.

 

We were using the corner for the brick wall background, which Zayanah set up by installing a chair to the place where we can't see the garage door.

 

Unfortunately, we did not have a tripod on the day and we couldn't find a person with a tripod that was nearby, so to do this we used step ladders in order stabilise the camera and balance it at the right height. Eventually we decided on the taller step ladder, as it had the right height, which allowed the camera to capture the right shot. Despite the lack of tripod we worked well to move past it and work with our resources.

 

This was part of the wall that the camera had taken, which was the right sort of shot we wanted.

 

 

As I was the victim, Hazel had helped me with my costume and did my hair, ready for the picture. Zayanah held the garage down as it kept rattling and opening, and Xena took the pictures.

The last part of props was the whisky glass for the pictures, we used a small glass in which we diluted coke in water to give it some colour.

Photos

Our first set of photos were of the victim in the kidnappers location.

The next we had done were of stalker like pictures which suggested a long obsession. This fools the detective into thinking that she's a real victim.

 

 

Lastly, we finished the day with regular looking photos of the victim, we then chose the best two to put on the evidence board.

 

 

Although we had a few set backs such as the weather and no tripod, we persisted as a group, and got as much done as possible, though we then had lots to do the next time we were together. However, seeing the layout of the rooms and area we were filming prepared us for the next time when we were filming.