FMP- Reaching out

Being a filmmaker is all about expanding your skill set. Now there are many ways to do this, you can watch the masters of cinema and learn from them, read a book on certain technics or even be told how to do something by a much more experience filmmaker. All these things are good, but don't surpass the knowledge you gain from actually picking up a camera and doing it yourself, old fashioned trial and error.

As a budding filmmaker, there are many styles and techniques I am yet to use, that is why my FMP offers such a great opportunity to learn. I have also decided on a project which will require skills to produce a style I have never really tried to achieve, film noir. It is such a distractive style that there are countless things that I am going to need to research into and practise.

The first big one is lighting. In any production lighting is a corner stone, shoots are often planned to be in certain times of the day so they get the right light. With such a unique style as noir, you have to be very specific in how you light your scene. This is something that will require a ton of practise, both in the studio and in an outside environment.

The next thing to look at is black and white as well as selective colour. There are many ways to achieve a black and white look. Most cameras now allow you to shoot native in BnW in camera and sucking the colour out of a video is as easy as pulling down a slider in post. However, when shooting for back and white there are certain things that need to be addressed. It will be these issues and differences that I will need to research into to get the most organic feeling film.

Something which is less technical but still a key part of the film will be how can we get actors smoking cigarettes if they are either non-smokers or recovering from addiction. The last thing we want is someone who was previously addicted to start up again because of the film, that is a lawsuit waiting to happen. However, the noir genre demands smoke so one way or another we will get it. I want to find out what they use in Hollywood and experiment with perhaps doing something in post.

The big finally thing that I want to improve on is the camera movement. The genre of film noir has some signature angles and movements that I would love to be able to recreate. This will take time and effort but should really add to the overall project.