Research - Film Noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Hollywood’s classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film noir of this era is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style

The term noir (French for "black film") first applied to Hollywood movies by French critic Nino Frank in 1946

Film noirs can encompass a range of plots, these are: -

• The central figure may be a private eye (The Big Sleep)
• A plain clothes policeman (The Big Heat)
• An ageing boxer (The Set-Up)
• A hapless grifter (Night and The City)
• A law abiding citizen lured into a life of crime (Gun Crazy)
• Or simply a victim of circumstances (D.O.A.)

From the 1960s onward, many pictures have come out that share attributes with film noirs of the classic period, often treating noir conventions in a self reflexive manner. Such latter-day works in a noir mode are often referred to as neo-noirs.

Reference – ‘Wikipedia’ and a video from ‘Youtube’

I will be using the element of film noir at the beginning of my film where I use a long lasting shot of the subject from a point of view shot. It will be in black and white, describing his life. The only other time film noir will come up in my film is at the end where I go back to black and white and he describes his death.

Evolvement Of Ideas

Since the ideas I first created I have come up with a narrative and a structure to work on for 3 film ideas I have the first is about a small town where everything is nice and the town is a community, until you see a dark alley way of some kind with a shady figure. The dark character has found a lever, and decides to pull. The whole the town goes black and white and the town are in shock and distress. One of the commuters finds the lever and pulls. The town goes back to colour. the shady comes back and pulls the lever, but this time takes the level with him leaving the town in black and white and the audience guessing will the town stay like that forever. I have decided for this film to be a thriller aiming at ages between 16 - 40 because its a mysterious but yet fun short film which i think will be enjoyed by those ages. The representation in this film will be that the hero and the villain are both men who they usually are, but the villain will have a disfigurement (a disability) to make him seem different. The narrative will be a linear narrative with a beginning, middle and end, this narrative will also be one by Propp who said that each film has a set of characters like the hero, villain, princess etc.
my second idea is point of view short film where it seems that its a person getting up to go to work for instance, but it turns out to be a dog, so people are caught of guard when watching. The narrative for this film is again linear but the theory for this short film is one by Roland Barthes who came up with codes that makes narratives work. The 2 that suit this film is the action code and enigma code. The action code is where a model of actions helps the viewers place details in plot sequences and determine how much action should be shown. So it can help me how much i should disguise the fact the man person is actually a dog, or give some hints that it is.
My third idea is the main idea; this is a film/horror film. A detective is on the case of mysterious killings which all seem to be the same, he talks to someone about the killings at his desk. (the detective has recently stopped smoking and that’s one point they get on to) he goes outside for a cigar but decides he has come to far and falls asleep.(dream) he wakes up hearing a scream and runs to it. When he reaches there, there is a woman standing in the middle of the road, he calls out to her and she runs at him. Just before they touch he wakes up and zooms out and turns out he is the killer. (Because ever since he stopped smoking he has manifested a new bad habit) the narrative for the story is linear, but could be seen as an open structure where the viewer is left wondering. My theory for this film comes from Todorov where came up with the equilibrium where everything is as it should be, but then suffers an equilibrium creating a new equilibrium.

Practice Movie Poster

This is my Movie Poster Vir Inferus, this is the practise poster i did with a partner where we quickly had to make up a film with a poster, and this is the end product

Photography Task Reflection

Our photography task was very interesting I finally understood how exposure works and how it can compliment someone but also that it can be too much; it came out with very good results by letting more light in because it disguised all blemishes on the subject and lighted up her face to show her personality. Also giving shadows on someone’s face to make them seem sinister and evil is very good. using the aperture was useful because by having a smaller aperture the more that objects will appear sharp from foreground to background, while having a big aperture gives a narrow depth of field and have fewer things in focus. This helped us in some pictures so we could focus on the subjects face and show their personality

Ideas

At the moment I have came I up with three ideas for my short film, I still think that there may be something better out there and maybe these ideas can still be evolved. The first is a zombie short film, where the film would be based a zombies recurring dream, or some one having a dream, and by having this dream about having been attacked by a zombie, he becomes one. The second idea I had is where there is a nice little town with go about there ways while a suspicious looking man down an alley way pulls a lever a turns the whole town into black and white and turns the town to chaos. my third idea is where a man or woman is able to see a certain persons memories, but it turns out that she has a split personality and the memories she sees in the other person is actually her own.