Similar Products - Film Noir Conventions

Definition of Film Noir

'A type of crime film featuring cynical malevolant characters in a sleazy setting and ominous atmoshpere that is conveyed by shadowy photography and foreboding background music.'

Film Noir Conventions

Black and white
Flawed heroes
Glamourous female
Detective
Gangsters
Crooks
Crime based
American setting
Urban city setting
Smoking
Odd, striking shots (e.g. very low angle, very high angle, dutch tilts)
Flashbacks
World of corruption
Use of shadows and silhouettes
Rain
Moody setting
Jazz music

Film Noirs

The Maltese Falcon
Moontide
Rage in Heaven
The Shanghai Gesture
Street of Chance
This Gun for Hire
A Woman's Face
Experiment Perilous
Guest in the House
Laura
The Lodger
The House on 92nd Street
Jealousy
Johnny Angel
Mildred Pierce
My Name is Julia Ross
Scarlet Street
The Spider
The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry

The Maltese Falcon is about a private detective who takes on a case that involves him with three criminals, a gorgeous liar, and a quest for a priceless statuette.

Guest in The House is about a gorgeous young woman who disrupts a partnership.

The House on 92nd Street is about a man who becomes a double agent for the FBI in a Nazi spy ring

 My Name is Julia Ross is about a young woman who is tricked and by an evil family. She wakes up in a house in Cornwall where everyone tries to convince her she is not who she actually is. However she has a male friend who comes looking for her.

The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry is about bachelor Harry Quincey's developing relationship with one of his new colleagues, which is thwwarted by one of his selfish sisters.

All of these films revolve around trickery, deceipt and evil plans. The usually male main character is usually on some task for good, but is not wholly good himself, the undercover detective, the friend who goes looking for the woman. The plots place these characters in hopeless situations so they strive to restore balance. All of these films star glamourous women and most of them star twisted crooks. 'My name is Julia Ross' is very psychological and these types of film noirs are not uncommon.

Preliminary Task - Evaluation

Preliminary Task - Poster

Preliminary Task - Video

Final Video

Preliminary Task - Filming

The filming process

Me and Katie both split the role of director and camera worker. We got a lot of nicely framed shots with some fancy tilts, pans and tracking shots. However after filming we realised we made a major error in the filming, being that I didn't record most of the shots properly. When I was pressing the button to record the film I actually paused the filming, and ended up with a lot of recording of what happened inbetween the actual shots we wanted. We did however get most of the shots we needed and some tricky editing pretty much saved the film. However some of the shots we lost would of been a welcome addition to the film.

A mistake this big however ensures it will never happen again.

Preliminary Task - Team Work

The original concept of the film was my idea and together I feel we worked well transforming and growing that into our original idea. However I think it did feel we only did it because we didn't really come up with anything else, the brainstorm was pretty poor. Post production was fairly smooth progress to begin with the script and storyboard was done in a joint effort. Communication could of probably been improved a bit but throughout we improved on that so that was not a problem. 

Sharing the responsibilities organising the shoot was not so smooth as we could not film on the original planned date as one of the actors Katie got dropped out, and then the following week we could not film again because both the female actors couldn't do it yet again but it has made me learn that actors aren't that reliable. 

Preliminary Task - Camera Skills

Multi Camera Setup

A multi camera setup is where you film one scene with multiple cameras, to get lots of different angles of the same thing filmed at once. This is helpful for editing, continuity and saves a lot of time. It is especially good for filming a conversation between two people, using the 180 degrees rule.

Using a Tripod

Using a tripod is extremely useful and in most cases necessary to produce professional looking takes. They are stable and can handle pans, tilts, angled shots and such with ease. I will be using tripods and two cameras when filming my preliminary task.

Here is a clip which demonstrates how useful a multi camera setup actually is. Watch the transitions between shots and see how smooth they are.