Prop List

To make our film as realistic as possible and to make it look convincing to the viewers our actors had to wear and hold items that were used back in the 50's. Therefore we drew up a prop list and raided the drama department for them and our own house's. This is the list of props that we required:

• Hats (old fashion tophats/bowler)
• Fake cigar
• Fake cigeratte
• Suits
• Ties
• Red Dress
• Newspaper (created our own one)
• Two guns
• Briefcase
• Knife
• Pretend Coke
• Wine Bottle
• Fur Coat
• Trench Coat
• Typewriter

We were able to find or create all of these items. For the fake drugs we used flour in small food storage bags which worked really effectively as they are good and look similar to the drug. Also as you are not allowed to carry around a knife we had to make a fake one with silver card and foil. As when Reece Freeman puls out the knife it catches the light in shines really brightly which is very effective in a dark place.
The fur coat and the red dress go very well with thefemme-fetale as they are very seductive and classic apparel of the women in film noirs and of the age.
Cigars and the cigerattes were two very good props that Jack Squires had this is espicially shown in the opening scene with Reece at the desk and you can see the smoke coming from the cigar. This adds to the realism and will only enhance the viewer pleasure.
Also the hats we used for the two male roles were neccessary as they are the classic and most crucil concept of film noir as they add to the mystery which is imporant in our film and in all noirs. You don't want the plot to be two obvious and endings can be left on a cliff hanger just like ours. The typewriter was a hard to come by object and in the end I had to purcahse one from a car-boot sale. The noise that the typewriter make is very illuring and of course relates heavily to Sheldon Rex's profession of a journalist.
We also created our own newspaper, we took a standard news paper that Jack had and stuck our story over the top of it, we had taken a few pictures of Reece Freeman (Jack Squire) at an stand like object looking as if we was giving a rally which he would be as he is running to be Governor of Ney York. We also wrote our own mini story underneath. This was incase the viewers actually started to read it (even though the attention would be on the picture and the title we could not use dummy text as the shot is quite long and viewers might get slightly bored.