In what ways does your media use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of film noirs.

Our film uses many classic conventions of film noirs;

We use black and white throughout the whole film. Most film noirs use black and white and noir itself in French means 'black film'. Black and white film makes the whole film seem darker which adds to the eeriness of the film. Black and white used in film noirs in the late 1940's and early 1950's and only the more recent films have used colour such as Brick and LA Confidential.


Another convention we used was that the film is set in America, a lot of the film noirs at the time were set their such as The Big Sleep and LA Confidential. As it was set in America all the actors needed to use an American accent which was quite hard to do. We decided that our femme-fetale should be English and should speak in a posh accent so that it distinguishes her and makes her more seductive and intelligent.
We used an all time classic convention in film noirs which is venetian blinds.
example:

Lola - Double Indemnity

The reason we used this concept was that it creates mystery as it does not reveal the identity of the person. It creates bar which in our film represents a prison/trap/cage like effect. When used in our film Rex is meeting up Sylvia and this suggest she is luring him into her trap.

Themes that we used which are not necessarily common in film noirs was that we let our murderer get away in the end and is never caught, in American film noirs the perpetrator is always caught. The reason we decided to let him get away was because we wanted to use some realism in our film so that a UK audience could relate to the film. In the UK a lot of our films and TV uses realism where in the UK it is not.

Another concept you do not see in film noirs that often was that we left the film on a cliffhanger when the audience is not left knowing if Reece kills Sylvia this is because this scene builds a lot of tension and keeps the audience on their seats. After the film it makes the audience think and talk about what they think the ending would be. This creates a form of promotion 'word of mouth' for the film which is only a good thing.

We used cigars and cigarettes in the film as well, we believe this was important as at the time smoking was seen as cool therefore we needed the main characters to be seen as idols for the audience viewing it back then. It also creates a smokey scene which adds to the mystery of our film, the difference between Sheldon smoking and Reece shows the divide socially between the two, Reece is pictured with a huge cigar while Sheldon has a small cigarette.

We used murder as a key theme which in all film noirs is a focal point, it adds drama to the film and makes the film much more interesting. Usually in film noir the murder is more subtle than a gun shot but we felt that as our scene is in an open area it will echo and create a nice sound.

Having a femme-fetale was also important to us and we needed it in our noir as she is the main character and develops the emotions for the two men.

We used politics and corruption as a theme in our noir which I have personally not seen on a governmental level, this in 1950's would have caused a stir but common films have embraced this concept.

We had many common angles seen in film noirs such as canted angles and angles that showed position of power, this is mostly seen when Reece points the gun at the two at the table. The over the should low angle shot really shows who is in charge.

We used power as the key theme in our film, all of the characters want power over one another, Reece wants power being that he wants to be governor, Rex wants power over Reece by being able to publish this story he will become a big player in the journalist industry. Sylvia wants money which brings power and she has power over both the men, this is seen throughout the film and how she manipulates them and plays them against each other.

We used a mirror shot which is classic in film noir, this is seen when Reece Freeman is about to discover his wife and Sheldon Rex together.

We added a scene in which had to talking at all which is not common in film noirs, either there is talking or no talking throughout the whole film. Combining the two worked really well and made the scene stand out. The acting and the camera angles meant that no words actually needed to be said and the audience could still understand what was going on.