Beginning our Film Noir

I have paired up with Jack Squires to create our film noir for our A2 media project. We both enjoy the same sort of genres which we wanted to include to make the film a neo-noir. We enjoy horror and crime films so as you can see from our film that we will include suspenseful moments and use of classic crime props such as; guns, cigars and top-hats. We initially brainstormed some features we wanted to include in our film the final ones we chose were: politics, drugs, money and murder all of which can easily be included under film noir protocol. Before developing the plot we decided on what characters we would need and what their names shall be, we initially needed 5 characters but decided to have 4 as the plot would be too confusing to fit into a short film. The names we choose were:
-Sheldon Rex
   -We chose this name because he can be called Rex for short and that it sounds like it is from the 50's era. It also sounds like a detectives name. Yet subliminally I might have taken it from the Simpson's and the character Rex Banner who is this shady detective. Even though Sheldon is not a detective he is a journalist he has to do some snooping around to uncover the stories
-Reece Freeman
   -We chose this name because at the end of the film [SPOILER] he walks away a Free Man, so there is a spin on words. The name sounds quite posh which our character is and as he is running for governor he needed to have a respectable name.
-Sylvia Freeman
   -We chose this name because she is married to Reece so it is easier for the audience to tell that they are together. Also Sylvia is a quite seductive name and was a popular first name around the time the film was set, so it seemed fitting.
-John Barnacles
   -We chose this name for no real reason as he is never referred to by his name and is only known as boss to Sheldon.

We then had to decide who we wanted to play these parts and who were good actors and could fit around our schedule as we had many different days to film on because we had many different settings.

Sheldon Rex

I chose Ben Cartwright because he is a close friend and he has stared in many of the school productions. He is quite tall which is good as he needs to be taller than the femme-fetale and he is thin therefore is not to dominant as in film noirs the femme fetale has the power. Ben is also excellant at accents as you will see in the final production.







Reece Freeman 

Jack Squires was happy to have a lead role as he has also acted and directed the Sixth Form Revue. He is also good with accents and as he is bigger the Ben he is more intimitating and demands more respect and in the final scene he is going to kill ben. He is very good playing the 'bad guy' role.







Sylvia Freeman

For my Femme-fetale we chose Lucy Cunnington to play Sylvia, as she has all the concepts of a femme-fetale, she has long blonde hair and looks good in a red dress. She is very seductive as she has a good figure and good lips. She also has acted previously in her own film noir and played the femme-fetale so she has history of playing this role succesfully.






John Barnacles

I played John Barnacles as it was the smallest part to play as I have not properly acted before other than compulsory School Plays at the age of 6-11. As I am smaller than Rex I would seemingly have less authority but by the way I talk with such convinction and the camera angles used I am able to gain respect a lot like Keyes in Double Indemnity

Research - My DVD Cover

This was my attempt at creating a DVD cover for my film noir I have called it 'Time is Money', this might not necessarily the name I will use for my actual film.

Front Cover
Back Cover
Side Cover

As you can see I have tried to include many classic conventions of film noir which makes my DVD cover very appealing.

Research - LA Confidential

In class we have watched the film LA Confidential which is a neo-noir film set in Hollywood, before watching the film I depicted the DVD cover to get a feel of the film before watching it and observe the conventions used that we associated with noir.

LA Confidential DVD Cover

As you can see from a DVD cover we can easily see that a cover can tell an audience a lot about a film, this will be useful and I will try and incorporate some of the themes when I come to create my own DVD cover. This will also be useful when I come to make my film poster for the coursework.

LA Confidential
Characters;

• Ed Exley- glasses, nerd, bullied, truthful
• Jack Vincense- drugs, works with journalist, corruption
• Bud White- protective over women, forceful, violent, doesn't play by the book, corruption
• Kari- love interest(especially for Bud White), hot, seductive

Conventions;

• Lighting, La Confidential uses chiaroscuro; this translates as light-dark in Italian, the clear contrasts show depth and volume.
• Venetian Blind, a classic film noir convention used in countless films, the shadows are cast on characters to suggest vulnerabilty and that they are trapped.
• Binary Oppositions, this is seen constantly throughout the film with the main one being Loyalty VS Deception; this is seen when Jack refuses to testify on the prison fights, where Edd does.
• Femme-Fetale, in this film Karin is a seductive women who plays off Edd and Bud. She is a prostitute and causes great tension between the pair. She wears sexual clothing; white silk dressing gowns, she has an innocent face with curly blonde hairl this is a false deception.

LA Confidential Film Revue

This was my attempt at a film revue after looking at revues of other films such as Jurassic Park, I applied certain aspects to my review I also looked at reviews from such as www.rottentomatoes.com which most of them agree with my postive view on the film. 

History Of Film Noir

Film Noir History

·        Early 1940’s to late 1950’s

·        Low-key black-and-white visual style

·        Fear, mistrust, bleakness, loss of innocence, despair and paranoia are readily evident in noir, reflecting the 'chilly' Cold War period.

·        Most American film noirs end up with the ‘wrong-doer’ being caught

·        Key Aspects- Femme Fatale, Anti-Hero, Venation Blinds, Dark Theme, Dutch Angles, Mirrors, Cigarettes, Alcohol and Voice Overs. 

·        Whoever went to the movies with any regularity during 1946 was caught in the midst of Hollywood's profound postwar affection for morbid drama. From January through December deep shadows, clutching hands, exploding revolvers, sadistic villains and heroines tormented with deeply rooted diseases of the mind flashed across the screen in a panting display of psychoneurosis, sex and murder most foul.

                -Donald Marshman, Life (August 25th 1947)

·        Common Plots: A cynical, delusional male who gets caught up in the machinations of the femme fatale (a seductive, double-dealing) who manipulates him to become the fall guy.

·        Binary Oppositions: Innocence vs. Corruption, Male vs. Female, Light vs. Dark, these are all opposites and are seen in all film noir films.

·        Film Noir is one of Hollywood’s only organic artistic movements. Beginning in the early 1940s, numerous screenplays inspired by hardboiled American crime fiction were brought to the screen, primarily by European directors who shared a certain storytelling sensibility: highly stylized, overtly theatrical, with imagery often drawn from an earlier era of German “expressionist” cinema.

·        Two of film noirs greatest actors where Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart became household names in their first movie together ‘The Big Sleep’. They later became married and stared in many other film noir films with Humphrey being the anti-hero and Lauren being the femme fatale.