Research Into Film Noir

What Is Film Noir

Film Noir can be a black and white Thriller from the 1940's, the reason I say 'can' is because there are now more recent ones, called neo-noir, where there are the same type of movies but in colour. These films could be violent and sometimes graphic, the reason for this was because the war was happening and people were used to the idea of guns and war meaning they wont find it as distressing, due to them coming to terms with what was happening.

Generic Conventions

Camera: Lots of different camera shots were used such as panning, close shot, zoom and many others. For example; In 'The Killers' a man is running to warn his friend. He is running down the road and jumping over fences, all the meanwhile the camera keeps level and follows him, this is called 'panning' The composition of the camera means what is inside of the shot and how it is arranged. Another example would be; If it was meant to be a scary shot of a house, the camera would be quite low giving the house a towering, menacing feel. And it would be very shady or have lots of shadows so that people wouldn't want to go near it if it was dark

Editing: Editing tends to happen when all of the movie has been shot and it just needs to be put together in the right arrangement to tell the story correctly. In normal films you would have the default story and then the reveal at the end, but with film noir they can tend to start at the end so that you now want to know why it has happened, rather than how it happened. If a film is changing scene a classic way to edit it would to be cutting to another scene, but some films, like star wars, use fades where is fades from left to right or vice versa. 

Characters: Noir's tend to include classic characters; Everyman (anti-hero), Femfatal, Villain, Henchmen/man. The Everyman usually is the main character, but on the occasion the Femfatal or Villain can be the main character, and he is the one being twisted by the Femfatal to do her biding. This was portrayed by the Femfatal seducing the Everyman and asking him to steal or do something to annoy the Villain. In the Killers, the Everyman is Swede and the Femfatal is Kitty, she asks Swede to help her steal a load of money from her lover. Swede gets the money for Kitty but then she runs off and leaves Swede in trouble, but in most film Noir's the Everyman tends to die and the Femfatal dies or gets punished in some way. Finally is there is one more character who can be included, The Girl Next Door, this is the woman who is in love with the Everyman but he doesn't love her until it all goes wrong and he turns to her for help at the end. An example of this is the Black Dahlia where Bucky turns to Kay when he has no where else.

Sound: Sound can cover many different things but the mains ones are; narrating, voices/conversations and music/instruments. The music matches the scene happening, so if a car chase is happening the music will  be quite frantic and go to the speed of the chase/scene. If the Femfatal is trying to seduce the Everyman the music could slow down and start playing smooth Jazz of some sort of 'sexy' music. Finally the narration could be a crucial part, the narration tends to be from the Everyman/main character and they could give some backstory or dialog to sum up what is happening or how they are feeling about the situation/scene