The History and Conventions of Film Noir

"A style or genre of cinematographic film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism and meace. The term was originally applied (by a group of French critics) to American thriller or detective films made in the period 1944-54 and to the work of directors such as Orson Welles, Fritz Lang and Billy Wilder." (-Google)

For the second year of my media course, our coursework task is all focused around 'Film Noir' a genre of film. The genre of Film Noir began in the early 1940's and stretched to the late 1950's. However, there are plenty of film noirs that are still watched and loved today by the fans of film noir. Film noir began before the United States entered the second World War and began to properly flourish towards the later stages of the war. Some well-known film noirs include: Double Indemnity, Detour, The Killers, Kiss me Deadly, The Aspect Jungle and Sunset Boulevard. Film Noirs are known for being dark and twisted. They're often shot in black and white and include the famous film noir characters: Femme Fatale, The Fall Guy, Cops, a Detective and more. In French, the term 'Film Noir' translates literally to 'Black Film'. As mentioned earlier, film noirs are commonly shot in back and white which explains the term 'black film'.

Film noirs have roots in German expressionist cinematography. German expressionism is an artistic movement which began in 1910 and carried on through to the 1920s. It included photography, theatre, painting, sculpture, architecture and cinema. There were huge oppurtunities in the Hollywood film industry and due to the dramatic growth in Nazi power, many were forced the leave Germany including many of these German expressionists. One of these was Fritz Lang and along with other directors including Robert Siodmac and Michael Curtiz, they brought a unique dramatically shadowed style of lighting to the mis en scene to Hollywood. In Hollywood was where they would begin to create some of the most well known and most successful film noirs.

Interestingly, Film Noirs were not always referred to as 'Film Noirs'. In the 1970s they were often called melodramas. The 1940s and 1950s awre often known as the classic period for film noirs in America. They are commonly known as stylish Hollywood crime dramas and are famous for their dark and abnormal conventions. The key theme in almost all film noirs is crime, most often murder. Film Noirs include a crime investigation involving a private eye or police detective. Films are commony shot in urban locations including big cities such as New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Chicago. Scenes are often shot in dark alleys, luxourious lounges, offices, bars, nightclubs and casinos. 

The Film critic Nino Frank was the first to actually use the term 'Film Noir'. This is what he said;

"Thus these 'noir' films no longer have anything in common with the usual kind of police reel. They are essentially psychological narratives with the action - however violent or fast paces - less significant than faces, gestures, words - than the truth of the characters, this 'thir dimension' I discussed a short while ago."

Below is a Power Point pointing out and explaining conventions and codes of film noir.

                     

Seeing Our School in Two Different Ways...

We were set the task of videoing our school and creating two short films that would display the school in a positive light and then a negative light. We used different camera angles and movements to create different effects, for example: We used multiple panning shots of the empty school with litter blowing across the fields and playground which created a very sad, lonely effect that worked perfectly for the negative film. In contrast we used close ups on bright flowers and nature that helped to fill the frame with bright happy colours that worked brilliantly for our positive film. In some cases, I used the same shot in each of my films to show how editing can create different moods, it also showed that filters have a big impact on the mood and so does the music. This task really helped to broaden my knowledge and experience of using the camera to set the mood and to create different effects. The task also helped me to learn more about what editing can do to change the mood of a film and why choosing the right music and filters is so important in cinematography. With the negative film I chose to use much longer transitions like cross fades and fades to black. This made the film seem a lot slower and sad which really matched the music and was very effective. With the positive film I used much shorter transitions like straight cuts, shorter cross fades and the Gaussian fade (found in final cut) this again matched the more upbeat soundtrack and presented a much snappier, quicker joyful film which is exactly what I wanted.

In my positive film I used the settings in final cut pro to brighten the images and to increase the exposure making them all much happier and colourful to add to the effect of the positive film. This was really effective as it showed all of the clips in a bright and happy way rather than a dark and miserable one. In the positive film I chose to include a lot of people talking, smiling, doing productive activities like reading or practicing an instrument as these are all very positive things that are seen as good. For the positive view of the school we used brighter filters and lighting to really show how the school in a brighter more welcoming light that really made the positive atmosphere of the school stand out as much as possible. I feel that the positive film was enhanced even more because of the light, upbeat music which really affected the mood of the film only adding even more to the positivity of the bright shots and the happy subjects within the shots. In contrast, the negative film contains no colour whatsoever which I feel helps to make the film look a lot darker and emotional rather than bright and happy. I also chose to increase the contrast and exposure on all of the footage in the negative film which helped to sharpen the images as not all of the clips were the best quality. I always made all of the transitions between clips either fades or cross dissolves which made the clip come across as a lot slower and thoughtful rather than snappy and happy like in the positive film.

This project really helped me to develop my camera and editing skills and learn even more about using the camera and editing techniques to my advantage to change the mood of footage. This skill will be extremely useful when it comes to filming and editing my final film noir for my coursework.