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.

The Breakfast Club

As a class, we were set the task of recreating a couple of minutes of footage from a famous film. Having a small class, we simply split into two groups. Our group decided to recreate a scene from one of my favourite films "The Breakfast Club". As a team we decided to recreate the scene in which the teenagers are running around through the halls, stairs and doors in order to try not to get caught by their teacher after having previously collecting some drugs from Judd






Nelson's locker. We chose to recreate this scene because of the resources that we had to film and the variety of shot types we could add incorporate into our recreation. There were a lot of shots in  which the camera had been attached to a tripod and dolly so that the camera would remain steady and balanced whilst following the pupils as they rain through the corridors. These types of shots would be very simple for our group as we had a dolly and tripod to attach our camera to. Being in a school we also had hallways, lockers, doors and all of the other props already there for us so it would be an easy scene to recreate. However, we did  come across the issue of not having wide enough corridors seeing as the Breakfast club was set in an American high school whilst we go to an English school with much more narrow hallways making it hard for us to film whilst running across the halls. However scenes like the one above were easily recreated as we set the camera on a tripod making sure to get the wall on the left in the frame and the door behind us.

This task was really effective in helping us to learn more about the camera and the different effects different angles have.  To the right is both our Breakfast Club Recreation and the original hallway scene. We decided not to edit the two together into one film as they aren't completely timed identically and the sound would have also been timed differently making the two very noisy and confusing to watch together at the same time. So instead we have the two separate so that the comparison can be made more clearly. We made sure to constantly be watching the original breakfast club scene in order to get our recreation as accurate as we possible could. Watching our version of "the hallway scene" from the breakfast club you can see very clear similarities between our version and theirs, there are some slight differences like the timing and where the cuts are. Some of the camera angles and movement are also slightly different because we weren't able to get it as accurate as we had originally planned due to the limit of space and tripod. I am really pleased however, with the final outcome of our recreation of the Breakfast Club because when I watch our version, I feel almost as though I'm watching the actual film itself the two are so similar. If I was to re-do this task I would try harder at getting the timings more accurate and working even harder at making the camera angles and camera movement exactly (or as exact as possible) the same as those in the original film.

 I would also recruit more actors and actresses as we were one or two short meaning we couldn't film all of the different scenes as closely as possible because we didn't have enough people to film all of the scenes in "the hallway scene". Within this task we have used a variety of camera angles and movement including mid shots, long shots, close ups, tracking shots, low angles, high angles and a whole load more. This task has helped me to learn how to make different camera angles using a tripod and dolly as well as what different effects they have. For example, the shot of us running through the hallway was filmed with a tripod attached onto a dolly so that the camera could move steadily. This gave the effect of action and created a hurried and panicked atmosphere as the camera moved in front of us at a reasonably fast pace showing that we were in a hurry and running from a teacher. The shot reaction shots of us and the teacher showed the connection between us as the teacher moved at a slow, relaxed pace whilst we were moving much faster and so did the camera. 

       

Foley Sound

Foley Sound is the reproduction of sound effects heard in films, videos and other media. The sound is recorded separate from the original recording as this enables the audio quality to be much sharper and enhanced. Foley sound is often created in a studio using sensitive microphones in order to pick up every sound wave possible. A well known technique of foley sound is to use coconuts to create the sound effect of a horse galloping across the countryside. Foley sound requires a lot of patience, time and concentration. Multiple takes are often required to make sure that the sound is just right for the video it will be edited onto.

Sound effects created are often done so by using obscure objects that have no relation to what you are seeing on the screen. A key example of this is car tires screeching across a road. What you see is the tires screeching as smoke comes out and you think that that's what you're hearing but in fact you aren't. What you're actually hearing could be a hot water bottle filled with air being rubbed back and forth across a wooden table. Below and to the left, what you're seeing is a very busy foley sound studio in which hundreds of props used to create foley sound have been scattered across the floor and every worktop. This demonstrates just how technical and just how much work and time goes into creating foley sound. Foley sound artists have to be accurate when recording and this can often take multiple recordings to get the sound to match up exactly with what you see on the screen. As a class, we decided to try and make our own foley sound. We were shown a list of different sounds that we could choose to make including: fire, rain, a crash, footsteps, keys and some other options. We did multiple recordings of each sound effect and tried different ways of recording such as walking on gravel and then walking in heels across tarmac. Each recording made very different sounds as in one you could...

hear the sharp footsteps as the heels walked across the tarmac whilst on the other hand you could hear the gravel crunching underneath some much heavier footsteps. We also tried recording the different types of rain by using a hose pipe to pour water on top of different surfaces like metal, concrete, gravel and water. After recording a variety of sounds we were told to put the foley sound to a film that either already existed, make one ourselves or just make up a narrative to go along with our sound effects, the video below is my example of how foley sound works, it's called "campfire chillout". The film tells a story of a girl who is simply leaving her house to go for a walk in he rain, she locks up, pops up her umbrella and starts to walk off, the rain suddenly stops and the scene becomes a lot brighter and sunnier. As she is strolling she hears a sudden smash of glass and it frightens her. She continues walking to find out what the noise was and stumbles across a young boy having a fire in a clearing, it turns out that all along the voice was in fact the young boy, the girl gives up her walk and decides to join the young boy in his little camp out.