Our media project incorporated conventions of the film noir genre through elements like black and white color, dialogue, costumes, performances, and locations. Key conventions included a worn down industrial location from the 1950s, costumes like suits to signify rank and a white vest for a poorer character, and intimidating performances with New York accents. While our film lacked a femme fatale, we challenged conventions in other ways like strong performances and tackling thriller elements through a minor key soundtrack, gunshot sound effects, and serious dialogue to create suspense and tension. Overall we feel our film noir sequence successfully captured the thriller subgenre through conventions related to costume, location, performance, music and sound effects.

1. Evaluation Question one.
Our media project incorporated generic conventions through and through.
This was achieved through a few specific ways. Color (black and white),
dialogue, performance, costume and location. There were other factors that
related our piece to the noire genre, but the given for are the main ones.
Our location was a worn Costume is shown here, a white
Black and white vest emphasizing the more
down industrial field,
effect fits ‘heavy arms’ character, also the
meeting the requirements,
perfectly with character in a suit fits well as he
as times in the 50s didn’t
the given genre. resembles a higher rank soldier,
have modern cars and
settlements so this fits who’s to take control.
perfectly.
In our media project conventions were included and challenged through and
through. A main concern/issue with our project was the femme fatale; as our
film did not include one it was up to us to challenge this issue and make our
film truly unique. We feel as though we tackled this issue well as the other
main conventions of a film noire genre were pulled up more strongly. For
example, our performance was kept at its maximum peak. The actors kept a
strong New York Yankees accent to give a more realistic feel. If we felt as
though the accent wasn’t as good, we would remove that take and do it again
to reach its maximum potential, also through performance was facial
expressions and body language, we feel as though through research that
actors during the 50s gave of a strong impression of intimidation, so to
maximize the actors doing this well, we had the two gangsters (one in suit and
one in a white vest) to give off a daunting, intimidating vibe. Also a key
convention that was tackled was the location. To keep the film as real as
possible, we were to film in a worn down, isolated field. Given this, there was
a fence wrapping round the perimeter of this field. Also we filmed in an alley
for the monologue scene, doing this it makes the whole scene more
believable as it makes the ‘rat’ character look sneakier.
The subgenre in which our sequence was to achieve was a thriller film noir.
We feel as though this was achieved well as the conventions that link into this
subgenre fit well.

2. For instance: The soundtrack for the sequence was a minor key low droning
piano held chord. This builds up suspense and creates tension as you get the
feel the climax of the sequence could happen within any time. Also towards
the end of the clip, the more typical authentic film noir music is played, such
as a saxophone and a double bass. Also through sound are the effects, the
use of a gunshot lingers into the thriller genre, by doing this the suspense
created through the music makes for a great climax. The content in the
dialogue makes for a fitting thriller. The use of profanities makes it more
realistic and believable, also by having a serious well thought through
dialogue, could make the thriller idea realistic, as a thriller audience would be
more mature.
Through our film noir sequence, we have taken influence and incorporated
them into our own sequence. A few types of this were due to do with the:
costume, location and performance.
We figured that the main costume dress code for the 50s film noir were split
into different roles; the suit was to resemble a well looked upon, well off
mobster. The white vest was to resemble the more, poorer heavy arms
mobster. The use of shirts, ties and trilbies are essential as they fit well with
iconography and to make the look more authentic. With location it is really
essential to gather a place that would look isolated, worn down and really
quiet. Perfect for our film as we were having a meeting, to minimize the risk of
having pedestrians walking by we made sure the place was unused and
extremely quiet. Performance was extremely essential; through film noir films
we researched it was quite important to make sure the body language was
kept to make the characters look intimidating and scary. Also through
performance accents were so essential to the sequence, we incorporated the
New York accent, this fits well with the American gang time period. The main
risk from this was that we were worried the accents couldn’t be put off well but
after several takes we were happy with it.