The film challenges conventions of film noir by not including a femme fatale and making one of the police officers the killer instead of a psychotic criminal. It incorporates aspects of film noir like two differing authoritative figures, black and white scenes, and dark shadows. The film also includes mystery through a flashback scene and crime through a final murder scene. It draws inspiration from Frank Miller's Sin City and The Usual Suspects by using title sequences between action scenes rather than at the beginning or end.

1. E: Hello, Im Evan Barnett<br />M: and im Megan Cairns<br />E: and this is our Video commentary for a DVD extra<br />M: in this commentary, we will be talking about how our Film challenges and develops conventions of general film noirs.<br />E: We will also be talking about what type of institution might be distributing our film.<br />M: A general film noir has set features and characteristics that include: It’s generally dark and shadowy; it is in black and white or has aspects in black and white; it contains a femme fatale; and generally involves two differing authoritative figures, and finally; a killer who is usually psychotic or has been affected from his past<br />E: Our film incorporates certain aspects from this list but not all, and not all in the most obvious way. For example, our film doesn’t have a femme fatale on screen, but, we have a flash back scene where one of the authoritative figures are walking in a house towards a door, with children’s toys around him. The Flash back scene then cuts just as the man is about to walk through the door which leaves room for interpretation over his family or wife being behind the door possibly.<br />M: so aspects we did include in our film were: two differing authoritative figures; black and white; and dark and shadowy areas.<br />E: the other aspect, besides the femme fatale, that we challenged was the killer side of the story. Rather than a psychotic killer with problems, we instead tried to switch the story around and use one of the cops as the killer. However, rather than being on the police side like a normal film noir, we thought we would have the good guy as the killer. We tried to do this by making the killer someone who had been framed and was just trying to get back to his wife and family.<br />M: Other conventions our film includes leads towards some sub-genres within our film.<br />E: We tried to incorporate mystery and crime genres into our film.<br />M: The last scene clearly shows how crime is incorporated with a murder. The mystery mainly comes from the flash back sequence leaving the audience with their own interpretation as to who or what is behind the door. The mystery is also as to why has this man has felt the need to kill someone in the last scene, when all that has happened, on face value, is the man has tried to help him.<br />E: We took inspiration from Frank Miller’s Sin City, and the Usual; suspects. We analysed the usual suspects first and were thinking about doing an introduction along those lines, hoping to make it look professional and well edited. However, this wouldn’t have fit the criteria because it wouldn’t have shown we can use sound, mise-en-scene and camera work effectively. That is why we took more inspiration from the Sin City introduction.<br />M: Sin City uses more images and rather than just the titles, has some action before hand. It also includes mystery because there is a man who murders a woman and we don’t know why. This is where we got the idea of having a murder to involve mystery.<br />E: we then took it a step further and thought, why cant we make this the good guy who the story follows and the audience loves. <br />M: in the end, we took inspiration from the two and used the titles in between the action. This saved using titles at the end of beginning which could look tedious and boring. <br />