1. Question 1a- how did we use forms of
real films in our own film opening?
• When we were planning our gangster film opening we wanted to
combine both Film Noir conventions along with Crime Thriller
conventions ; as we liked the look of both. For Film Noir we like the
femme fatale look of a strong female role, we also liked the
sophisticated, glamorous look about them to create a real
traditional yet modern representation, through their actions and
intelligence, of women. This is shown in films such as 'Gilda' (1946)
and 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' (1946). These films show
strong independent sophisticated women creating the promotion
of the strength and power of women after their triumphant
accomplishment of running Britain while their men went to war in
world war two in 1940.
• We also wanted to have a strong influence from Crime Thriller: we
noticed that Crime thriller showed strong conventions of crime
solving such as ‘Se7en’ (1995), showing evidence of strong
investigations with modern day detectives to contrast against film
noir detectives.
2. Strong femme fatale films
(Film Noir)
Gilda
(1946)
The Postman Always
Rings Twice’ (1947)
4. Question 1b- How did we develop
forms of real films in our film opening?
• However within film noir we also saw similar
connotations to Crime thriller by using the
connotation of death and murder. For instance in
films such as 'Murder, My Sweet' (1944). This film
title gave us the idea that the woman was
seducing men to do her dirty deeds such as
murder, as a result of this we decided that our
femme fatale character seduces men to kill them,
as a type of hit man/ hit woman in our case. This
is shown through our phone call "it's done", to
show that she was hired by a mysterious person
to kill men.
5. Connotations of death
• ‘Murder, My Sweet’ (1944)- Traditional
representation of woman seducing men, like a
type of brainwash created by her beauty.
6. Question 1c- How did we challenge
forms of real films in our film opening?
• Mainly in film openings within film noir they use dialogue
to illustrate the characters, we decided to make our film
opening more visual to the audience instead.
• To make sure we could make the characters introduction as
clear as possible we had to make sure our media prompts
were very clear and bold for instance with our Mise en
scene we wanted to make things such as costumes as clear
as we could. We did this for example with our femme fatale
character, Asia, to show connotations of Film Noir we used
similar costume and makeup to make her look similar to a
1940’s woman; with bold red rouged lips and cat eyed
eyeliner with tight fitted clothing to express seduction and
sophistication of her curves.
7. Mise en scene prompt within our film
opening
(Gilda- 1946)
(Our film- Fleur
Noire-2015)
(Double
Indemnity-1944)
Femmefatale
character
Detective
character
8. Costume and props
• The director also establishes the social class of the characters through
their costumes; which we thought would work well in our film.
From this character we can see that he
is quite a wealthy man from a higher
social class from his sophisticated
costume of a well tailored suit and tie,
it is further established through him
being placed in a car which further
implies his wealth.
Print screens from ‘The Postman always rings twice’ (1946):
In comparison...
From this character we can see from his loose
fitted clothing that he is from a much lower
social class. From his baggy trousers and the
colouring of his clothes suggests they are
worn out and older in comparison to the
driver. The lack of background around him
further implies he has nothing but a suitcase
and the clothes on his back.
9. • We also looked at the lighting of our film opening. As a
majority of film noir films were produced in the 1940s the
copy of the film is filtered black and white, we deliberately
decided not to filter our images instead we decided to use
difference in lighting to visually show the contrast of film
noir with crime thriller to show conventions of both being
distributed within our film. For instance in crime thrillers
we noticed their was a contrast in the lighting to illustrate
the good verses the bad characters, similarly we
interpreted this in our film to distribute this to our target
audience. For example our femme fatale character has a
much more darker set of lights in comparison to the
detective scenes. We noticed this in the crime thriller film
‘Se7en’ (1995).
Lighting conventions
(used, challenged, developed)
10. Lighting contrast
Good
VS
Bad
The lighting for the bad side is much more spotlighted; which we decided to use in our
film opening to show our audience the character they are seeing on screen is quite creepy
and is up to no good.
Whereas on the good side the lighting is much more natural and bright to show their
goodness of the characters; which we used in our detective scenes to illustrate to the
audience their innocence.
11. Sound conventions
(used, developed, challenged)
• The final sound piece that we used was a combination of
both glitch and jazz sounds to show our link to both Crime
thriller (creepy) and Film noir (sophisticated).
• In film noir we noticed that the diegetic sound they used
was similar connotations of jazz to illustrate the time set of
their films and to add the soft flow of the film. Whereas in
Crime thriller the diegetic sound was much more glitchy to
add to a creepy dramatic effect to the film.
• As a result we decided to add both to the final piece, we
also added a glitchy sound effect over the murder scene to
add to the queasy effect for the audience to feel. The
queasy feel was further influenced through the editing
process with a ghostlike look over the top of the clip to add
to the dizzy feeling of the victim.
12. sound
Our final piece of music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwvVhXItl
1w
(film noir music)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD7
w2l88dl8
(se7en opening credits sound)
13. Titles conventions
• Our titles in our final screening is in a thin sharp font, written in
capital letters and in a block white colour. All these conventions are
used in both Crime Thriller and Film Noir to stand out against the
backdrop and show clear precise lettering so the audience can
easily read the credits. In Film Nor the title font is much more
elegant and appear as if they have been hand written by a woman
to highlight femme fatale conventions. Whereas in Crime Thriller
the titles are much more sharp and rough to create a creepy look to
the film. We decided to combine both conventions of titles within
our film opening but decided against the hand writing font as we
thought it was very unclear and, due to linking film noir and crime
thriller together , decided it didn’t really fit with what we wanted
our film to interpret.
• We also decided to add a block red colour to establish the link to
film noir femme fatale with the rouged lips yet also to link to Crime
thriller conventions of blood colour to establish crime and murder.
14. Examples of titles
Both use bold white fonts and capital letters to be bold and clear to the
audience.
However, where Se7en uses a ghost like effect to create a creepy effect, Gilda
uses feminine hand writing to show sophistication.
15. Camera Angles form and conventions
• In our final film opening we used various different shots and camera
angles to establish both Crime Thriller and Film Noir.
• To influence Crime Thriller we used the dolly to use smooth camera
movements to create a creepy look to the image. However we also
used common camera shots like over the shoulder and close ups,
long shots etc... to show conventions of both film noir and crime
thriller.
• In Film Noir I noticed that even over the shoulder shots the director
didn’t want the female to look over dominated he did this by either
showing her from low angles or at eye level to show her higher
power over men. This is shown In Gilda (1946). We decided to
develop this by showing shot of a picture of our femme fatale
character with the victim showing a happy equal relationship
between man and woman.
16. • Women being shown as having equal or
higher power over men through low angles or
at eye level:
Examples of camera angles in real films:
‘Gilda’ (1946)
We used this with a camera shot
of a photograph to show
equality between gender.
Fleur Noire (2015)
17. Narrative forms and conventions
• We decided to use similar conventions of Crime thriller in Se7en,
where we had everything shown to the audience visually through
actions and very little dialogue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6GUKPYi
uAc
(our film opening)
https://www.youtube.com/watc
h?v=SEZK7mJoPLY
(se7en film opening)
• We decided to challenge the film noir convention of using a voice over and
quite a lot of dialogue as we thought it would be too much for the audience to
visualise the story and understand what could potentially happen in our film if
we were to produce it. For instance in ‘ The Postman Always Rings Twice’ uses
a voice over to tell the audience where the scene is set and what has led to
what they are about to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe9ALvuzwYg
(the postman always rings twice- film opening)
18. Editing forms and conventions
• When we had the murder scene we decided to use
conventions of crime thriller ‘Se7en’ of a ghost like effect to
add to the dizziness felt by the character after drinking the
poison. Similarly this was used in ‘Se7en’ in the titles to add
the creepiness of the film as a conventional form.
