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In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
Film Noirs, especially those made in the 1950s, often used oneiric film theory. This is the depiction of dream-like states in motion picture, or the use of the metaphor of a dream or the dream-state in film. The iconic airport scene at the end of Joseph H. Lewis' The Big Combo is a good example with two figures silhouetted in smoke. We wanted to take the ideas of oneiric film theory in the classical sense of setting and lighting in film noirs but also draw on more modern ideas to bring our piece firmly into the 21st century. We filmed our scene at a set of sofas made out of brick in Ramsgate. As sofas are usually soft the brick gave the familiar shapes a surreal and dream-like quality perfect for a film noir. We also edited parts of the scene in such a way that it seems as if it had a glitch in the footage. This is similar to how video games have software glitches or what happened when you tried to tape over a video on a vcr; the old footage tended to bleed through into the new. These two technologies are fairly modern and weren't around in the 50s. This brought our film into the modern era and while still giving a respectful nod to the old style of film noirs.
Lighting is often a large part of the film noir genre with stark shadows and contrasting light spots being in the forefront of the cinematography. Because of this we paid close attention to the lighting. Taking inspiration from the way shadows are used in the opening of Sin City on the two character's faces we kept our main character partially obscured by shadow for the majority of this film. By barely getting a clear look at his face or seeing into his eyes a lot of his emotions and inner thoughts are masked and makes him a more mysterious character. It is also not wholly obvious whether he is good or bad because we do not have a clear view of his thoughts and feeling; keeping to the convention of an antihero as a lead character. We achieved this chiaroscuro lighting through holding up boards to block light off camera to cause shadow, positioning lights so facial features cause shadow (as was done in the dialogue scenes), and using the brim of our main character's fedora to keep his eyes dark. We also achieved a silhouette through positioning our character in front of a light.
Linked to lighting we decided to use the motif of smoking and, by extension, addiction throughout our film opening. Smoking is a popular past-time for men of film noir's and our main character is no different. Having looked at 'Out of the Past' by director Jacques Tourneur we noted the way the two characters showed their emotions through smoking. Every time they'd exhale light would be thrown on them to capture the smoke well on camera; through this emotions are expressed to the audience. Critic Roger Ebert sites it as the "greatest cigarette-smoking movie of all time" and said "there were guns... but the real hostility came when Robert Mitchum and Kirk Douglas smoked at each other". Because of this we chose to follow the convention of smoking to try and show our lead's weaknesses. Though the character is stoic throughout the scenes shot on location he spends the majority of the time with a cigarette, displaying his dependence on them and his addiction to them. He seems in control but the cigarette gives away he is reliant on something else, perhaps this reliance foreshadowing what would later be revealed about him in our film.
The theme of crime is one Film Noirs tend to revolve around. In our scene the two men exchange a package for an envelope on a brick sofa in the night. Because of the setting of this exchange it suggests it is being done secretly and outside the law. The worried expression on our secondary character's face also suggests the exchange takes place out of his moral comfort zone as well. This points to the criminal nature of the exchange. The music we chose increases steadily in pitch and volume. Film Theorist Raymond Spottiswoode wrote that film score is chosen for, among other things, evocation, saying "leitmotifs act as emotives and assist the visual film towards insight into the characters". Our building pitch and volume shows the uncomfortable and unlawful nature of what the men are doing.
Costume in older Film Noirs tended to be upper-middle class so we dressed our charecters in suits. The fedora is also the quintessential piece in a Film Noir with it being worn by stars such as Robert Mitchum, Fred MacMurray, Kirk Douglas and almost every other male character. We used the fedora to mask the face with shadow and it suggests, as he is only wearing it when he's on location at the brick sofas, our character is also masking his emotions; his true emotions of panicked and stressed coming out in the dialogue scenes.