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.

Strong femme fatale films(Film Noir)

Gilda

(1946)

The Postman Always Rings Twice’ (1947)

Detective influenced films(Film Noir and Crime Thriller)

‘Murder My Sweet’ (1944)

‘Se7en’ (1995)

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.

Connotations of death

• ‘Murder, My Sweet’ (1944)- Traditional representation of woman seducing men, like a type of brainwash created by her beauty.

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.

Mise en scene prompt within our film opening

(Gilda- 1946)(Our film- Fleur Noire-2015) (Double

Indemnity-1944)

Fem

me

fata

lech

arac

ter

Det

ectiv

ech

arac

ter

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.

• 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)

Lighting contrast

Good

VS

BadThe 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.

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.

soundOur final piece of music

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwvVhXItl1w(film noir music)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD7w2l88dl8(se7en opening credits sound)

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.

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.

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.

• 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)

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=b6GUKPYiuAc(our film opening)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?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)

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.