Conventions of Film Noir

Film noir are particular types of film in which were made in the 1940s to 1950sduring the clinical depression period after the First World War. The term film noir means ‘black film’ in French. This is as the cinematography of these films are set in black and white. Film noir in this era is usually connected with low key lighting or black with a visual style. As Black and white films were, I think used to bring out more of its features to the audience as you can see a lot more with the contrast of light and dark lighting. Films in this genre in the 1940s to later dates consist of ‘Double Indemnity’ and ‘strangers on a train’.

Film noir the genre is based on the usual story lines of crime, murder, mystery, betrayal etc. The reason why noir films are based on this is because it interests the audiences by building suspense and making it more of an up beat tempo to it. There are differences even between the character genders in film noir to films these days. The male characters seem to be more dominant playing the main characters like the corrupt policemen or just in crime in general. They are also seen as imperfect people and are shown to have weak points.

The female characters are seen to be less dominant and more vulnerable and innocent in the film noir genre. The ‘femme fatale’ statement is used to judge what the female gender is like in film noir. This is concluded on the fact of the females being more seductive and dangerous which attracts the males in the film.

Another part of the film noir character is antiheroes. An antihero is a person who lacks the attributes or characteristics of a typical hero. They can often display vulnerable or weak traits as well as can be often classed as a villain or bad guy. The anti hero with some of its qualities of a villain, up to and including brutality and Ruth fullness, but with a soul or more motivations of a conventional hero. In film noir films the audience often identifies who the anti hero is straight away. The anti hero can be though yet sympathetic, and the anti hero often functions outside the mainstream and challenges it.

The lighting in film noir films is very important. The use of chiaroscuro which is the contrast of black and white in the mise en scene dictates who or what is good or bad in the film. This also heightens the sense of alienation felt by the viewer which is mainly used in this genre of film. The darker shadows and not much use of light represent darkness and evil. In some noir films the lighting can be used intentionally or sometimes it is just natural light. Lighting that has been used intentionally is called ambient lighting whilst natural lighting is called non-ambient. Ambient lighting is used to help lighten up the darker areas to set the scene to control the contrast of dark and light.

Actors Planning

Evaluation Question 7) Looking Back At Your Preliminary Task, What Do You Feel You Have Learnt In The Progression From It To The Full Product?

From the preliminary task to now i think that i have learnt a lot about producing a film. It was more complicated doing our own thriller as we had to take in more what everything meant in the scene, the mise-en-scene.

This included like camera shots and angles, costume, locations etc. This also varied from the preliminary task as we didn’t have anything set that we had to do e.g. someone sitting down and having a conversation. Where as in our thriller production we had to come up with a story line and plot and make it from scratch.

In the preliminary task we were allowed to use whatever sound track we liked whereas in the production we were not allowed to use any copyrighted music which took quite a while to get the right soundtrack that suited the opening.

The casting of the actors was very different as well as we did not have a lot of time to get people in the preliminary task so we had to use who was in our group where as in the production we had a lot more time for planning and to get our designated look alike for the part.

Editing was a big difference between the two as we didn’t know anything about the software as it was the first time in using it during our preliminary task, but as we gained experience for our main thriller production we knew a bit more about it so we could edit our film easier and quicker.

Evaluation Question 6) What Have You Learnt About Technologies From The Process Of Constructing This Product?

In the process of making, editing and finishing our thriller we had to use a lot of technologies to help us with our research and planning as well as actually constructing our production. This included using certain websites; the main one that I used during all of this was YouTube as it helped by looking at other thriller clips to help with planning and research. (www.youtube.com)

We also used a site which helped us with choosing the suitable soundtrack for our thriller. This was a site made up of artists whose songs could be used and not subject to copyright. (www.unsignedbandweb.com)

Also to get quick and easy results off your friends for research in to your thrillers are to use social networking sites. This helped me when doing my audience research as i needed quick and easy results and most of my friends are from the target audience. e.g. Facebook,Myspace etc.

My blog helped with all the thriller planning, research and constructing as it is easy to go back and look what you have done and what there is to do next. With my planning i have uploaded essays, storyboards, treatments and proposals as well as audience research tasks. It keeps all your work in place so there’s loose sheets in folders which you need to keep look out for as they may be important. It also allows for fellow class mates and teachers to give feedback nice and quick so you know what to do next.

The editing software we used was quite hard for me as i had never used it before, but gladly my partner in my group did know. We used quite an amount of editing to our thriller to help with what we wanted our thriller to look like as well as what our audience wanted it to look like. We used a darker tint on the train station scene to help it look like the day was a lot drearier as it was quite a sunny day when we shot the scene. We also used some fade to blacks and some white screens for the flashbacks which also look very good. The titles and sounds took quite a bit of time as the opening credits had to match with the person on screen and also the voice over needed cutting and putting in the right places as well as sound.

Evaluation Question 5) How Did You Attract/Address Your Audience?

Our thriller attracted our target audiences by the editing and title of our film.

The editing shows binary opposites like good and evil and also plays a big part with the scene changes and flashbacks. I think that the flash backs helped our film with the target audience as not a lot of films out at the moment are physiological thrillers.



I think this is because these are relatively hard films to make as well as choosing a target audience for it. The title is also a big help as its new and it stands out with the name ‘infatuation’.

Evaluation Question 4) Who Would Be The Audience For Your Media Product?

Our target audience for our thriller film is males and females around the ages of 16 to 20 from no particular social groupings or class, who also like physiological thrillers like ‘se7en’, ‘the butterfly effect’ and ‘saw’.


The majority of my audience research showed that questions asked about making our thriller have been put to mind and now have been used in the production to help us give what the audience want.

The audiences will be drawn to the eeriness of the music and what’s actually happening in the thriller opening as it’s a relatively new idea and may not have seen anything like this. Also the enigma of what’s actually happening in each scene is sure to grab there attention.

This is shown in my audience research.

Evaluation Question 3) What Kind Of Media Institution Might Distribute Your Film And Why?

As our film production thriller is aimed to be more of an independent thriller, i think it is more likely to be exhibited by places like cinema city and the play house.
I also think that smaller companies like pathe and working title 2 are more likely to take interest into this thriller rather than the big companies such as universal as our thriller is based on independent films.

YouTube and other websites like film festivals and film competition websites are most likely to be interested to distribute our film as its not likely to be a big mainstream film which is going to cost a lot of money to be produced, marketed and distributed.

Evaluation Question 2) How Does Your Media Product Represent Particular Social Groups?

In our thriller production the representation of gender was used by the male having more dominance than the female. Reasons for this are her being killed and the use of camera shots like high angles and low angles to show dominance and vulnerability.

The female is wearing something lightly femme fatalist and the male wearing a strong suit which also can show more dominance. The characters social class and groupings, I think comes from the modernization of the location in the kitchen scene and the characters costumes. I think they are towards the top of the middle class group.

We represented good and evil in our thriller by editing and also the use of camera angles and shots. The kitchen scene shows the male character when he grabs the knife to be very sly and deceiving by using darker and negative effects and low angled shots. The female character is shown by a higher angled shot as she is the victim in this scene and also the use of when the negative fade turns back to normal at the title screen.

Evaluation Question 1) In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

In our group’s thriller production ‘infatuation’, it shows us reference to many different thriller films we have look at in class in how it has influenced our thriller. For example the costumes are reasonably smart and sleek with the male character wearing a suit and the female wearing a dress which we got the idea from the opening scene of ‘sin city’.



Other thriller films also influenced us on numerous occasions like the idea of locations of ‘the third man’ at the beginning in the train station.



We also used the location of a train station as our thriller’s sub genre is more of a physiological than anything else. This essay suggests that train stations serve as a psychological metaphor and have a psychological role: the empty space creates a sense of psychological panic, of isolation, of vulnerability, of being watched, etc.

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=wt3S-kVtmzoC&pg=PA126&lpg=PA126&dq=train+stations+film+noir&source=bl&ots=1d-S2z44O1&sig=d4EwrmNsTTm9BxbNtCKNHABk9g0&hl=en&ei=wNYxS_LuN5TU4gbB9t2qCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=9&ved=0CCwQ6AEwCDgK#v=onepage&q=train%20stations%20film%20noir&f=false

The use of our soundtrack was to try and make the film production seem unsettling and eerie but as well as fitting to the shots. We had done this by using an instrumental song with quite a depressing tone and which then fits in with the plot of the film opening.

The story name is called ‘infatuation’ which is also another name for the word passion. We chose this to be our title as it goes well with the whole thing as the plot of the story is that the male character played by Cameron Button has murdered his wife out of ‘passion’.



In our thriller there are three different types of characters. There is the main male character who in the scene of the murder seems to be a dominating, powerful character where in the second scene is the opposite with him looking more vulnerable and weak.



The second male character only appears in the second scene near the train station. This character seems a lot more controlling when he’s talking on the phone to the other character and darker and mysterious.




The female character only appears in the first scene where she plays a reasonably small part in getting murdered. This makes the character seem more like the male in the second scene (vulnerable and weak).



The titles and fonts that we used come from many thrillers that we have seen. The fonts that are used are more like the font used in the film ‘se7en’ which is quite un neat and co notates a typical physiological thriller opening.