Film noir is a film making style where its shot entirely in black and white and focuses on contrasts. The location for a noir film would be a depressing and bleak setting like an abandoned area such as an ally way or a empty street where there would be a lot of darkness and gloom.
This comes across as a typical set in a noir film, lots of black's and grey's looks like bad weather as well along with street lamps burning brightly. mostly colour grading is made entirely out of contrasts.
Costumes also play a large part in noir in the sense that guns are widely used along with long mac coats and trilby hats. For example the "organ thief" will be dressed like a doctor but in all black and maybe some greys. The organ thief will be dressed in a long mac coat with a black shirt and carrying a doctors bag filled with surgical equipment and a medical journal along with jars to but body parts in.Shots also play a big part in the making of a noir film like there are lots of strange upright angles to give the film its own genre. this angle is used to make the audience feel uneasy. Its almost like there trying to make the audience feel uneasy on purpose
In this shot we can see a dark figure running in the distance at a low angel shot which is native to noir.
In noir the characters are very important
- detective
- femme fatal
- gangsters
- corrupt police
- heros
- criminals
- down and out writers
If the detective seems hard boiled that means he has seen his fair share of nasty wrong doers. there is one character that comes to mind when i think about noir is the characters of sin city.
In this scene we see Dwight aiming a tea 9 and this scene really brings noir to life with the white rain.
Visual styles play a huge part in noir by using blocking shots through blind to dark and gloomy shots and silhouettes are used a lot as well.
In this genre settings are important, for example a film isn't noir if its not on the dark street corners of a city such as New York or London anywhere with ally ways and a criminal underworld and when a noir is not being filmed in a dark ally its then in a bar or a club.
Themes
- greed
- love
- betrayal
- jealousy
- lust
- revenge
- corruption
- murder
- sex
- justice
In this picture we can see a noir theme of a corrupt officer using a sledge hammer to crack a nut by going full out on a gangster which is something we see in noir all the time.
In noir narratives play a huge part like in a lot of noir i have seen personally is a lot of flash back and flash forward narratives.
The Organ Thief
The organ thief is a tall dark shady character that trulls through allies of plymouth look for fresh meat to steal from. in a way the organ thief can be a protagonist in the way that he's stealing organs from people in order to nurse his dying mother back to health so in a way he's a copy cat killer of jack the ripper
The image above is a silhouette of jack the ripper creeping down an ally, personally id call this image angry noir because of mixture or black and red.
The doctors bag
The main prop for the organ thief will be a doctors bag filled with surgical equipment, pliers, a medical journal, hypodermic needles, a cleaver and bottle of chloroform along with black disposable gloves.
The really edgy part of the film will be when he puts his victims to sleep and he then sets up a miniature autopsy on the side of the street just as the day breaks.
Jack the ripper was the first serial killer to be reported in the papers but was never caught and thats what sparked an interest in using him as a theme for my grad film and i have an interest in camera angle's so noir seems like an excellent opportunity to experiment with angle's because from what i have researched its all about the angle and not so much content. the angles are used to create dread in the audience.
