Genre

The creative project we are doing involves producing a short film or and extract from a full film which is between 3-5 mins. I have to write a script, produce a storyboard, organise a shooting shedule and allocate roles within my piece.

I have chosen to do an from the full film instead of a short film as I think it is easier to write a storyline for a long film then just chose a scene to do from it. I will be doing an opening sequence of a film which will come before the credits.

I have choes my genre which is Film Noir, and from there I have decided to look at neo-noir and I am using 'Sin City' as my visual inspiration but trying to keep classic Film Noir in the storyline. I have done some research on film noir to find the conventions of the genre so I can use some of them within my film sequence. I found one website that helped a lot with finding the conventions and character descriptions for my chosen genre. (http://www.filmsite.org/filmnoir.html)

I also used two other websites to help me find the typical pulp/hardboiled language used in film noir as I think using this type of speech will help give the sequence an authentic noir feel. The two websites I used are (www.miskatonic.org/slang.html & http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A563898)

Some of the conventions I plan to use are dim lighting, venitian blinds, femme fatales and smoking/smoke in my sequence. I also plan to use the narration technique by having a voice over through the sequence and no deigetic dialogue and use the typical suspemsful jazz and orchastral music assosiated with noir.

The storytype could be described as the Quest and Overcoming the monster because the main character is on a quest to get the truth out in order to overcome the city's lies. I am taking these as my basic layout for the storyline but will be following the traditional convention of Film Noir and making sure the film does not have a happy ending.

My audience is most likely 16 to 40 year olds as it has the classic noir feel which will appeal to the older audience, but is a modern reinvention with a comic book edge which will appeal to a younger audience along with the violent storyline. The film is aimed at both gender becuase although it has a comic book feel and is a crime story which is generally more of a male favoured genre the lead is a strong female which will appeal to women as well as men.

I wrote an essay on my genre;
Film Noir- Genre conventions

Hollywood's classic film noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Classic Film Noir developed during and after World War II taking advantage of the post-war ambience of pessimism. The term Film Noir was first applied to movies by French critic Nino Frank and was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the era. A lot of Film Noir attitude is derived from Hardboiled fiction which portrays crime and violence in an unsentimental way. These stories were often published in pulp magazines, or pulp fiction which were cheap magazines widely published from the 1920’s through 1950’s.

The main themes of a film noir are; alienation, melancholy, disillusionment, moral corruption, guilt and desperation. The heroes of these pieces are often anti-heroes and even corrupt and villainous characters including hard-boiled detectives, gangsters, lone wolves, sociopaths, crooks or just plain Joes. Distinctively they were cynical, obsessive (sexual or otherwise), brooding, sinister, sardonic, disillusioned, frightened and insecure loners (usually men), struggling to survive - and in the end, ultimately losing. Stories are often twisting and non-linear with complex narratives typically told with foreboding background music, flashbacks, razor-sharp witty dialogue often done in a confessional first person voice over narration. Film Noir generally showed the darker side of humanity. There were rarely happy or optimistic endings in noirs.

Female characters in Film Noir are often one of two types; the trustworthy, loving woman or the gorgeous yet predatory femme fatale. Pursuing the wishes of the traitorous femme fatale would lead the hero into committing some crime coupled with twisted love. Femme fatale literally means "killer (or deadly) woman."

Film Noir was marked for using expressionistic lighting, deep focus camera work, jarring editing, skewed camera angles, cigarette smoke, venetian blind, claustrophobic spaces and gloomy appearances. Exteriors were often urban night scenes with deep shadows, wet asphalt, dark alleyways, rain-slicked or mean streets, flashing neon lights, and low key lighting. Story locations were often in murky and dark streets, dimly-lit and low-rent apartments and hotel rooms of big cities, or abandoned warehouses.

Film noirs have recently been released in the modern era and have been refashioned for present-day sensibilities. Most neo-noirs attempted to re-establish the moods and themes of classic noirs. Unlike classic noirs, neo-noir films are aware of modern circumstances and technology. Modern themes employed in these films include identity crises, memory issues and subjectivity, and technological problems and their social ramifications.

Classic Noir films;
Rebecca (1940, Alfred Hitchcock)
The Maltese Falcon (1941, John Huston)
Laura (1944, Otto Preminger)
Double Indemnity (1944, Billy Wilder)
Notorious (1946, Alfred Hitchcock)
In a lonely Place (Nicholas Ray)
Kiss Me Deadly (1955, Robert Aldrich)
Sweet Smell of Success (1957, Alexander MacKendrick)
Touch Of Evil (1958, Orson Welles)

Neo-noir films;
Cape fear (1962, J. Lee Thompson)
The Long goodbye (1973, Robert Altman)
Taxi Driver (1976, Martin Scorsese)
Blade Runner (1982, Ridley Scott)
Black Widow (1987, Bob Rafelson)
Basic Instinct (1992, Paul Verhoeven)
Pulp Fiction (1994, Quentin Tarantino)
Sin City (2005, Robert Rodrigruez)
The Dark Knight (2008, Christopher Nolan)

The stylistics of my idea are inspired most by the film Sin City in that I plan to use the comic style isolated colour editing that keeps the film black and white with one or two colours highlighted only, i.e. red blood or blonde hair.