Neo Noir film.

Film 2.

Se7en
Seven was made in 1995, its director was David Fincher and was written by Andrew Kevin Walker. It’s about two detectives who are on the hunt for a serial killer who uses the deadly sins as their modus operandi. The detective’s are paired together, one old and knows how to handle things another a rookie and is still new. The setting is like a film noir it rains mostly all the time in its urban landscape. It’s dark and gloomy like a film Noir, there’s murder, a lot of it. There’s two heroes the detectives at the end of the film Somerset states that he shall stay on for the police department scared to know that he’s the only one fighting criminals

Two Neo Noir

Blade Runner

Blade Runner was made in 1982, its director is Ridley Scott, it was written by Hampton Fancher and David Webb Peoples. Blade Runner is set in the future 2019 in Los Angeles, it has tried to keep the urban set like Film Noirs by keeping it in a urban area like L.A. Also keeps the main character as a cop or a character like you would have in a film noir. He’s a worn out tired cop who wants out of the force but is drawn back when ‘4 skin jobs’(replicants) hack a ship back to Earth, he’s no normal cop you would get in a Film Noir though he’s a cop who specialises in terminating replicants. He’s a Blade Runner.Deckard is a typical film noir anti-hero, he drinks too much, a loner and mistrusts authorities. There are also some Femme fatales Rachael, Pris and Zhora could be portrayed as a femme fatale. Even the props, Deckard uses a trench coat and a gun of course he wears the hat as well. The plot could be taken in as a film noir plot as well because Deckard is assigned a awful mission, falls in love with a dangerous woman and then realises he’s been deceived.

Neo Noir

Neo Noir.. What is it

Neo Noir is a style of film that is modern and has taken a few things from the Film Noir, some times ideas of settings or characters and then added a new modern storyline in with the story. It has the temptations of a Film Noir but with a twist.    

Here are a few neo noir films.

Double Indemnity

Double Indemnity

We watched a classic Noir in a Media lesson and this is my write up on it.

Double Indemnity is a classic Film Noir, it’s supposed to be one of the best Film Noir around for that age. Directed by Billy Wilder, Double Indemnity is used by insurance businesses. It means when somebody who had life insurance dies in a weird or unusual way then the money shall be doubled. Anyways the film is about a insurance officer whose name is Walter Neff, in the few minutes of the opening we already have our main character our, ‘Anti-hero.’ The beginning of the film is different to most film now days, in true Noir style it started from the end of the story to the beginning with our main character explaining it by using flashbacks. Even the use of the lighting here has been used when he sits down the use Venetian blinds have been used, we can also tell that it’s night. The contrast between the blacks and whites show us this.

 Neff our main character tells us how he was doing a routine insurance policy, this is where he meets the stories own femme fatale Phyllis Dietrichson. As soon as we see this fatale the lighting is straight on her face making it lighter and her eye to sparkle also when we first meet our fatale she’s just wearing a gown over her chest as she admits she’s been sun bathing. Neff is taking in by such beauty, especially when she comes down and shows off her pretty little anklet. They both start to flirt and somehow our fatale slips in how she can get her husband life insurance without him knowing, Neff clicks on to her plan and tells her he wants no part in it. However our fatale’s charm has worked on him and she pays him a visit later on that night. The femme fatale is a dangerous women, like a black widow spider. She uses the male to get what she wants and as soon as she has it she’ll get rid of them as well. And Phyllis does this well. Billy Wilder makes sure that Phyllis is a character who stands out and that can’t be missed, he does this by props Ice tea, big glasses and even the anklet.

Neff agrees to help kill Phyllis’s husband and brings in the use of a Double indemnity, he tells her not to worry and that he’ll sort out a plan just like a hero would of some kind. Our femme fatale now has control over our hero and turns him into a anti-hero, she brings him into a life of crime, murder. Neff and Phyllis do kill her husband but mange to make it look like he fell from a train, the contrast when they kill her husband is dark and all you can really see is the fatale’s face, her husband’s and a shadow when she honks the horn of the car

They set it out so Phyllis’s was waiting at the track to place his body out on to it and then they could drive off. This is all done in the dark, grim of night. However they both start to panic and build up tension when the car doesn’t want to start. Here the director was quite clever he didn’t use no words at all, he just used the expression on the characters faces to tell the audience how they are feeling when they couldn’t turn it on at all.

The insurance company are not having any of it and don’t believe Phyllis’s husband fell instead jumped. Of course this doesn’t go to well and even Barton Keyes, Neff’s colleague doesn’t believe it was suicide. He goes into a bit more and tries to find out what went on and why. He realises that Mr Dietrichson didn’t claim on the insurance once he had broken his leg and then tells Neff this and that they’ve been watching Phyllis’s house and think they have them both. And in the dead of night Neff goes to see Phyllis, he takes a gun. Phyllis knows he’s coming and has a gun as well she shoots and it him and the same goes for Neff. This is all done in such dark all you can make out is the figures of the characters. This is when Neff goes back to the insurance companies offices and tells the whole story into his Dictaphone.

There isn’t much sound in Double Indemnity at all just a few bits of music here and there and when there is it’s a bit downbeat jazzy type of music. The whole setting is urban, dark streets but when they place the body of the fatale’s husband down it’s not really that urban. Billy Wider knows that to make a good film you need more than a good storyline you need good props and settings as well. The ideology of this film I would say was that crime doesn’t pay. Or never trust a woman? Especially at them times when women were just house wives.

History of Noir

What is Film Noir?

Film Noir was highly popular in the 1940s- late 1950s. The name Film Noir was made in 1946 roughly by a French Cineaste Nino Frank, it best described the films coming from Hollywood after World War Two. However these weren’t the first Film Noirs to be made after then, Film Noirs were started in the early 1940 but because of World War Two there was no chance of getting them over to France for people to watch. When Nino Frank started to watch the films that had only just came across he and maybe others. He noticed the darkness in the films, that’s where Film Noir got its name from the darkness in the films. World War Two influenced Film Noir quite a lot because of the horrid things the Nazi’s and Hitler were doing at the time, this put some of the depression into Film Noirs. Not only did the War help with Film Noir’s but it also caused some of the politics happening at the time helped also, these helped set the characters and the moods of the films. Because of World War Two we have the Femme fatale a female character that is always has a powerful control over the leading man. World War Two helped because at the time when men were at War they needed someone to take over their jobs and that’s where the females came into plan. At the end of a Film Noir the Femme Fatale normally has something bad happening to her in. Another thing the World War Two had influence over was some German directors and film makers escaped to America where they brought different things over to America. America didn’t have such as stylistics on ways of working. The ways of how shadows and shades and light helped set a good film came over with it, these are a few things Film Noirs have. They also brought mistrust, the mood of darkness, anxiety and pessimism. This all came from being subjects from the Nazi’s. Most Film Noir’s started off as B-movies, things that use to come on before a better high budgeted film. B-movies were low budgeted, emerging stars, reflect more into real life then a movies and also were sneakier and changed a lot of things. Film Noir was also influence by ‘hard boiled’ a lot of which were based on seedy private eye crime books of pulp fiction authors. This is where femme fatales and anti heroes were used a lot to make the film more interesting and more like real life. They often used the same sets of crime and gangster movies, loads of people still argue that film Noir isn’t a genre because it seems as if it was taken from these two genre’s and it’s still in both of these. This Film Noir is where it wasn’t the criminals making the crime it was the dodgy private eyes with their femme fatales. In Film Noir the usual relationship is a male character who is normally a private eye, cop, journalist, government agent, war veteran or a criminal. The lowlife has normally go two choices of women. The beautiful and the dutiful one. So in all Film Noir is a film which is full of darkness, depression, corruption, Femme Fatales making the male to choose the wrong decision. Streets full of rain and shadows, minimal light at most of the times. Film Noir is a mood set across well because of all of these things makes it that way.

Second Film Noir.

Out Of The Past

Out Of the Past has a downbeat soundtrack that first catches your attention, this films contrast between the black, white and grey makes it clear to us that Film Noir is a wonderful and clever thing. It was dark, loomy and set the mood to terror easily. Theres betrayal, passion and a massive dark plot in this films which most Film Noir's should have. The Femme fatale lures the detective Mitchum in and also a low-life gangster.
The film was perfectly portrayed, it had eveything that a Noir film should have even if it's a B-movie and low budgeted it made it feel like it was real life. And thats why Film Noirs are so special and so great.

Two Film Noirs

KISS ME DEADLY




This has been said to be the most apocalyptic Noir of all time, even though it was roughly one of the last good Noir's to be made. The main character in the film is a  fascistic private investigator whos name was Mike Hammer who was known as being a hard, selfish cop. This Noir is very brutal and is full of paranoia because at the time the Cold War with Russia was going on. The film itself was very low budget, a B-Movie and only costed around $400,000 without recognizable actors. The film has a lot of great cinematography, it had different and unusal shot points aswell. It had everything a Noir film should have, even character wise it had destructive feeme fatales, low-life gangsters and ofcourse an Anti hero. The mood in the film was set easily with these already you could sense that the film was ment to be dark and that people were up to no good... Or that you were ment to think that. It makes the audience paranoid aswell as the characters.

Origns of Film Noir.

Cinematography In a film Noir are often distorted and many have different camera angles suchs as a dutch tilt, they use different camera effects so it makes the femme fetale seem to have more control or the anti-hero to have no control. To add to the effect of mysterious things the camera angel is sometimes blocked by something or something is in the way.

Mise En- Scene

Film Noir is mostly set in an urban area, somewhere like San Francisco and normally it's all about the 'rough' parts of the city or day to day areas that people go past. It's like this because it makes it feel more real life and that it could happen to anyone. Film Noir's are based on wrong decisions and normally if you make a wrong decision like hiding a dead body that was your friend or a strange person in the street then you'll get what’s coming to you.  Film Noirs are normally based on murders or crime which is happening in the city. The normal setting for a Film Noir is rain, damp streets, and filthy urban landscapes. To get the right shot or scene in Film Noir they use a lot of high contrasts between dark black and whites, some times there are a few greys floating around but this helps a lot to set the mood and the film. Film Noir's lighting is mostly Low key lighting where three lights are normally used and only the places that need light get it such as the face. This is where the venetian blinds come in and help set the shot or scene.

Sound
 The sound used in Film Noir is normally Melancholy downbeat music such as Jazz either to calm the tension or to make the tension in the film a lot worse to make the audience tense up and think what’s going on. Sometimes heavy breathing and silence can help with setting the mood. Because the film is normally set in a city there would be a lot of urban sound effects within the film to make it feel a lot more real life then anything else.

Editing
Film Noirs normally start at the end so maybe the femme fetale is explaing the story or maybe even the anti-hero is telling it. Film Noirs were often shot in day instead of night because this was cheaper they made it look like night by using filters that barely costed anything then. Film Noirs often had a lot of jump cuts in them.

Narratives
Theres many narratives for a Film Noir such as  :-

• Crooks
• Amnesua
• Downard spiral (making a bad decison.)
• Murder
• Black Widow
• Psycholgical.

These are normally the main ones when watching a Film Noir creep up.

Characters
There are normally two main characters in a Film Noir, a male and a female. The female is a femme fetale,  she normally grabs the attention of our hero ( the male ) And can choose what she wants him to do and his ideas.
A list of male characters can be :-

• Detectives
• Gangster
• Millionaires  
• The 'fall guy'
• Hench/ thugs
• Beautiful women
• Police
• Corrupt politicians
• Crooked police.

Film Noir uses different types of angles when shooting, they normally use high angles and low angels which helps reflect the tone of Noir back then. Also Film Noir has a lot of extreme close ups to help the audience understand the characters emotion, they also use depth of field, reflections and faces which have been obscured though objects such as venetian blinds to make it look like the character can't been seen or something’s happening and want to add effect to this scene. Noir also has different camera angles such as the Dutch tilt, irregular framing of shots in that scene.

Welcome and Brief

Welcome!

Hello my name is Dianne Hamilton I am a media AS student. We are looking into Film Noir and its origins.  This is a brief of the what the year has planned for me. Once we get the grip and understand the how to use the equipment we will have a go at shooting a 2 minute video for our first assessment, we’ll try and get new educated angles and have a go at getting the microphone in the right place, shooting in the right angle and using them to our advantage. This piece will be looked at and took in, everyone in the group shall have a go at editing, shooting and acting in a short film. However we are looking into Film Noir because our final piece needs to be a Noir of our kind, it’s got to be a contemporary Film Noir thriller. This piece is very important because it’s a great piece of our coursework,(60%) we’re going to use the exact same techniques as we did in our first little film and more that we had learnt in the months we’ve been there. Also we shall be working in groups of four and everyone will have a go at editing, shooting and acting. After the final piece is done we shall evaluate the piece, we shall talk about what we like, what we dislike, what we would change and why we would change it. It shall also show how I performed individually and how I done, this piece will then be presented in class to all of the other pupils there and on my blog when it is finished.