Research 5: Film Noir Conventions pt.1

Film noir being the sub genre of crime fiction, has taken great acclaim for its use of visual motifs, which feature strong shadows that often partially obscure the character in focus, this particular technique is called ‘chiaroscuro’. The characters involved tend to be either a private eye; a loan detective on a particular case, complimented by a second in focus the femme fatale, who usually gets the protagonist into difficult situations and is often devious and misleading.


Isolated ‘Fight Club’ character played by Edward Norton

Although, what we chose to do was go down the path of another signature film noir character, the ‘alienated protagonist’, who is usually struggling to get to grips with reality and has a pessimistic view of the world, so a modern day film noir such as ‘Fight Club’, the main protagonist in the movie seemed perfect to base our character on, who is often vulnerable and isolated.


Dark Knight at abandoned Battersea Power Station & The Wrong Man

It was vital to demonstrate the elements of film noir, so we analysed various Alfred Hitchcock films such as ‘The Wrong Man’ and modern film noirs such as ‘Se7en’, and what we decided on was how the setting was always in a big city, filled with busy workers, during rush hour, key scenes usually took place in either a bar or a nightclub. To add, fight scenes and vital parts of the story tended to be in an Industrial setting so therefore factories, abandoned train yards and power plants.


Flashback during Memento

Film noir has a very descriptive narrative present throughout most film noirs, so it was important to indicate this in our teaser trailer, which is usually in first person; flashbacks of vital moments usually in the protagonist life, as well as complicated storyline where the main character struggles to find a way out.


Stylized black and white & low key lighting

After considering the setting, narrative and type of character, we then moved onto lighting and editing which is so precise in film noir; it was important that get it right, the use of black and white throughout the film makes film noir very stylized. Therefore we saw there was usually low key lighting on the characters, exposing the emotions of the characters which made them seem vulnerable or when the protagonist is unable to understand the characters surrounding him; obscuring part of the characters face also connotes a sense of mystery and can convey how dangerous a character is – usually the antagonist.


Protagonist at Mirror & Character cautiously at blinds

The use of camera featured a range of shots but the iconic camera techniques we found from film noir were the protagonist had a scene where he was looking at his reflection through a mirror , or either cautious through a blind, exposing the high key lighting on the characters face. Furthermore various Dutch angled shots also featured.


glowing neon sign


use of rain


Trench coat

The last part proved to be the little touches, that give it that sophisticated film noir look, was then mise-en-scene and iconography, the vital scenes were usually showcased in rain drenched streets, and in almost every film we would see the protagonist at some point near a flashing neon sign; we decided that it was also important that are main character at one point in our teaser trailer used a gun, and had a trenched coat like iconic film in the early 1940s.