Question 1a- how did we use forms

of real films in our own film opening?

When we were planning our gangster film opening we wanted to
combine both Film Noir conventions along with Crime Thriller
conventions ; as we liked the look of both. For Film Noir we like the
femme fatale look of a strong female role, we also liked the
sophisticated, glamorous look about them to create a real
traditional yet modern representation, through their actions and
intelligence, of women. This is shown in films such as 'Gilda' (1946)
and 'The Postman Always Rings Twice' (1946). These films show
strong independent sophisticated women creating the promotion of
the strength and power of women after their triumphant
accomplishment of running Britain while their men went to war in
world war two in 1940.
We also wanted to have a strong influence from Crime Thriller: we
noticed that Crime thriller showed strong conventions of crime
solving such as Se7en (1995), showing evidence of strong
investigations with modern day detectives to contrast against film
noir detectives.

Gilda
(1946)

Strong femme fatale films

(Film Noir)
The Postman
Always Rings
Twice (1947)

Murder My Sweet (1944)

Detective influenced films

(Film Noir and Crime Thriller)
Se7en (1995)

Question 1b- How did we develop

forms of real films in our film opening?
However within film noir we also saw similar
connotations to Crime thriller by using the
connotation of death and murder. For instance in
films such as 'Murder, My Sweet' (1944). This film
title gave us the idea that the woman was
seducing men to do her dirty deeds such as
murder, as a result of this we decided that our
femme fatale character seduces men to kill them,
as a type of hit man/ hit woman in our case. This
is shown through our phone call "it's done", to
show that she was hired by a mysterious person
to kill men.

Connotations of death
Murder, My Sweet (1944)Traditional representation of woman
seducing men, like a type of
brainwash created by her beauty.

Question 1c- How did we challenge

forms of real films in our film opening?
Mainly in film openings within film noir they use dialogue to
illustrate the characters, we decided to make our film
opening more visual to the audience instead.
To make sure we could make the characters introduction as
clear as possible we had to make sure our media prompts
were very clear and bold for instance with our Mise en
scene we wanted to make things such as costumes as clear
as we could. We did this for example with our femme fatale
character, Asia, to show connotations of Film Noir we used
similar costume and makeup to make her look similar to a
1940s woman; with bold red rouged lips and cat eyed
eyeliner with tight fitted clothing to express seduction and
sophistication of her curves.

Femme fatale
character

Mise en scene prompt within our

film opening

(Double
Indemnity1944)

Detective
character

(Gilda- 1946)

(Our filmFleur Noire2015)

Costume and props

The director also establishes the social class of the

characters through their costumes; which we thought
would work well in our film.

nt screens from The Postman always rings twice (1946):

In comparison...

From this character we can see

that he is quite a wealthy man
from a higher social class from
his sophisticated costume of a
well tailored suit and tie, it is
further established through him
being placed in a car which
further implies his wealth.

From this character we can see from

his loose fitted clothing that he is
from a much lower social class. From
his baggy trousers and the colouring
of his clothes suggests they are worn
out and older in comparison to the
driver. The lack of background
around him further implies he has

Lighting conventions
(used, challenged, developed)
We also looked at the lighting of our film opening. As a
majority of film noir films were produced in the 1940s the
copy of the film is filtered black and white, we deliberately
decided not to filter our images instead we decided to use
difference in lighting to visually show the contrast of film
noir with crime thriller to show conventions of both being
distributed within our film. For instance in crime thrillers we
noticed their was a contrast in the lighting to illustrate the
good verses the bad characters, similarly we interpreted
this in our film to distribute this to our target audience. For
example our femme fatale character has a much more
darker set of lights in comparison to the detective scenes.
We noticed this in the crime thriller film Se7en (1995).

Lighting contrast

VS
Good

Bad

The lighting for the bad side is much more spotlighted; which we
decided to use in our film opening to show our audience the character
they are seeing on screen is quite creepy and is up to no good.
Whereas on the good side the lighting is much more natural and bright
to show their goodness of the characters; which we used in our
detective scenes to illustrate to the audience their innocence.

Sound conventions
(used, developed, challenged)
The final sound piece that we used was a combination of
both glitch and jazz sounds to show our link to both Crime
thriller (creepy) and Film noir (sophisticated).
In film noir we noticed that the diegetic sound they used
was similar connotations of jazz to illustrate the time set of
their films and to add the soft flow of the film. Whereas in
Crime thriller the diegetic sound was much more glitchy to
add to a creepy dramatic effect to the film.
As a result we decided to add both to the final piece, we
also added a glitchy sound effect over the murder scene to
add to the queasy effect for the audience to feel. The
queasy feel was further influenced through the editing
process with a ghostlike look over the top of the clip to add
to the dizzy feeling of the victim.

sound
Our final piece of music
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u
wvVhXItl1w

(film noir music)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?
v=FD7w2l88dl8
(se7en opening credits sound)

Titles conventions
Our titles in our final screening is in a thin sharp font,
written in capital letters and in a block white colour. All
these conventions are used in both Crime Thriller and
Film Noir to stand out against the backdrop and show
clear precise lettering so the audience can easily read
the credits. In Film Nor the title font is much more
elegant and appear as if they have been hand written
by a woman to highlight femme fatale conventions.
Whereas in Crime Thriller the titles are much more
sharp and rough to create a creepy look to the film.
We decided to combine both conventions of titles
within our film opening but decided against the hand
writing font as we thought it was very unclear and,
due to linking film noir and crime thriller together ,
decided it didnt really fit with what we wanted our
film to interpret.
We also decided to add a block red colour to establish

Examples of titles

Both use bold white fonts and capital letters to be bold and
clear to the audience.
However, where Se7en uses a ghost like effect to create a
creepy effect, Gilda uses feminine hand writing to show
sophistication.

Camera Angles form and

conventions
In our final film opening we used various different shots and
camera angles to establish both Crime Thriller and Film Noir.
To influence Crime Thriller we used the dolly to use smooth
camera movements to create a creepy look to the image.
However we also used common camera shots like over the
shoulder and close ups, long shots etc... to show conventions
of both film noir and crime thriller.
In Film Noir I noticed that even over the shoulder shots the
director didnt want the female to look over dominated he did
this by either showing her from low angles or at eye level to
show her higher power over men. This is shown In Gilda
(1946). We decided to develop this by showing shot of a
picture of our femme fatale character with the victim showing
a happy equal relationship between man and woman.

Examples of camera angles in real films

Women being shown as having equal
or higher power over men through
low angles or at eye level:
We used this with a
camera shot of a
photograph to show
equality between gender.

Gilda (1946)

Fleur Noire (2015)

Narrative forms and

conventions
We decided to use similar conventions of Crime thriller in
Se7en, where we had everything shown to the audience
visually through actions and very little dialogue.
https://www.youtube.com
/watch?v=SEZK7mJoPLY
(se7en film opening)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b
6GUKPYiuAc
(our film opening)

We decided to challenge the film noir convention of using a

voice over and quite a lot of dialogue as we thought it would
be too much for the audience to visualise the story and
understand what could potentially happen in our film if we were
to produce it. For instance in The Postman Always Rings Twice
uses a voice over to tell the audience where the scene is set
and what has led to what they are about to see.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fe9ALvuzwYg

Editing forms and

conventions
When we had the murder scene we decided to
use conventions of crime thriller Se7en of a
ghost like effect to add to the dizziness felt by the
character after drinking the poison. Similarly this
was used in Se7en in the titles to add the
creepiness of the film as a conventional form.