Overall I'm quite happy with the final film although I feel an encounter with someone else would have been more revealing about the character.
I am very pleased with the actor. He was very professional and I think I did a terrific job, especially with the narration.
Visual I need to work on working in low light conditions. I also need to spend some more time on my composition. Finally I needed to make sure I got more cut away shots and plan my shoot more carefully.
I will shoot on the Canon 550D as these camera have a great low depth of field that would help to create the lonely man visual look. They can also shoot in high definition.
Everything will be shot on a Tripod as my test videos showed it is vital to have smooth and steady images and especially on a subject matter like this I want my audience not to be distracted by a shake image.
I will try to use the natural lighting of the location (pool hall) as much as possible as it is less likely I will want to add light to a scene I want to look dark and dull. I will have a reflector board to help provide fill light if necessary. I also don't want the audience distracted by not being able to see what's happening.
I have decided my actor will provide a voice over for the film so I will record onto a Marantz PD670 recorder using a Rifle Microphone on a boom pole. This will allow a clear recording of the sound of my actor and not picking up much background noise with the directional microphone.
I have hired an actor called Martin Tomms who is from Birmingham so won't cost any extra travel expenses. He is also around the right age of an old guy living alone. His playing age is 50. He has lots of experience in open air theatre.
As the above film shows it is possible to over-do the visual style of film noir. Created by some film students it looks nice but has little impact in the narrative which I have already discussed should influence the visuals.
I my film I am going to have an alienated character how struggles with loneliness. The idea also was presented to me to have him in a bar or pool in the night. A man on his own in one of these places in the middle of the night is a starting point to show his separation from the world.
I am planning to show him very much alone so if he is in the bar he would be seen in wide shots of the whole bar as the only person there. Likewise, shots of him playing pool alone in a pool hall full of empty tables with a camera peeking around a pillar or another table would really help to show this point.
I also plan on getting many extreme close-ups of the actors face as he goes about what he does alone, with just his thoughts for company. The general feel of the film will be a slow and gloomy atmosphere as the lonely guy has no rush. The whole night is ahead of him and he can take his time.
I plan for the film to be in black and white to help show the dark, shadowy feeling of the character. Also the lighting contrast could look great across the shiny edges of the bar tables or alone the dull soft pool tables.
I will shoot in colour, one for clarity as discussed in The Man Who Wasn't There, two in case I get great looking colour images that help tell the story more, three in order to more easily study lighting and contrast of the shots I am getting and fourth, so dicisions can be made in post. Black and white has a distinct noir feel to it which I am hoping to explore. Many films have a noir feel like Blade Runner and Memento which are shot in colour, therefore by shooting in colour I can decide in post whether or not black and white will work would work the best or not.
I have taken some inspiration from the Martin Scorsese film The Color of Money (1986). This was the sequel to The Hustle (1961) which are all about hustling in pool halls. While not noir looking in it's visual style the film does do some rather fascinating things with the pool tables and mostly the pool balls. One sequence the pool balls seem to move on their own and just by showing the balls, not even the cue, the audience can feel more involved in the game Tom Cruise is playing.
One area I am particularly excited about is the look of the pool hall if I film in a pool hall. As seen in The Color of Money there is a great, slightly dull look to the pool halls thanks to the hanging lights above the tables. This particularly would be fascinating to film.
As I am trying to replicate a depressing character, moody lighting would work much better than the more highly contrast lighting often seen in the more memorable imagery of the noir films. However, low key lighting is still vital.
In my research into film noir it has become clear to me that narrative is one of the most important parts. The famous visuals that make the style so well known are always used at particular points in the story. Moments where the famous shadows and dark images can be most effective are at those particularly scary, dangerous or especially mysterious moments.
Therefore for my film I will concentrate on making sure the narrative is there before make visual decisions.
As film noir is such a large subject area and there are so many areas that can be explored, and because there are so many areas that could go horribly wrong, I have decided to concentrate on one main theme of noir narrative and that is the theme of alienation.
I am going to make a film which concentrates on the feeling of a character who feels alienated from others. Loneliness and a lack of being loved will be used in this narrative.
In the book Encyclopedia of Film Noir by Geoff Mayer and Brian McDonnell they state Thus film noir went beyond presenting the drama as a simple or unequivocal conflict between good and evil. Instead, they shifted the dramatic focus to the "psychological" conflict that emanated from an ambivalent presentation of moral norms,
This quote sums up exactly the feeling I want to create in my film. The character can't be described simply and there is no right or wrong about his feels or actions. He is who he is and that is who we will see.
The German Expressionism movement of the 1920's and 30's has been one of the main areas that influenced the Film Noir movement in America later in the 40's and 50's.
Recovering from World War I but unable to compete with the lavish films coming out of Hollywood, German film makers began to experiment. Creating films with moods and deeper topics an extreme non-realism was created. The most famous films from this era are undoubtedly Fritz Lang's Metropolis and M. The fantastic horror Nosferatu was also born from this movement. While this era was short lived in German many German film makers immigrated to America when the Nazis' started to gain power. Through them both horror and film noir were influenced.
While bring their style into the films Hollywood was making, such as Karl Freund who was the director of photography for Universal's 1931 feature Dracula, several directors were heavily influenced by the style. Orson Welles who would go on to make Touch of Evil. Carol Reed who would go onto make The Third Man and Alfred Hitchcock who would make the noirs Notorious, Strangers on a Train, Shadow of a Doubt, Spellbound and Suspicion.
Using mise en scene and non-realistic looking sets to create symbolism often created a dark moody atmosphere for the films. This has transferred in, a way, to film noir in the canted angles to created a disjointed feeling from the audience watching. Confusion or insanity are also often shown from unusual angles. Extreme high and low angles are also common place in film noir and again this is often to show the loneliness of the characters and there alienation, not just from the world there in but from the audience as well.
There is no doubt that German Expressionism helped break the trend of "happy" movies that were coming out of Hollywood and were a major influence to noir's dark and mysterious edge.
Noir was not just influence by Germany though. America itself participated heavily to the noir genre. The Hardboiled crime fiction books that started in the 1920's and continued through the 1930's had a much tougher and unsentimental portrayal of sex and violence. This was something not seen in Hollywood movies. Firstly published alongside the pulp magazines, later many authors like Raymond Chandler would become very well known for their novels, many of which would be adapted later into movies (such as Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep). These gritty crime stories, with their anti-heroes and femme fatale's along with their particular style of dialog helped formed the narrative structure that would become common place in film noir.
Together German expressionism helped form the famous visual style that would work perfectly with the Hardboiled narrative structures to create truly one of the most interesting styles in the history of cinema.
In this test footage I was testing shooting night-for-night. Normally films film day-for-night but film noir usually films their night scenes at night.
Most of the footage was shot at an ISO of 800 but looked far to dark on the camera. This proved not to be the case when viewed on the computer. The scenes of the garages are just scrapping the noise issue but are mostly fine for lighting although if I wanted to light a subject clearly then I would have to provide much more light. A silhouette however, would work nicely in that lighting.
Because the camera has difficultly in low lighting conditions I often felt the need to up the ISO to 1600 and while against the white walls inside the house seen in test footage 3 it didn't look to bad, outside the noise was very evident, especially on the row of houses.
In this test footage I was trying to test how practical lights, particularly in the form of lamps, would look. I tested wide shots and close-ups and several different places to place the light.
While nice to look at, shots where the lamp is just in the corner of the frame meant the light tended to distract from the main subject.
The second and third shots show Mark lying in bed. Firstly there is only the main light seen in the top left of the frame which lights the left side of his face nicely. However, there is need for a fill light as the right of his face is to dark. Shot three uses a much less powerful lamp to provide that slight fill on the right of his face and makes for a much more comfortable image.
The Canon 550D was used for this test shoot and the ISO had to be around 800 in order to be bright enough on the cameras LCD screen itself. Quite often the footage looked to dark, particularly in the mirror shot, and therefore I uped the ISO to 1600.
Directed by Joel Coen and starring Billy Bob Thornton as Ed Crane, The Man Who Wasn't There is a modern day take on the noir style. It does for the noir style what Brick would later do for the noir and hardboiled narrative and dialog.
In terms of the narrative it is very stereotypical. We have an anti-hero who seems to be in an almost constant state of narration. Focused very much on himself we are always hearing the words "I" and "me" while starting to see his skewed few of morality. In his eyes he is doing no harm through blackmail and shows almost no emotion throughout the film, even up until his final demise. The film was heavily influenced by writer James M. Cain who wrote the novel for Double Indemnity, one of the most famous film noirs.
Visually is where the film really stands out. Black and white, low key, high contrast lighting, the film uses just about ever noir style there is and uses them beautifully.
Cinematographer Roger Deakins uses a film style very similar to those used in the 1950's. A long depth of field with the camera at eye level is very common in films of that era. Mirrors, wide shots with long shadows and blinds in the dingy bar are all common visual elements of noir and all feature in the film. Rising smoke is also very common and throughout the film Billy Bob's character is almost never shown not smoking.
Roger Deakins was inspired by fellow cinematographer Russell Metty who was DoP on such films as Spartacus and the film noir classic Touch of Evil. He was also inspired by the films Kiss Me Deadly, In Cold Blood and The Spy Who Came in From the Cold for his visual style in the film.
Another interesting thing to note is how durrig the scene where Billy Bob fights his wife's lover the camera cuts away to a wide shot where little of the fight can be seen, alienating the audience from what's happening. Also worth mentioning is the use of circular shadows in the scenes shot in the prison cell. Perhaps as these are taking place with the lawyer creating plans, they are to give the audience a sense that everything will work out well and that everything is complete and whole. False feelings as it will turn out.
The film was shot in colour then made black and white in post. Roger Deakins did months of tests on b + w film stock but ultimately was very glad to shoot on colour as he stated there was not as much clarity as colour.
The Man Who Wasn't There is a triumph of visual storytelling and a worthy edition to the modern noirs.
Directed by Rian Johnson in his debut film, Brick (2005) is quite a remarkable experience. It takes the classic noir narrative of crime, but places it on a setting where it really shouldn't work, high school.
In terms of the narrative the film has the classic anti-hero, a detective down on his luck, lonely, alienated, tormented by a woman, desperately trying to find answers and willing to break the law to do it. Another main character is the ever-present in film noir, Femme Fatale, a mysterious and seductive woman who tests our hero's resolve. All the characters of larger than life and uses stereotypes commonly found in the hardboiled novels.
The film is most noticeable for its use of dialog. It takes its dialog style from the old hardboiled detective novels that inspired many of the early 1940's film noirs. It's very odd hearing teenagers talking in this style and the narrative seems like it just shouldn't work at high school but by combining all the different parts that shouldn't work they help complement each other. In other words, while it may seem odd that such young characters have such skewed views of morality, the fact they are in the middle of this detective drama and talking in such a way helps make it more believable and vice-versa.
Visually the films hints at the famous noir style particularly with the opening shot. A dead body is lying in a little stream running out of a menacing dark tunnel. The film also hits at the use of canted camera angles once when our hero Brendan is hit on the head in the tunnel and we see a canted angle shot of a dark shadow running away and whenever our hero it particularly in pain or disorientated, we the audience too become disorientated with the odd angled shots.
A fasinating modern day take on the old hardboiled novels and film noir style Brick is really worth the watch.
Sunset Blvd. (1950) was directed by Billy Wilder who also brought us one of the most famous Film Noir's Double Indemnity. Famous in its time for being one of the first films to show the darker side of Hollywood, Sunset Blvd. boasts four remarkable performances (nominated for all four acting Oscars).
Narratively speaking, the film is quite different from other Film Noirs. While there is a crime involved, (the body of a dead man is found floating in a pool in the opening sequence) the film has very little to do with that. It does us a voice over which is a very common part of the noir films but takes a daring new approach by having the narrator dead from the start.
The film is full of shadows in a very figurative way. It shows the shadowy world deceit and self-deceit, self-loathing and perversion. These are all strong characteristics of Noir narrative. Joe Gillis is the Noir centre of the film not Norma Desmond as it often believed. Norma (Gloria Swanson) is just delusional while Joe (William Holden) is caught in a moral battle of genuine love of another screenwriter and the wealth and pity of Norma.
While the narrative is very shadowy, the visual style is anything but. Visually we have a much more fantastical feel. The grandeur of the house, the many elaborate dresses worn by Norma and the many practical lights help to create the strong feelings of delusion Norma suffers from.
The film does use shadows most commonly when referring to Norma's past, particularly the scene where they are watching her old movies and she stands int the projection light, arm held high with very strong light contrast on her face.
In contrast, whenever Norma is not on the scene the film looks almost normal. However, when Joe is visiting another scriptwriter in the night, secretly and against Norma's wishes the style becomes much darker and much more shadowy. This again helps to back up the point of Joe being the central noir figure.
An unusual noir in both style and content, much can be learned about the themes and styles of noir when viewing Sunset Blvd in comparision to many other film noirs. One thing is for sure though, Sunset Blvd remains just as enticing and fasinating and is truly one of the great movie.
So here I'm lighting everything using just a desk lamp. The major problem is the ISO was on 800 which caused some very grainy images. More or brighter lights will be needed for shooting.
Directed by Charles Laughton and released in 1955, Night of the Hunter has some of the most memorable and extreme examples of classic noir film shots.
Robert Mitchum's performance in Night of the Hunter is widely regarded as one of his best. The films narrative focuses on a preacher/serial killer seducing a woman to try and get her kids to tell where $10,000 dollars is hidden. Typically of film noir the film does indeed have a bases in crime, but is more in this case to do with greed and focuses much more on the insane and haunting elements of the story.
Very gothic, Night of the Hunter really takes its inspiration from the German expressionism films, taking the noir elements and turning them into a dream-like nightmare. There are a few shots of the film that stand out as among the most powerful in the film. The above image shows a harsh pointed room which really reminds me of a gothic like cathedral. The image left is that of the cellar where the bar like lights really adds to the feeling of being trapped.
The film particularly uses silhouettes throughout the film to shows characters at important moments. Two such moments can be seen in the image to the left and bellow.
The whole of the film has an undertone of the haunting noir like style but the moments that particularly stand out are always the moments where the characters are particularly venerable. They are few but very powerful.
There is no doubt that Night of the Hunter's terrifying performances and haunting images create one of the most atmospheric films I've seen.
Directed by Orsen Welles, Touch of Evil was released in 1958 and is widely regarded as the last true Film Noir. There's no doubt this is a noir. The narrative is your typical crime drama. There's a corrupted police chief, an alienated narcotic detective and his wife and even a sex obsessed motel manager. Betrayal, corruption, murder and revenge are all themes here and common themes of film noir.
What is particularly interesting about Touch of Evil is its visual noir elements. Many extreme and uncomfortable close ups, particularly of Orsen Welles's character are often used. Also shots at low angles (see picture above), shots with smoke and flashing lights and a shot with a mirror and a person in the back ground appear throughout the film.
Two women feature throughout the film. First off is the detectives wife who although becomes a victim, is to begin with a strong and defiant character. The second is a lady who runs a small bar where our police chief is seen drinking near the end of the film. Here she is working in the dark side of the town and seems to be also a strong woman.
One particular noir element I like which appears in the famous opening long take (a 3 minute long uncut opening take) is a shot where a person holding a bomb runs of screen and a second later his shadow can be seen flying along the wall (this can be seen at 23 seconds in the bellow video). For me this one moment really captures the essence of film noir, a shadow without a person visible connected to it running along a dark alleyway.
All the usual harsh lighting and long shadows appear throughout the film though they only appear at the moments in the narrative when something particularly related to crime happens or is happening. Most clearly this is happening in the long finally where the corrupt police chief is revealing his unlawfulness to a bugged police officer while our hero, the detective, is following and hiding with the receiver. It's all happening at night with long shadows being cast by the street lamps and as the police chief is becoming more worried the camera gets closer and closer to his sweaty face.
Another particularly interesting couple of scenes take place inside the apartment of a possible suspect, then a bar, then back at the apartment. All three scenes are uncut and in the apartment the camera moves throughout three different rooms of the house. While logistically these are interesting scenes what is particularly fascinating is why these scenes where chosen. In the first scene the police chief is clearly quite brutal to the suspect and the detective become aware of this and starts to distrust him. In the bar scene we the audience see how he is not to be trusted and is planning on setting up the detective. Back in the apartment we see how the suspect is then set up so the police chief look good and the detective realises this. Could these be uncut as these three scenes setup the rest of the events in the film therefore are particularly interesting or perhaps Orsen Welles just like long takes. (The two apartment scenes can be seen in the video bellow).
One thing's for sure, Touch of Evil remains a thrilling and gripping film and a great ending to the noir era.
The test footage used a single red head light and sometimes a reflector board. The aim was to create very direct light lighting only certain specific areas.
The first shot used the light shining on a reflector board. This created some strong shadows but proved very hard to get light on a specific area. The camera shot was also a dramatically low angle.
The second shot nicely illuminates the left side of the guys face and there are some nice reflection on the wine bottle.
Shot three used some extra props to block the light and allow the light to only shine on the eyes. However, this was unstable and the light bounces around a great deal.
Shot four was an ECU of the guys eye with the aim of having the light reflected in it. There was a nice light reflection but when we tried to reflect he wine glass it was impossible to see on the camera.
In shot five there were some nice strips of light across the wine glass though it was hard to see the results of the light until it was transferred onto the computer.
Shot six was an attempt to get a dramatic shadow while keeping the first character clear. The biggest difficulty was trying to get the shadow the right size and in the right place.
Shot six was an attempted to get the shadow of the person traveling along ahead of the person. Positioning the light was difficult in the tight location.
The final shot was trying to use a practical light creating a small amount of light.
One thing that's clear is much work testing work needs to be done.
I will investigate the style of Film Noir through lighting and image composition. I will study the various forms of low-key lighting to create light and dark contrasts, dramatic shadows and highly stylised shots.
I will also evaluate how the use of camera angles in image composition will help explore the themes of film noir. I will particularly look at wide and close-up shots along with dramatic high of low angles and the use of canted shots.
I will see how I can combine all these areas to visualise the themes of disorientation, alienation and the essentially pessimistic tone of the film noir genre.
Films used for inspiration will range from those with a very strong noir look such as Double Indemnity and The Third Man, and those that use a less obvious style such as Sunset Blvd. I will also draw inspiration from modern film examples such as The Man Who Wasn't There and other genres the use noir styles such as Blade Runner.
Released in 2002 Minority Report staring Tom Cruise and directed be Steven Spielberg has a fascinating visual style.
It can deffinetly be defined as a Film Noir or Sci-fi Noir as there is a lot of use of shadow and darkness in the film. The film has a bleached look which takes out certain colours from the film, leaving it with a very cold look. A great contrast it when we visit the house far out in the countryside which is full of very rich and bright colours, particually green. Then the navey blue police ships arrive which almost look like cold shadows accross the warm countryside.
Another factor that relates to the Film Noir look is the use of extreme camera angles. There are examples of extremely high angles, such as durring the directly overhead scene when the spiders roam through the appartment complex identifying people, and very lower angles.
Steven Spielberg sepcifically said he wanted to make the ugliest, grainest film he'd ever made and this can be seen best when comparing the dark detective story of Minority Report with the warm adventure story of Artafical Intelligence A.I. I would say Minority Report is one of the best looking Sci-fi films short of Blade Runner and a great film too.
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