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.
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