First draft of shots for film noir opening sequence;

Shot 1; Lucy is laying dead on the floor looking very roughed up after being slit in the neck by Daniel, wearing a black dress with red lipstick and high heels with a puddle of blood next to her neck.

Shot 2; Close of up of Daniels face with a focus pull outwards to show his whole body as he is looking down at Lucy then he takes a picture of her dead with an old fashioned camera.

Shot 3; Lewis and Daniel casually walking away from the scene going down to the cabin to print the picture and stick it on their wall of victims.

Shot 4; Eathan the detective is waiting in the cabin looking at the wall of victims as Daniel and Lewis walk through the door laughing and there is a quiet pause when they have eye contact.

Popular film noir movies;

1) The Double Indemnity;

Late one night, successful insurance salesman Walter Neff breaks into his office building in Los Angeles.  Bleeding and in pain, he begins to recite his story into a Dictaphone for his colleague Barton Keyes to find the next morning.  His story is one of deception and betrayal.  So begins Billy Wilder’s gritty masterpiece, based on the book by James M Cain.  As we sit and watch, we learn how Walter began an affair with the captivating Phyllis Dietrichson, played by the ultimate femme fatale actress, Barbara Stanwyck.  It isn’t long before she convinces him to help her murder her husband, Mr. Dietrichson, in order to collect his life insurance money.  


                             2) The Big Sleep

This has what could very well be the most complicated plot in film noir history.  Even Raymond Chandler, the author of the book that it was based on, once famously admitted that he didn’t know the answer to all of the plot twists and holes.  But despite the nearly incomprehensible plot, The Big Sleep is universally regarded as one of the definitive masterpieces of the genre.  This time Humphrey Bogart plays the famous hardboiled detective character (this time the famous Philip Marlowe). He finds himself in the employ of the sick and dying General Sternwood, who asks him to keep an eye on his daughter Carmen who has fallen in with a bad group of people.  


                           3) The Maltese Falcon

Considered by many to be the very first film noir, John Huston’s directorial debut would go down in history as one of the great detective movies.  The film is based on Dashiell Hammett’s book (also called The Maltese Falcon) and star Humphrey Bogart in one of his best roles as private eye Sam Spade. The story starts with the murder of Spade’s partner Miles Archer. Although he never really liked him, Spade is honor bound by his personal code of ethics to track down his killers.  Along the way he will get involved with the sultry Miss Wanderly and a group of criminals who seek a gold-encrusted falcon sculpture known as the Maltese Falcon. 

                                 4) Sweet Smell of Success

In the city of New York, your reputation is everything.  If you are not careful, it could easily be destroyed overnight.  Or it could be protected, for the right price.  Such is the world of Sweet Smell of Success, the gritty, grimy noir from famous screenwriter Ernest Lehman (he also wrote the screenplays for Sound of Music and North by Northwest).  Director Alexander Mackendrick, who had made his name doing comedies for England’s Ealing Studios, transforms New York City into a dystopia soaked with jazz, smoke, and criminals.  We follow Sidney Falco (Tony Curtis), a press agent without the burdens of morality. He is hired by J.J. Hunsecker, New York’s premier newspaper columnist, to stop his sister from marrying Steve Dallas, a fresh, young jazz guitarist. So, Sidney plants some reefer on him and spreads rumors that he is a Communist. Things work at first and the relationship is destroyed.

                      5) Out Of The Past;

A perennial favorite by film critics and directors alike, Out of the Past is universally regarded as one of the definitive examples of film noir.  It has all of the bells and whistles of great noir: stunning chiaroscuro cinematography, a beautiful femme fatale, and an intricate storyline.  But key to its charm is the lead, Jeff Bailey (Robert Mitchum), who like the title indicates, is running from a past that he cannot escape from.  At the start of the film, we find Bailey as the operator of a small town gas station.  But one day, he is forced to meet with a gambler named Whit Sterling.  On the way to the meeting, he confesses his past to his girlfriend.  It turns out that he was once a private eye who was hired by Sterling to find his mistress Kathie after she shot him and stole $40,000 from him.  Bailey managed to track her down to Acapulco.  Too bad he ended up falling in love with her.  But one murder and terrible discovery later, he decided to leave her.  Now, his past has caught up with him as he travels to meet the man that he betrayed.

Muholland Drive;

 The beginning of the opening title sequence is a clip of a bight purple background with men and women dancing together and their black figures  appearing on the background, the 'girl next door' character is among these people and appears at the end of the dance in a bright spotlight showing she is a happy, friendly and cheerful character. The femme fatal is first shown in a smart car with her own drivers and she is blunt and in control like a typical femme fatal by saying 'we don't stop here' as the drivers stop the car. She only then backs down and gets scared when she can see that there is a gun pointed at her, then the car has a head on car crash which stops her from being shot. The smoke created in this clip is not from smoking a cigarette which is usually used in film noir, instead it is smoke coming from a cars in the crash and also a fire is started in one of the cars.

Opening title sequence for Muholland drive;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2cb5XpIBqQA

The red riding trilogy;

Throughout the opening title sequence of the red riding trilogy it is a hazy atmosphere due to smoking, the character of the anti-hero is very typical of film noir, he is a journalist and he has his problems such as his dad is dead and he is under pressure to be as good as he was. He has been away to London and messed up what he was doing there then came back to Yorkshire and when he arrives back he is treated like an outsider who no ones really bothered about apart from his family. The storyline started at the end with a clip of the anti-hero looking rugged and muddy with blood all over his face and he is holding a gun. There is a voice over in the first minute with the anti-hero talking about the missing girl, the lighting is a sepia and dark effect. The camera is usually on close ups of the anti-hero for the audience to know who he is and what he looks like. 

A link to the trailer of the red riding trilogy;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nx5rqw9tXB8

Typical images of film noir;

Preliminary Exercise;

Filming a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down on a chair opposite another character, with whom he/she then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue.

My group decided to make the preliminary exercise more interesting and complicated with a dramatic story line which is unrealistic. We had to make sure match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree rule was used in our clip.

Lewis is a mental patient, Daniel is his care worker trying to get Lewis back to the mental home as Lewis ran away to hide from the apparent 'Aliens'. Daniel finds Lewis in a office block and try's to help get him back to the mental home but Lewis doesn't want help and saves Daniel's life from the apparent Aliens by chucking him out of the window.

For the Movie click here!!

Shot reverse shot;

Match on action;

180 degree;

We used short shots to keep the audience interested and wondering what is going to happen next as the story-line is very unusual so there is a sense of mystery within it. The mise-en-scene is a school block which we have chosen to be an office block that Lewis had strolled in to trying to hide from the 'aliens' as he believes it is safe because it is a large building. The characters are very different people, Daniel is a normal caring man who is trying to save Lewis because he is his carer and doesn't want anything bad to happen as he has known him for years, he is similar to a 'hero' in a film. Lewis has mental problems and is not really sure what is going on as he thinks aliens are invading the earth and he is scared and lonely. The dialogue choice wasn't very planned, we decided a story line and most of the dialogue was just created on the spot whilst filming which ended up working very well, Daniel and Lewis were the actors in this clip as they are more comfortable on camera which makes it look more real and serious, i filmed as i know how to use all of the camera correctly. 

After filming we uploaded the clips on to Imovie and chose which clips worked better to create the scene, we cropped certain bits out as some areas were longer than they needed to be. We then edited all of the clips so they were black and white to create a more mysterious effect making it look like there's no brightness in Lewis's life, after this we added noises such as a creaky door to make it all seem more creepy, also we added a wind sound so the weather comes across worse than it was and we smashed glass to create the sound of Daniel smashing through the window. The music was added in afterwards, we chose this song because to us it came across as a very strange tone and sounded like it was what Lewis could be hearing in his head, it also sets the mood of the type of clip it is going to be. 

Story board for preliminary exercise;

The audience for our Preliminary Exercise would most likely be men between 16-20 as it would appeal to them more than women. They would most likely enjoy it because the sense of mystery and there is action such as the fight and murder clip. 
The set task was; Filming a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down on a chair opposite another character, with whom he/she then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue.
Our clip includes the rules of the 180 degree rule, match on action and shot reverse shot. We added more than a couple of lines of dialogue to make it all more interesting and to explain the scene. We created our clip this way because we wanted it to be different and more appealing to a younger audience.