Narration

The use of an omniscient narrator is key to the narrative of Film Noir. Normaly the voice of the protagonist, the unravelling story is normaly accompanied by a narration informing the audience of added information such as thoughts of the characters.



Here is a song which is based on s typical crime thriller and uses a vocal of an omniscient narrator. I particularly like the lyrics as they are a good example of the typical rhetoric style you would expect in crime fiction.

Crime Fiction

Crime fiction style novels where being written throughout the 1800’s however it first started being recognised as a genre around 1900. Its popularity was boosted by the increase in production of fiction magazines. In the 1920’s Carroll John Daly invented a new style called Hard Boiled crime which is described as having “an unsentimental portrayal of violence and sex”. Hardboiled fiction was featured in and closely associated with Pulp-Magazines, particularly "Black Mask".

History of Film Noir

The Film Noir era originated in the 1940’s and spanned through to the late 1950’s. “Film Noir” isn’t a genre of film but more of a style. They where Hollywood crime drama’s shot in low-key black and white which was inspired by the art movement of German expressionism from the 1910’s to 1920’s. German expressionism had a strong focus on symbolism and mise-en-scene to create the mood of the film as they where unable to compete with the extravagant productions of Hollywood. At first the films used non-realistic set designs giving the film a surreal feeling. This only lasted a few years before the style progressed and the budgets where less restricted. This allowed the films to develope and reach a wider audience. The Noir style was most commonly used in "hardboiled" American crime films.

Genre of Film Opening

After researching a number of different film genres, Alec and I came to the decision to create an opening for a Film Noir thriller. We thought this genre would be interesting to explore, historically and contextually. I was inspired by its artistic origins and thought as a genre it has many codes and conventions that will be interesting to include.

Get Ahead OCR media, level 4 video, comparison to assessment criteria

The first six shots all illustrate a boy running. As of yet the audience does no know who he is or why he is running. Nevertheless we are intrigued into his motivation by these fast paced shots which use a variety of distances between subject and camera. The titling is also applied appropriately. It uses quite a general font which avoids playing to stereotypes of the “thriller” genre which can sometimes make it look tacky. The font size is quite small but the makers of the film have placed it appropriately into the corners of each shot so it sits on a background without too much contrast in it making it visible. The mise en scene of the flashback scenes is very effective. Firstly it is filmed in a high contrast greyscale helping the audience differentiate between the past and present. The props used in the flashback of the police interview are simply a table and chairs for the characters and a tape recorder placed on the table. The background is in shadows. These props are sufficient for the audience to recognise what is being illustrated but not too much that it distracts from the action.

Title Sequences

We watched the opening scene sequence for the film Juno. We made notes each time the scene changed and there was new titling featured. This was to help us take note of the timing between each title and how long each scene lasts for.
As it was an opening sequence, there was a lot of titling used to display the credits for the film. I was surprised by how quick the scenes changed in the opening. It wasnt until we had to time and note down the length of each scene that i realised how many different scenes where used. This is something i will have to consider when creating my own film opening.

Research