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These are the first brief notes I wrote to plan this blog post.

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These are the first brief notes I wrote to plan this blog post.

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In our film we stuck to two key locations - London and the studio (i.e. the private investigators office). We have no 'at home' shots and perhaps this would have been good to use a flashback to show the husband and wife at home. So, unlike most films where they use a variety of locations and particularly always use a house/home settings, we stuck to two basic settings. This is because we only have five minutes worth of running time, so we wanted to keep it simple in order to keep our audience focused and on track with the narrative. Below you can compare how the amount of locations and type of locations vary in "identity", "500 Days of Summer" and "Body Heat".

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In many film noirs a typical convention created is the use of blinds to create shadows by shining an artificial light source through it. The effect in itself can portray and connote many themes: the idea that the person behind the shadows is broken and fragmented; the person behind the shadows is doing something wrong and is hiding; the character is trying to conceal their identity; the shadows represent the story or their life; the low key and high key light contrast represents a theme of binary opposition (Levi Strauss). As we were in London for the first part of our filming we were not 'inside' as such and so blinds were not an accessible prop. Instead we stressed our contemporary theme and used the architectural structure of the train station to portray this as seen in the screenshot below. Moreover, in the studio we had much more props readily available to us. We used the 'barn door' lighting prop to create a strip of light that caused a line of shadows/low key and high key contrast on our actors instead. I feel these were really effective in portraying a subvertive yet modernised concept of the venetian blinds/shadows film noir convention. Screenshot 1 and 2 show how we applied the convention in our film and screenshot 3 shows an existing media product, Double Indemnity, conforming to the original convention.

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No Smoking - Film Noir Convention ("FNC")

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No Smoking - Film Noir Convention ("FNC")

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In many film noirs, especially the traditional ones dating back to the 1950s, much of the characters were seen smoking in a lot of the scenes. We wanted to make sure we didn't conform to cliche stereotypical conventions so avoided using cigarrettes. We also feel that it promotes a negative image/habit to our audience - especially as our target audience are young, fit and healthy men and women in their mid -20s. I feel the codes a film presents can sometimes reflect or encourage bad prospects so this is why no smoking was carried out by our actors.

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The protagonist:

does not speak

does not kill anybody (film noir convention - "FNC")

is a female (FNC)

one person plays two characters

is not the voice of the voiceover (FNC)

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Our protagonist Blake Miller/Mia Bramley does not actually have any dialogue scripted despite the fact that she is the central character to the plot. This is subverts the usual conventions in films whereby the protagonist has the most dialogue. We did this because it further conceals her identity in the narrative. Also, we didn't actually require her to speak as the story is revealed through the voiceovers and conversation between The Husband and the Private Investigator. Had she spoken - it would have broken the concept that she is being watched upon by CCTV. Furthermore, I feel that her not saying anything stresses how much power she has (at the the start) despite having no voice at all. The only time we hear her voice is when she about to get shot and we hear her scream - heightening the idea that her power is lost at the end of the film.