Understandings of Narrative

The narrative is the structure of a story.

The diegesis is the fictional space and time implied by the narrative - the world in which the story takes place.

Verisimilitude is the realism content of the narrative.


Narrative has different structures:

Multi-strand narrative- the telling of the story from more than one persons point of view or two stories of two characters which intertwine
Restricted Narrative-  the story from only one character in the story/narrative. The audience has limited access to narrative events as they only see them as the one character does and not another characters point of view.
Non-Restricted- is the opposite to restricted and the audience may be able to watch the film from more than one view point.  Eg following a couples life but seeing the females day to day work and the males when they aren't together.
Linear Narrative- the story is told chronologically, with a beginning, middle and end.
Non-Linear- this is the opposite to linear narrative. The story does not always have a clear beginning, middle and end. And the story could change from reality to flashback for example.
Fragmented Narrative- only parts of the story are shown to the audience causes the feeling of pleasure and suspense.

Film Noir Mood Board

I have researched film noir, and have found some typical stylistic conventions from films. Whether they be classic film noir, neo-noir or tech-noir.
From saving secondry research, from the internet. I have created a mood board to collect ideas of what I could potentially use within my trailer. There is a dominant contrast of black and white within most of the images.

Film Noir Research Prezi

In order to find out some more about film noir I decided to convert what I already knew into a prezi and posed questions for myself. Throughout the prezi it allows you to see what elements fall into film noir and what the conventions of a stereotypical film noir are, through visuals of images and text.

Conventions of Film Noir

This is an image of a classic Film Noir.                                   This is an image of a neo noir/tech noir

 

 

 

Most film noir's have stereotypical conventions of the following:

• Dark scenes
• Rain/ bad weather/mist
• Femme fatail character- An alluring, mysterious woman.
• Smoke/ smoking
• Shadows
• Urban Surroundings- cityscape's
• Costume- hats (trilby/fedora), trench coats.
• Chiaroscuro (low key lighting)
• Reflective & mysterious first person narrative
• Pathetic fallacy
• Time period of 40's-50's
• Male Protagonist
• Distorted camera angles

I have researched into some actual film noir films, and watched trailers of the following..
commenting on the conventions i have come across within these:

Memento

• Mystery
• Flashback
• Non-linear plot
• Partly black and white
• Untrusted female
• Powerless hero

 

Machinist

• Disorientated camera angles
• Monotone voices- expressionless voice
• Black and White - desaturated colours
• Secrets/suspense
• Flashbacks- de-ja-vu
• Sounds to highlight the flashback

Brick (2005)

• Captions surrounded with smoke/ disappearing into smoke|
• Black and white/ bleached out colours
• Camera angles
• Protagonist voices
• Monotone voices
• Darkness/bad weather
• Femme fatail



 
 
 

 

Setting up our blog...

Both Sophie and I decided before doing any research into this project that we would collaborate as a pair to create an advanced promotion package for a new film, including a trailer, a magazine cover and a poster for the film.

We thought that it would be a good idea to customise the colours and the background of our blogs so it would relate to the topic of  research, which is 'Film Noir'. So when we first had a look for some pictures for the background of the blogs, we came across an image of a camera in which relates to the traditional colour scheme of film noir that being black, white and red. The colours on the image related a lot to the subject of 'film noir' which is why we felt it would be a good idea to make some of the font black, white and red too. When we did our research on 'film noir' both past and present, many of the DVD cases that came up were mainly black, white and red. As this was recurring through our research, we thought that this was a characteristic dominant of old and modern noir,which is useful information during this process.

Features of a Trailer

Genre Conventions

Genre
Genre is a way of categorising films into sections, which will appeal to different audiences. It is a french term meaning 'type' or 'kind'.
 
some examples of genre are :
 

• Film Noir
• Action
• Adventure
• Horror
• Thriller
• Family
• Comedy
• Romance
• Western
• War
• Science Fiction
• Documentary
• Crime
• Gangster
• History

Some films are hybrids this is when a film has more than one stated genre for example:
Rom-Com is a romantic comedy

A way in which you can establish what genre a film is, is through the iconography.
The iconography is the way we describe the particular signs that identify a particular genre for example the props on set, the mise-en-scene, what you can see when you watch the film that links to a certain genre, an example would be :
a western film would have iconography such as
cowboy hats, horses, deserted places, tubleweeds.