Top 10 Film Noir

1. Sweet Smell Of Success
2. The Big Heart
3. Pickup On South Street
4. Out Of The Past
5. The Killers
6. The Big Sheep
7. Detour
8. Laura
9. Double Indemnity
10. The Maltese Falcon

Film Noir

Film noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize cynical attitudes and sexual motivations. Film noir is associated with a low-key black-and-white visual style. Many of the prototypical stories and much of the attitude of classic noir derive from the hardboiled school of crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

The term film noir, French for "black film". first applied to Hollywood films by French critic Nino Frank in 1946, was unknown to most American film industry professionals of the classic era.

Because Film Noir is mostly crime drama's, the main characters in the films would be as such.the central figure may be a private eye (The Big Sleep), a plainclothes policeman (The Big Heat), an aging boxer (The Set-Up), a hapless grifter (Night and the City), a law-abiding citizen lured into a life of crime (Gun Crazy), or simply a victim of circumstance (D.O.A.).

New film

Our new film is going to be a film noire detective film. We have started to think about the story line, and the obvious one would be to do a murder. A film noire/detective trailer would easier to do than our last idea and it wouldnt be any problem to do.

Change of film

We have encountered a few big problems in our film. due to the problems in our film, we have been told it is in our interest to change the genre of the film and story-line, as it may cross over with a horror.

Narrative Structure

Narrative chain of cause and effect- the plotlines in a story that are triggered by action and enigma codes (something that happens that causes something else to happen). Below is the two theories by Propp and Todorov that show the two typical structures to storylines in films and television.

Propp                          Todorov

1) Preparation                            1)Equilibrium

2) Complication                            2)Disruption

3) Transference                  3)Recognition of Disruption

4) Struggle                       4) Attempt to repair disruption

5) Return               5) A return or restoration of NEW equilibrium

6) Recognition

This is the typical characters types seen in most forms of the media.

Another Theorist

Richard Dyer 1993 argues that representation is a political tool:

Social groups are treated in cultural representation is part and parcel of how they are treated in life, that poverty, harassment, self-hate and discrimination (in housing, jobs eduacational opportunity and so on) are shored up and instituted by representation.

He also highlights the complications in theories which focus on negative, representations of calss, race and sexuality.

Media Theoriest

Representation

The media have
"The power to represent the world in certain ways. And because there are so many different and conflicting ways in which meaning about the world can be constructed, it matters profoundly what and who gets left out, and how things, people, events and relationships and represented".

(Stuart Hall 1986)

This basically means the media controls what people think, because the audience will believe whatever they think. They control the way people think about social/racial groups as well.

Top 10 Pschological Thrillers

Whilst researching about the trailer, I thought it would be a good idea to find out what the best Psychological Thrillers of all time are. Here is the top 10 list, from   http://www.flickchart.com/charts?genre=Psychological+Thriller

1. Black Swan
2. Silence Of The Lambs
3. Rear Window
4. The Prestige
5. Psycho
6. Vertigo
7. The Third man
8. The Sixth Sense
9. Donnie Darko
10. The Night Of The Hunter

After researching through this, it appears that there are no perticular genre that these psychological thrillers fit into. However none of these films are documentary, therefore this makes our trailer an original idea.

Our Trailer Idea

Our Trailer is going to be a psycholgical thriller. We got the idea from a movie that has recently been released called 'Grave Encounters', however, this film has been released as a psychological horror. never the less, we have decided to go with the idea, but we will have to be careful of what we put into it and make sure we use the codes and conventions of a thriller and not a horror. We haven't thought of a name as of yet, but the idea is coming together, as we have got a actors who aren't working with us for help in the trailer. Also we have strung together a lot of ideas for a location/s, which are things like, a graveyard, abandoned buildings, open fields and dark places like that.

First Day. Audience Research

On our first day of starting on our project, we first decided to make a moodboard about our target audience and did some audience research on what their hobbies/interests are. We have decided that our trailer will appeal more to females ages between 16-24, we decided on this because through research, we fount that young female adults would prefer to watch a psychological thriller than a gory thriller or any other type of thriller.