This week my group decided on what we are going to produce for PB4- and that was to follow the horror genre with aspects of Noir and possible bottle drama. We have quite a good story line that I think will contribute nicely to each of these genres as we have now learnt from watching so many films that one film is never just one genre.

To produce a 8-10 minute video we felt that giving the audience a question right from the beginning would make it more intriguing because we are going to start in the middle and not really have a beginning or an ending. I really like this idea because it gives the audience an emotional connection to the film straight away as they sympathise for what they see  and therefore want to find out what happened and why. We have decided to base our film around a women where she has done something bad (killing someone e.g. her husband) and the psychotic break down she goes through in covering it up, hiding it, and flash backs to why it happened. I think this plot is effect because it gets inside the head of the protagonist and can give the audience the decision to either like or dislike her.

I am excited to start working on this and for the remainder of this week we are going to decide on locations and form together a rough script which will plan out our story board.

This week I looked further into the readings as my last project brief was on Film Noir and felt interested to look more into the history and areas I hadn’t done so for PB3- as this might have effect on PB4.

What was raised in the reading ‘House, Rebecca R. (1986). Night of the soul: American film noir. Studies in Popular Culture, 9(1), pp. 61-83.’ it stated that even though film noir has many typical aspects such as dark and mysterious tones that are very easily identifiable. Quite a few of the Noir films you would though to be noir are not. I thought that this was a very good point made by House as I can understand the idea that audiences see a black and white film surrounding a murder mystery and automatically think that it fits into the Noir. Yes, it has the expected concepts but Noir films are said in this reading to be based around one character and in one set location.

Film Noir has been debated for many years to not be seen as a genre. This is because unlike genres such as Western with conventions of setting and conflict, noir is more noted for its tone and mood. I really admire the quote “It seems reasonable to agree that American Film Noir is more of a movement then a genre”. I think this is a better way of looking at Noir because it doesn’t cut it from genre but shows it as a type of cinema unique that cannot contrast to anything else.

Last week consumed of many late nights and fiddling with the editing of PB3. Overall I am pretty satisfied with the outcome of my film and feels that it acts upon the expected conventions of the Noir genre, but it also has a creative side revealing my thoughts and expectations of Noir.

What I specifically feel went well with this genre sketch was the portrayal of feeme fatale and showing the two different personalities of the protagonist, around her family and then facing her inner demons. I feel that this film didn’t need much diegetic sound as the visuals themselves portrayed the idea of what is expected to be a women and how that is conflicted.

One part that I feel could have had more work was the camera angles themselves. I really liked the high shots I incorporated in the kitchen and the reflection use in the mirror, but I feel my shots needed to be a bit more distorted to increase this abstract visual of Noir. If I do decided to follow on from PB3 and use this genre in PB4 I think that carrying on with the idea of Femme Fatale is a good insight to look upon as you can really play with the conventions and manipulate the story line to distract the audience from what they expect, but also subconsciously use those conventions expected.