Different types of genre: Film Noir

In order to broaden media culture, different types of genre are shown. The ways in which they are shown vary. 'Film Noir' is one of many that we looked at. It is very different compared to other genres such as thrillers, actions, sci-fi's or horrors. You could say some elements of a thriller and horror genre are perhaps included in the genre 'film noir' however subvert in ways that make it a complete different genre.

In class we watched a documentary which focused on, 'film noir' in particular, and the ways in which they used certain criteria to enable the genre to be different to the rest.
Many elements included:

- black and white only: this created a different atmosphere almost giving the genre a unfriendly feel but very engaging as it was different and not the same colours everywhere, and where there's daylight and a sense of happiness this was cut out completly to help the audience to engage in a different scenary.
- voice overs: these were used frequently to establish characters thoughts, this was effective and could be used within my coursework as it shows different techniques. When the voice over was played over the shots it seemed as though the character was talking directly to us the audience, and whislt what was happening on screen it made the narrative fit in perfectly and almost outlined the series of events to make them clearer
- male gaze: was a reoccuring theme brought up throughout the documentary or short story if you like, and whatever the scene if there was a shot with a male actor and female actress the female actress would always have more of the attention opposed to the male actor, and this was enforced with an effective camera technique. The males point of view would be to look at the female actress from the ankle upwards. Tilting upwards ultra slowly. Some documentarys/short films seem to include this technique in their footage too. Even if once, it has to be said that its very engaging.
- Shadows: film noir is a genre that is creepy and eery, not pleasant and full of mysteriois happenings, and shadows was another element which cropped up alot to help support this theory. Especially for the audience when somebody is about to kill somebody else with a knife and all you see is the shadow of the knife in that persons body.
- Cigars: were often used to show significance of a 'bad' character or one of which has the expenses. Expensive luxuries outlined higher class. The extract we watched leveled off which actors were in which class very clearly, by the possesion of motorcycles or glistening brand new cars.

Something i also noticed was that many of the characters wernt young, maybe a couple of extras in the background were children, but no actors seemed to be of a younger generation, which is unusual to see. However showing older generation actors within this media genre outlines the ability of bigger, better and wiser, moreover some of the other elements listed above ^ fit into my thoughts as black and white relates back to 1900's when there was no colour on screen, the male gaze and not younger men and cigars are a obvouis pin point to a older luxury.