In our Thriller, we have tried to make the femme fatale character conform to the conventional film noir femme fatale. In order to do this, we looked closely at the costumes used in existing film noirs that suggest a devient and glamorous woman. Looking into 40's costumes helped rather a lot. In the end we decided to put Holly in a faux fur coat, tights and slightly heeled vintage shoes. To accessroies this we made her wear a pearl necklace and a small black and gold clutch bag. As far as her hair goes, the group decided that she would look a lot more feminine with her hair down and the continuity when filming would be more precise because we were filming different parts on different days. The fur coat is very 40's and conforms to the film noir sub genre. Making her look very feminine created more of an illusion of the seductive, inticing woman that a femme fatale is defined as. A lot of inspiration came from the femme fatale in Once Upon a Time in America. Something we did not use was red lipstick, this is frequently used on femme fatale characters but we decided not to use it because when editing we are going to convert the footage into black and white.
Film noir primarily describes Hollywood crime dramas and they are filmed with a low key black and white iconic style. Both the narrative and cinematography of our Thriller opening conforms to this definition and there are certain generic convention that we utilised in order to create an authentic interpretation of the sub genre. The lighting, shadows and costume all have clear resemblences of the genre and the soundtrack that we are goint to use makes the era and sub genre even clearer. Elements of crime fiction are evident in our narrative and the inclusion of a femme fatale is something that solidifies the clarity of the genre.
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Very interesting comments about your utilisation of the generic archetype, the femme fatale.
ReplyDeleteIf you look at definitions of film noir, contemporary texts of this tradition are mainly in low key colour in order to appeal to contemporary audiences, specifically the 16-25 year old demographic who are hostile to black and white films.
Your camera shots and angles are splendid, together with costume and mise-en-scene your film pays tribute to the noir tradition and films like "The Third Man". Your original footage, before effects were used in post production reflects an excellent understanding of low key colour and composition which adds to the sense of menace and suspense. Do 2 versions as strongly advised by Mr Seal and me. Note "Spooks" and ""The X Files" are texts in the noir tradition but are filmed in colour with low key lighting.