Camera angles of Film Noir

Camera angles of Film Noir.
High angles and Low angle are good to add extra emotions i.e. high angles makes the persons emotions stand out more as it can make them feel small and weak. low angles can make a certain character appear big and important which makes it easier for the audience to understand the character more.
Deep Focus is used to emphasise the large field of view.
Extreme Close-ups were used alot at a silent moment in film noir when actors use the 180' rule during a tension built scene to put the audience into more suspense.

The Blue Angel Classic Film Noir review.

The Blue Angel follows Emmanuel Rath through a transformation from esteemed educator at the local Gymnasium to a destitute vagrant in pre-World War I Germany. Rath’s descent begins when he punishes several of his students for circulating photographs of the beautiful Lola Lola the headliner for the local cabaret, The Blue Angel. Hoping to catch the boys at the club itself, Professor Rath goes to the club later that evening and meets his eventual downfall: the lovely Lola herself. I personally didn't enjoy the film, because it was very hard to find a full copy of it and i feel the quality was bad, but what can you expect from a 1930's film. The story i didn't really understand and went a bit side tracked for the main plot of the educator who wanted to meet the famous 'Lola'.



A little glimpse of the film.

It was directed by Josef von Sternberg

What is Film Noir

Film Noir is a cinematic term used primarily to describe stylish Hollywood crime dramas, particularly those that emphasize doubt and sexual motivation. The classic Hollywood Film Noir period is generally regarded as stretching from the early 1940s to the late 1950s. Film Noir of the 40s and 50s was a very simple black-and-white visual style. Many of the classical Noir stories derived from the crime fiction that emerged in the United States during the Depression.

The Brief!

The Brief:
For As Media we have been told to produce a film opening and the theme is "contemporary 'film noir'. Our work needs to be up to date with the modernised world yet still bringing the noir traditions, values, narrative, editing techniques and mood and conventions to the film. This will involve a couple of mini-projects from what we can learn and improve on until we do our final project where we will have to do a 2/3 minute long cpntemporary film noir opening. I am looking forward to it and can't wait to get cracking on with the pratical side.

Preliminary Exercise The Brief

We were asked for our first Project before 'The Exchange' project was our preliminary exercise. We were given a task where we had to shoot a short film lasting approximately a minute. The shoot had to include a character walking into a room where a different character was currently sitting inside, the first character sits down next to or opposite the second character, a couple of lines of dialogue were exchanged and then the end. The reason we were set this task was to lead up to the Main Project that we are doing in January/February time. This exercise was performed to hopefully show common mistakes in our camera work and editing and to improve on it, and because we are not experienced professional cameramen, we need to slowly do exercises to gain experience so that we know what techniques and skills to use for our final project come January/ February time.

Preliminary Exercise

The Preliminary Exercise worked well, the dialogue went OK and so did the flow between the scenes. There were a couple of things that were pointed out that i didn't really notice at the time. Some of the scenes didn't cut to perfection, they were a few frames out, but this was also because we didn't have any more recording of that scene, this meant lack of handles. Lack of handles can be a big problem so you cant get the scenes to cut together perfectly. Also we forgot to record audio when there was no dialogue but we soon found out this was a very bad decision and we were wrong, it was school-boy error and we noted it and have recognised it doesn't sound right without any sound.
One issue that we pointed out as a group was the lack of shots, there weren't that many different angles only about 3/4, which doesn't make it very enjoyable to watch so we made notes and feel that we will not make the same mistakes again. This means in our next Project 'The Exchange', more shot and different angles are needed to create a more flowing and dynamic Project and hopefully more professional and enjoyable to watch.