10 Film Noir Still Images..

    

A few pieces of research found about film Noir..

Film Noir is a genre of  black and white film, which date back to the early 1940's. The term, 'Film Noir' is French for black film. They use low key lighting schemes and the contrast of light and dark to create atmosphere. Commonly, they will also use a lot of wide and low angles and flashbacks. They feature stock characters specific to the genre, for example the damsel in distress, or the hard-boiled detective. They often feature criminals, making them to a degree a type of crime drama.

My First Prezi..

Digital Media Technologies on Prezi

How does 'I am Legend' meet and break stereotypical conventions?

The dramatic thriller, I am Legend (2007) includes aspects of the sci-fi genre and is directed by Francis Lawrence. It shows the story of an American male, actor Will Smith, taking a journey through New York City to find a cure for a disease which killed, what seems like, most of humanity.

After watching the exposition twice i am going to try to vaguely explain, from notes, how this specific title sequence meets and breaks the key conventions of this sort of film. Firstly, we are greeted by an introduction to the storyline and all sorts of enigma, these are two key conventional points which will commonly cause an active audience, by providing us with questions. For example, the whole setting of the place. There would never be grass growing from the pavements in New York, leaving an audience with the question, 'where are all of the people?'. We can see the film is set in this American City by an establishing shot of all of the sky scrapers, along with the iconography used through yellow taxi's. All of this information together creates a 'hook', a very common conventional factor of most films.

However, the exposition of this film also has unconventional elements.. Such as the fact there are no titles, and it lasts at least four minutes, which is not normal. There is no non-diegetic music, the most distinctive sound is the continuous roaring of the car, which adds to the surreal effect and amplifies the action factor. There is also nothing which interrupts the interaction between the film and the audience in these few minutes, making it seem more unconventional.