1. Jan 2012
For A2 coursework

2.  After WW2 film were frequently dark and
depressing with a tendency for the bad guys to get
away with their crimes.
 In the US the cold war was making its mark and the
endings of these films was rarely happy or
optimistic.
 The title was attributed to mainly black and white
films with this particular gloomy tone or mood.
 Not so much a genre as a period of film history.
 The style was often influenced by German
Expressionism or the French New Wave.

3.  Films from German directors, such as F. W.
Murnau, G. W. Pabst, and Robert Wiene, were
noted for their stark camera angles and
movements, chiaroscuro lighting and
shadowy, high-contrast images - all elements of
later film noir.
 Another cinematic origin of film noir was from
the plots and themes often taken from
adaptations of American literary works -
usually from best-selling, hard-boiled, pulp
novels and crime fiction by Raymond
Chandler, James M. Cain, Dashiell Hammett, or
Cornell Woolrich. As a result, the earliest film
noirs were detective thrillers.

5.  A cynical, disillusioned male who gets caught
up in the machinations of
 A seductive, double-dealing femme fatale, who
manipulates him to become the fall guy.
 The women were often portrayed as such
because their new found independence
following the war was a threat to male power
and supremacy.
 The males were often anti-heroes as they often
had murky pasts and were not clean and clear
cut innocents or good guys.

6.  Innocence vs corruption
 Male vs female
 Good female vs Bad female
 Light vs dark
 Gullibility vs deceit and betrayal
 Law abiding vs law breaking

7.  Storylines were often elliptical, non-linear and
twisting. Narratives were frequently complex,
maze-like and convoluted, and typically told with
foreboding background music, flashbacks (or a
series of flashbacks), witty, razor-sharp and acerbic
dialogue, and/or reflective and confessional, first-
person voice-over narration.
 Amnesia suffered by the protagonist was a
common plot device, as was the downfall of an
innocent Everyman who fell victim to temptation
or was framed. Revelations regarding the hero
were made to explain/justify the hero's own
cynical perspective on life.

8.  Film noir films were marked visually by
expressionistic lighting, deep-focus or depth of
field camera work, disorienting visual schemes,
jarring editing or juxtaposition of elements,
ominous shadows, skewed camera angles
(usually vertical or diagonal rather than
horizontal), circling cigarette smoke, existential
sensibilities, and unbalanced or moody
compositions.

10.  Settings were often interiors with low-key (or single-
source) lighting, venetian-blinded windows and
rooms, and dark, claustrophobic, gloomy appearances.
 Exteriors were often urban night scenes with deep
shadows, wet asphalt, dark alleyways, rain-slicked or
mean streets, flashing neon lights, and low key
lighting.
 Story locations were often in murky and dark
streets, dimly-lit and low-rent apartments and hotel
rooms of big cities, or abandoned warehouses.
 [Often-times, war-time scarcities were the reason for
the reduced budgets and shadowy, stark sets of B-
pictures and film noirs.]

11.  Film noir films (mostly shot in gloomy
grays, blacks and whites) thematically showed the
dark and inhumane side of human nature with
cynicism and doomed love, and they emphasized
the brutal, unhealthy, seamy, shadowy, dark and
sadistic sides of the human experience.
 An oppressive atmosphere of
menace, pessimism, anxiety, suspicion that
anything can go wrong, dingy
realism, futility, fatalism, defeat and entrapment
were stylized characteristics of film noir.
 The protagonists in film noir were normally driven
by their past or by human weakness to repeat
former mistakes.

12.  Femmes Fatales: These women were always
mysterious, duplicitous, double-
crossing, gorgeous, unloving, predatory, tough
-sweet, unreliable, irresponsible, manipulative
and desperate.
 She would have transgressed societal norms
with her independent and smart, menacing
actions, which would bring her and the hero to
their downfall.
 The other kind of woman was
dutiful, reliable, trustworthy and loving.

14. Jan to April 2012

15.  10. A short film in its entirety, lasting
approximately five minutes, which may be live
action or animated or a combination of
both, together with two of the following three
options:
 a poster for the film;
 a radio trailer for the film;
 a film magazine review page featuring the film.

16.  Do a Film Noir style film.
 You can do old fashioned or modern.
 You must chart all decisions you make.
 Start a new blog.
 Do some research or put your existing research
onto it.
 Discuss the films we have seen as a class, watch
some more on your own, and explain what
elements you are going to borrow, preserve or
change and how and why?
 Do your own still shots of typical conventions:
camera angles, locations, characters, props etc

17.  Decide on your group.
 Assign roles but ideally all should have a part in
all aspects – one person is merely i/c!
 Work up a script – KEEP IT SIMPLE!
 Decide on costumes, props etc. Take care with
guns!!!!
 Choose your actors!! Keep it to a very few reliable
people!
 Decide on locations; think carefully about lighting:
single source, low key...
 Work up a shooting schedule
 Do a story board – Pete Fraser recommends a post
it variety so you can move the scenes around more
easily.
 Decide on the music.

18.  Film it
 Edit it
 Add music
 Add captions / titles / credits
 Remember production and distribution
companies’ logos, year, classification.
 Present it to class for feedback
 Film evaluation questions:
 In what ways does your media product use, develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real media products?
 How effective is the combination of your main product
and ancillary texts?
 What have you learned from your audience feedback?
 How did you use media technologies in the construction
and research, planning and evaluation stages?

19.  The production element and presentation of research, planning
and evaluation may be individual or group work (maximum
group size is four candidates). Where candidates have worked in a
group, the evidence for assessment may be presented collectively
but centres will still assess candidates on an individual basis for
their contribution to aspects of the work, from planning, research
and production to evaluation.
 Though there is no formal individual essay component for this
unit, in the G325 examination, candidates will be asked to write
about the work undertaken from this unit and from the AS
coursework unit. It is therefore recommended that candidates
undertake some form of written reflection as practice for the exam.
 G324 is marked and internally standardised by the centre and
marks are submitted to OCR by a specified date, a sample is then
selected for external moderation. The unit is marked out of a total
of 100 marks: 20 marks for the planning and research and its
presentation; 60 marks for the construction; 20 marks for the
evaluation.

20.  Each candidate will evaluate and reflect upon the creative process
and their experience of it. Candidates will evaluate their work
electronically, this evaluation being guided by the set of key
questions below. This evaluation may be done collectively for a
group production or individually. Examples of suitable formats
for the evaluation are:
 A podcast
 DVD extras
 A blog
 A powerpoint
 In all cases, candidates should be discouraged from seeing the
evaluation as simply a written essay and the potential of the
format chosen should be exploited through the use of images,
audio, video and links to online resources. Marks should be
supported by teacher comments and may be supported by other
forms such as audio or videotaped presentations.

21.  One way of approaching these is for each member of
the group to do a different poster appealing to different
audiences.
 Research the different posters that are released for
films, some are for different regions of the world some
for different ages etc analyse their differences and
reasons and how they appeal to their particular
audiences.
 Then as a group explain who chose which audience
and how they made it appeal and get some feedback!
 Likewise if you do the film magazine review
page, each take a different magazine and analyse it
before doing your own specifically for that magazine.

22. Good luck!
You have until Easter to get this all completed it
will be moderated on the inset day on Monday
16th April 2012.
The deadline for screening films to the class is
Monday 19th March.
Remember to keep you blogs up to date –
everything goes on them!