Noir Technical Conventions
Technical Conventions of Film Noir include:
Lighting:
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.
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.]
- www.filmsite.org
Lighting:
- Noir lighting is unlike the brightly lit sets of mainstream film of the time which used filler lamps to remove ambiguous shadows. Brief sequences of blanc or normal lighting may be used to indicate the normal world. Noir uses, low-key lighting to create a darker, ambiguous world which often makes characters, their faces and therefore their emotions and motivations shadowed by hats, veils, cigarette smoke and the low lighting of the sets, difficult to read. The shadowy interiors may be interrupted by fragmented light through venetian blinds, stair balustrades etc.
- The isolation from society of the typical noir hero was underscored by the use of stark high-contrast lighting—the most notable visual feature of film noir. The shadowy noir style can be traced to the German Expressionist cinema of the silent era. Robert Wiene’s The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920 contains one of the best early examples of the lighting techniques used to inspire the genre. Wiene used visual elements to help define the title character’s madness, including tilted cameras to present skewed images and a dark atmosphere in which only the faces of the actors were visible. This Expressionistic style was later used by German directors such as Fritz Lang (Metropolis, 1927; M, 1931) and F.W. Murnau (Nosferatu, 1922; Sunrise, 1927).
- These lighting effects were used in Hollywood by cinematographers such as Gregg Toland (Citizen Kane, 1941), John F. Seitz (Double Indemnity, 1944), Karl Freund (Key Largo, 1948), and Sid Hickox (The Big Sleep, 1948) to heighten the sombre tone of films in the genre. Classic images of noir included rain-soaked streets in the early morning hours; street lamps with shimmering halos; flashing neon signs on seedy taverns, diners, and apartment buildings; and endless streams of cigarette smoke wafting in and out of shadows. Such images would lose their indelibility with realistic lighting or colour cinematography.
- Camerawork often employs extreme high and low angles while shots will emphasise claustrophobic, moody compositions and may work to disorientate the viewer. Deep focus is common. Conventions of classic film such as shot/reverse shot will be infringed, eg: the speaker out of the shot while we watch the reaction of another character.
- German Expressionist turn of the 1920s which sought to express emotion rather than depict external realities had included the use of dramatic, exaggerated lighting to imply a character’s psychological state. Many directors of noir films were European, mainly German (eg: Billy Wilder, Fritz Lang and Robert Siodmak), who had a heritage of German Expressionism and had been among the influx of refugee filmmakers into the United States prior to World War II. This as seen as a powerful influence on the shadowy lighting effects of noir.
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.
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.]
- www.filmsite.org