Low Key Lighting

1. film noirA style or genre of cinematographic film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace. The term was originally applied (by a group of French critics) to American thriller or detective films made in the period 1944–54 and to the work of directors such as Orson Welles, Fritz Lang, and Billy Wilder.a film marked by a mood of pessimism, fatalism, and menace.

2. "We'd be oversimplifying things in calling film noir oneiric (dream-like), strange, erotic, ambivalent, and cruel": this set of attributes constitutes the first of many attempts to define film noir made by French critics Raymond Borde and Etienne Chaumeton in their 1955 book Panorama du film noir américain 1941–1953 (A Panorama of American Film Noir)

3. film noir is often identified with a visual style, unconventional within a Hollywood context, that emphasizes low-key lighting and unbalanced compositions

4. Low Key Lighting • Low key light accentuates the contours of an object by throwing areas into shade while a fill light or reflector may illuminate the shadow areas to control contrast.

5. Fog and silhouettes

6. Unbalanced Composition • In the visual arts, composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a work of art, as distinct from the subject of a work. • Balanced images are when the weight of the object or objects are evenly distributed, and unbalanced compositions are when the visual weight is stronger in a single area within the composition. • Unbalanced compositions are associated with chaos and tension.

8. characteristics • Cynical attitudes • Sexual motivations • Smoking and brooding • Police and investigations • Beautiful, backstabbing women

9. The clichés of film noir have inspired parody since the mid-1940s. • It is often spoofed on the improv show Whose Line is it Anyway • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uan1b8l3Zjc

10. Consider this advice from a comedy website: • Imitating any genre usually requires either (1) an intimate knowledge of the genre, or (2) a number of tricks which make it appear that you have an intimate knowledge of the genre. Here we’re going to be looking at strategy number 2, as it applies to the 1940s detective mystery genre. • The detective genre depends heavily on language, and using plausible detective jargon will take you a long way in a scene. You’ll find a list of some useful phrases below. You can also make up your own. Try to use metaphors and similes that conjure up images of the world the detective lives in. A big grimy city, filled with tough guys, narrow alleys, cheap bars, and greasy diners. • Food references are good, but make sure they’re the kind of food you’d get in a diner: “Big Ed’s operation was like smoked meat. And I was going to put it on rye.” • Make references to any grimy part of a city—sewers, rats, cockroaches: “Big Ed’s operation was like a sewer. And I was going to lift the manhole cover.” • Connecting something to drinking is good too: “Big Ed’s operation was like a cheap bourbon. And I was going to put it on ice.”

11. How to Move • Once you have the jargon down, try working on the typical detective moves. • Everybody smokes in detective films. Cool characters will remove the cigarette from the packet, place it into their mouth, and light it, using only one hand. Women will blow smoke into the faces of men (this was once considered sexy). • When entering a room which may contain your enemies, the detective should always move sideways, holding your gun against your ear. (Is this in order to deal with enemies by threatening suicide?) The rest of the time, keep your hands in your pockets. Don’t smile, or go big with emotions. (This does not mean that you shouldn’t use emotions—rather, play them as very suppressed.) You may find it helps to talk out of one side of your mouth. • Women are usually the femme fatale type, walking with their hips, and apparently with no aim in life but to be seduced by men.

12. The Plot • The detective is in his office. It’s a slow day. Then a woman appears at the door. (He will usually fall in love with her during the course of the story, if not immediately.) She will give him some strange assignment, and is willing to pay his high fees. Inevitably the case will be more than it seems. The detective gets clunked over the head for no apparent reason. Perhaps someone will tell him to drop the case (which will only make him more determined to solve it). The story will end with a gunfight, and with the detective getting the girl (or for her wanting him but him having only contempt for her), and a complicated explanation, which, ideally, makes almost no sense.

13. Some good detective sentences: • “The pieces of the puzzle were falling into place.” • “It was a blonde, and blondes always mean trouble.” (So do brunettes, redheads, etc.) • “Mr. Big gave a signal. Two of his goons started to work me over.” • “No one plays me for a sucker and gets away with it.” • “There was more to this caper than I’d bargained for.” • “The D.A. was after me, Lieutenant O’Hara was after me, Big Ed was after me. I had to crack this before someone caught up.” • “I didn’t like his face. When he said he was called Smith, I didn’t like his name either.” • “I don’t like to see cheap hoods messing with a sweet kid like you, Princess.” • “She crossed her legs. She knew they were good. She leaned forward. She knew they were good too.” • “I hadn’t started this thing, but it was up to me to finish it.” • “You’re not working on this case any more, Mr. Hardstone. You’re fired.”/“Maybe you’ve fired me, but I haven’t fired me.” • “There was a killer out there . . . and it was my job to find him.”