Analysis of LA Confidential

 

LA Confidential is a neo-noir film, that came out in 1997.

It was directed by Curtis Hanson, and stars Russel Crowe, Danny DeVito and Guy Pearce.

It was based on James Ellroy's 1990 novel, which had the same title as the film.

It grossed $5.2 million on its opening weekend, as it was released in 769 theatres.

In this clip are a lot of traditional film noir conventions as well as a few neo-noir conventions.

This is the clip of when the audience first get to see Bud White. It develops his character and sets a good first impression of him for the audience.

First Impression of the LA Confidential Characters

Research Of Film Noir

Task; To create a short film (no more than 5 minutes), in its entirety and create an accompanying film poster and magazine film review - brief 10)

Historical Origins

• Film Noir first hit it off just after World War Two, when women were doing the jobs that the men were doing before they left for the war and they finally felt they knew what it was like to have power, and they didn't want to give it back.

• The US cold war was making its mark, and Film Noirs rarely had a happy or optimistic ending. The films normally had a really gloomy mood, with a lot of mystery to it.

• The style of the films were often influenced by German Expressionism, which refers to a number of related creative movements beginning in Germany before the First World War.

• Films from German directors, like F. W. Murnau, G. W. Pabst and Robert Wiene were well known for their stark camera angles and movements, chiaroscuro lighting and shadowy, high contrast images. These were all elements of the later films.

About Film Noir

• There are always;

               - Seductive, powerful women and they use that to get what they want

               - About money and murder

               - Dark themes

               - Mysterious themes

               - Protagonists that have bad luck

               - Pose the question "why me?" and the answer "for no reason at all"

               - Protagonists that are on a downwards spiral in which they cannot get out of

               - A twisted triangle of love, hate and murder

               - Smoking - which is a sign of bad morals

• Film Noir portrays a world that no one had seen in detail before. They often gave the audience access to every part of society.

• The characters are like small fish in a big aquarium with lots of things happening all at once and they have to piece them all together.

• One quarter or more of the plots involve male finds out when he returns from war that things aren't the same anymore.

Target Audience

• The target audience is males; 
• The movies include a seductive femme fatale, who the male protagonist normally falls for because the femme fatale seduces her for her own purposes. This would attract the males more then the females.

• The age of the audience can vary depending on the content of the movie and what themes and the story line is like. Film noirs can be for the older generations and the younger.

Why do the Audience Watch Film Noirs?

• The audience doesn't know what is going on, but they know something bad is happening as the characters become entwined with more dark happenings, so that excites them to keep watching until the end.

• It's like a riddle or a puzzle and people want to figure them out, that is why people like them so much.

Lighting and Camera Angles

• There is often low angles and high angles when a woman is shot in a Film Noir. This shows who has the status and power between the two characters.

• After the war, the equipment they used advanced, so they were able to shoot at night and use effective lights to get the best results.

• They use wide angle lenses so that the foreground and the background are both in the shot, even though the actors cannot see each other when one stands behind the other while they are shooting a scene, the audience can see everything perfectly.

• Light and Shadows are always used in film noirs.

• Lights can show good and evil by how light or dark the location or shot are.

• The light can show a character trapped and the fact that they can't leave the situation or place they are in.
• Venetian blinds are a quick way to create psychological effects.

• 

  Film noirs often use chiaroscuro lighting, which is a contrast between light and dark lighting, usually bold contrasts which affect the whole composition. 

• Chiaroscuro lighting creates shadows and sharp lights, which can hide identities of characters, distort the audiences' view of what is happening in the scene and change the atmosphere of the film.

Location

• Some typical locations for Film Noir are; Urban settings, Dark Alleyways, tunnels etc.

• The location is a must because the film is shooting reality.

• It is important for film noir to show the city to make it seem more realistic.
  
  

James King

• He didn't write for the "pulps" and he wasn't interested in motion pictures or writing for them, so others took his work and made them films instead.

• People say he was an amazing writer.

• His story was the same for most of what he wrote - the man falls in love with the women, he ends up killing the husband and then it ends up with him getting into trouble because of it.

Raymond Chandler

• He was an American novelist and screenwriter. He started at the age of 44, when he lost his job at an oil company during the Great Depression.
• He mostly wrote detective fiction, such as "Farewell, My Lovely" and "The Long Goodbye". Both of these books have gone on to become films in the style of noir.
• Chandler was the first one to say "try it on for size" and now it is a phrase people use everyday.

Joe Lewis

• Joe Lewis was an American B-movie film director.
• His stylish flourishes came to be appreciated by film critics in the years that followed his retirement in 1966. 
• Joe Lewis was great at set ups and is remembered for his original mysteries; My Name is Julia Ross (1945) and So the Dark Night (1946).
• Some film noirs have followed in his steps and created similar set ups.

Censorship

• The censorship meant that Film Noirs were not allowed to show certain images that weren't seen as appropriate.

• People believe that censorship allows the audiences' imagination to take over, and for writers to be creative.

• The fact they aren't allowed to show when two characters have a sexual relationship, makes the audiences' atmosphere even more passionate because they don't actually see it, so their mind is left to wander.  

Traditional Conventions

 Characters

• Femme Fatale - a seductive, double-dealing woman. She normally manipulates men to becoming the "fall guy". The women were often portrayed as powerful women because they had just found their independence after the second world war.

• Anti-heroes - males that had dark pasts and were not innocent or good guys. They are often cynical, disillusioned males who get caught up in the femme fatale's plans.

• The Detective 

Costumes

Binary Oppositions in Film Noir

• A lot of Film Noirs include binary oppositions, such as;
• good vs evil
• innocence vs corruption 
• light vs dark
• male vs female
• good female vs bad female

Neo Noir

Neo Noir is a style that is often seen in modern motion pictures. These movies often have elements of film noir in them, but they have modern themes, content and styles that weren't in the original film noirs.

Some examples of neo noirs are;

• American Psycho 2000

• The Bourne Identity 2002

• Batman Begins 2005

• The Black Dahlia 2006

• The Dark Knight 2008

Creating A Scary Scene

Our creation of a scary scene:

We decided to pan across the empty school to try and give the scene an eerie atmosphere before we then stopped on Rachel in the window. We decided to have Rachel in a neutral position because it makes her seem more ghost like and it would make the scene scarier. We also decided to put the clip in black and white, instead of colour, because we felt that it would add to the tension we were trying to create. There was a crow in the background that fit really well with the clip, so we didn't add in any other sound effects or music. This is because we thought the crow on it's own had a big enough impact on the short clip and we found that the less sounds that were involved in the clip, the tenser the atmosphere was.   

Creating A Happy Scene

Our creation of a happy scene:

When we shot this clip, James and Rachel didn't know what to say but we really liked the way they walked and the facial expressions they had, so we decided to use this clip but add in a happy song to make the situation seem more happy then it would have been if we had kept in the talking. There was a crow in the background, which will work for a scary scene but it doesn't fit in with the scene we were trying to create, which was another reason as to why we added the music. We also brightened the clip because it was a dull day, which doesn't fit with the happiness we were trying to create, so by making it brighter, it made the scene look happier. 

Recreating A Clip From Forrest Gump

This is the clip we chose to recreate:

 

Our recreation:

click the image to see the writing.

Experimenting With Different Microphones

Experimenting With Garageband

  To create these pieces of music we used the ipad app garageband. This app was helpful to use but it was quite confusing to use at first, because it was complicated to use and change the instruments and record and save the music, but once we had used it a couple of times, we got used to how it worked.

Happy

To create this piece of music we used a series of grand piano and guitar cords mixed together in major to create a happy sound.

Tense

To create this piece of music we used strings, one with a low pitch (cello) and one with a high pitch (violin). To create the constant low note, gradually getting higher, we used the Ipad app of garageband and we placed three of our fingers on the low notes and then dragged our fingers up to the high notes.

Sad

To create this piece of music we used three notes from an acoustic guitar and strings as the base line. We used a minor key in order to make it sound sadder then if we used a major key.

Experimenting With Foley

To create this sound we got someone with loud shoes to walk on the spot. We used a room which echoed with a concrete floor, so that the sound of walking would be more defined then if we used a room with carpet, because the sound wouldn't have been as loud.

We put the Ipad close to the footsteps to make sure that we just captured the sound of the footsteps rather then other sounds around where we were recording.  

To create this sound we got one of the group members to breathe heavily, while I held the Ipad close to her, so that we could hear the breathing because we first tried it further away but we couldn't pick up the breathing well and it didn't sound as good as when we recorded it closer to her. 

We also had to create a sound that sounded realistic, which took a couple of attempts before we started to record.

This sound took a lot of trial and errors in order to create a sound that was realistic. We first tried pushing a school chair into a group of chairs, but it didn't create a loud enough crash and the crash wasn't very successful because is sounded like one chair hitting another, which didn't sound realistic. 

We decided to get one member to sit on an office chair and push herself into a group of chairs. This worked well because it was a big enough noise to sound like a realistic crash. We did it in the same room as we did the footstep sound in, which meant that the sound echoed, making it louder.

This sound was created by one of our group members slowly rustling a hula hoop crisp bag, while I held the Ipad directly next to the packet. I did this to make sure that the Ipad picked up the sound clearly because if I held it further away, the Ipad didn't pick up the rustling because it was so quiet.

We tried a few other objects before we got to the crisp packet, but they didn't give the same effect because they didn't sound as realistic as the crisp packet did, due to the material being less crackly as the the crisp packet when it was rustled. 

We used the door going into the room we used to create the footstep and the crash noise because the room echoed the sounds that we created. We found out that if we slowly opened the door, it would create a creaking sound and because the sound echoed it meant that it gave a eerie effect.
While making this sound, we didn't have to put the Ipad directly by the door because the sound echoed in the room anyway.

To create this sound, we got one of our group members to hit their fists together because we tried to create the sound by hitting a chair and a book but they didn't have the same effect because it didn't sound realistic.
In order to record the sound, I had to bring the Ipad really close to where her fists were because we tried it further away, because we didn't want her to hit the Ipad, but when we played it back, we couldn't hear the sound very well.

For this sound, we did some trail and errors on dropping different objects, such as books and shoes, and we tried slapping the table and hitting the table with our fists, but they didn't sound like gun shots. Then, we dropped a metal bin on the concrete floor and it made a sudden bang and the echo of the room made the sound carry on, which sounded like a gun shot.
We recorded it by putting the Ipad near to the bin being dropped to make sure that we could get the loudest sound, which would make it sound more realistic.

This was another easy sound to create because one of our group members had a set of keys on them, so we got her to jingle them and we recorded them.
However, the recording was more difficult because the keys were quiet, so the first time we recorded them we couldn't hear it properly, so we had to re-film it and put the Ipad close to the keys while they were jingling in order to pick up the sound.

Introduction to Film Noir

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