The characters that we built challenge traditional Noir conventions as we discarded the stereotypes and stock characters of film Noir, keeping only small aspects of original noir characters.
Traditionally film noir films are, for the most part relatively slow paced in terms of camera angles and action, however to suitably address our target audience we needed to keep up a fast pace to make it interesting and hooking, to do this we used a vast amount of camera angles, packed with effects and a variety of music to show the maze-like narrative.
Although our OTS breaks away from many conventions, especially in terms of characters and style, but we made sure to hang on to some, what we thought to be essential conventions such as the complicated plot, non-chronological sequences, narration and mysterious characters. We did this to keep the Noir part of our neo-noir genre.
Noir films where, in the vast majority, black and white, and while we didn't want to be black and white, neither did we want to be full colour, so we decided on a desaturated effect, something that some modern films such as 300 and Sin City are using. This gives the product a more serious feel, less light-hearted and links it back to film noir.
Above: A still from Sin City. Below: A still form 300. Both showing the desaturation effect.
Something that both 300, Sin City and other films which use the desaturation effect have done is put emphasis on the reds throughout the film, this is something that we wanted to do, I used colour effect manipulators in final cut to try to enhance the reds.
Conventionally the original film noirs were not very high budget or might production in terms of props and lighting, this is a convention that we stuck to by making our own props and using props and lighting that we already had. I made a short time lapse video of me creating the Tarot card props which we used as a strong signifier.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifhSym4yR54 - The Tarot card video.
