film noir evaluation

For this assignment we had to create a film noir poster. Film noir is a film genre mostly set in the 1950's and was used a lot in those times. It usually involved detectives and the mafia. The clothes they would wear for a man would be a suit a long coat and a fedora. Most people would look like this and the women would be wearing a long dress not showing anything. The men would mostly be in the shadows so you can only see the coat and fedora.

I had a look on google for film noir images to look for inspiration, I found a lot of shots of men leaning against the wall I thought that I should add one of these images, there is a lot of people in the dark and their face lit up. I also remember a game I played called LA Noire which is a film noir game so I also used the game cover as inspiration. I also had a look around for some locations I could use. Most of the research I did was secondary research and the only primary research I did was going out to look at locations.

 The ideas I had was for the first picture to have a person leaning against the wall with their head down so you can't see who the person is making the person looking mysterious. I took the picture from different angles and then I'd use the one I thought looked the best. The second image I took was in a dark room and I used a phone light to light up the models face. This one was took at college in a dark room. We couldn't have any light in the shot or it would of ruined it. The third image I took was the model walking down the stairs, I also took this one at college I took a lot of pictures as he walked down the stairs, I used the one where he was closest to the camera. I also had people in the background so I had to take that out in editing. The fourth and final image I took was of the model standing facing the camera, this was based off the LA Noire cover. There wasn't too many problems when taking the pictures we made sure the timing was good so there was not many people around us when we were taking the pictures.

When we was going out we wanted to do it when there wont be many people around. We knew all of the locations that we wanted to go to so we weren't wasting time trying to find a location. They were all in or near college so we didn't have to travel far either. I didn't use any props in the pictures so I didn't need to worry about that. I only used one model in the pictures so I didn't spend time trying to find people for the shots. We had to book out a camera but I didn't use a tri pod because I didn't think I would need it.

I had a lot of issues when I had finished taking the pictures because I lost all of the work on the computer so I had to go out and retake them and rush them the next week, we also then had the issue of using more than one SD card making hard to find my work. I also missed some lessons being sick so a lot of my final product was rushed. I changed the colour of the image by double clicking on the layer and using the gradient overlay tool to make it black and white. I used the text tool to write the text on my poster, I also used the eraser tool to get rid of some of the background because I had people in the shot that would of ruined it if they were still in it.

If I did this assignment again I would definitely use my own SD card when taking the pictures to save a lot of issues, and also I would save all my work on my hardrive. I would also find some more unique pictures to take, I did a lot of pictures that have been used so many times in film noir I would make a unique picture. I would experiment in photoshop too since I just used the basic tools I could of used a lot more but I didn't have any time.

In my opinion I think that the pictures I took meet the assignment brief but the final poster I made doesn't. I didn't have time with all the retakes and the days off. I have learned a lot with this assignment that I wont make the same mistakes again next time.