Film Noir ..

Film Noir ..

Film Noir is a typical style of stylish Hollywood crime drama films in the early 1940’s to the late 1950’s, particularly those that emphasized suspicious attitudes and sexual motivations 

Throughout this film trailer they jump from high-key lighting to low key-lighting; however it starts off by using strong high-key lighting using the key and back lights until the woman gives him the book "The Big Sleep" and he starts reading it. The scene changes to him in the car and that's when they use low-key lighting which is more of the filler lights. The scene is dark and you can only see half of his face because there's a shadow it. Then the scene jumps to him breaking into a house and still the lighting is low-key. During that whole scene the lighting is low-key as the woman comes back into the scene you can still tell it's low-key but it's not as strong as the lighting when he was in the car. While the scene fades out the lighting changes to high-key and you see the man and another woman kissing the only shadows on their face is from the man’s hat. Following on from that it shows the man in a car and this shot is low-key because she shadows on half of his face however when they show the woman they use high-key lighting. As the text comes up on the scene you can't really tell whether its high-key or low-key lighting but I don't think that matters because the text is the main focus in that scene. When the text "The Big Sleep" comes up the lighting behind it is clearly high-key; the only shadows shown on the scene are at the back because of the settings. When they show the woman again the lighting is high-key because there's only a hint of shadow on her face but has been softened with the filler light. You can clearly see the contrast between the low- key and high- key lighting towards the end as they use low-key lighting for one shot then straight away jump to the next shot with high -key lighting and that's how the trailer ends.

Having the high- key lighting first is really effective because it straight away identifies who's in the film and what they want, it doesn't confuse the audience. The scene jumping from high-key lighting to low-key lighting is really effective as it shows the contrast between not only the scenes but the characters in the scenes and whether they're the hero's or the villains. I think, when he was in the car the effect of using low-key lighting works well because he might be up to no good or doing something bad which is proven in the next scene when he beaks into someones house; however he could be a detective finding evidence. This is an enigma code as it raises questions on who he might be which attracts the audience to carry on watching (or in this case as its a film trailer to watch the film). As I mentioned above they use low-key lighting in one shot then straight away goes into high-key lighting which just highlights how effective the lighting is to create tension or  a relaxed feel to the scene.

For this image the producers have used high-key lighting because there are no shadows on their faces. The key light was used really strongly for this image as the light on their face is so bright. However, on the image you can still see the contrast between the black and white because on the woman even though her face has no shadow towards the back and her hair you can see the darkness. Also, on the man on the side of his face you can see a small hint of a shadow and behind them both its black which means the producer used the back and key light mostly. 

Using the high-key lighting on their faces is really effective as it highlights their facial expressions. This therefore, indicates whether the characters are serious or comical. The facial expressions in this case prove that the films genre is Hollywood crime drama because he looks serious and the woman looks scared; she's holding on to him in the car which connotes that maybe a car is coming towards them to hit into them or maybe they're running away and the car is stolen. This hints the genre crime drama really well as it shows the crime side of the genre. Also because the background of the characters is dark it means all the focus is on them.