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| Stereotypical Femme Fatale |
The actors in our film noir were all teenagers which is unconventional for this genre as the actors are normally middle aged. By using this age group we should attract a varied age range as young people could connect with the actors whereas older people can connect with the storyline more. However, because you don't actually see our femme fatale the opening sequence is male dominated meaning that it may not appeal to both genders, only men.
How Femme Fatale's are represented in film noir:
1. long hair (blonde or dark), make up and jewellery.
2. They usually have cigarettes which have sexual connotations of liberation and phallic power.
3. The dress they wear defines the woman.
4.Iconography of violence is a specific symbol of her unnatural phallic power.
5. A framed portrait of a woman is common.
6. They are usually the murderers which indicate narcissism or duplicity.
7. Women are generally centre frame or drawing our attention by focusing on the foreground.
8. Visual style expresses mood through darkness, both real in underlit and night-time scenes, and psychologically through shadow and claustrophobic settings which overwhelm the character.
Our femme fatale exceeded these expectations because she was quiet and let the man be in control. You couldn't see her face which normally you would in classic film noir's as she would want to be the center of attention. This stereotype of femme fatales in film has been challenged in our product, as said before this may make it less appealing to women because of the lack of female actors present, but the differences made may also attract women. This is because in most film noir's the women are viewed as bad people, who were objects and not that clever but in our product the woman, although not seen much, isn't presented in this way at all. She is clever, a good person and there is little objectification of her. This would allow the female audience as a whole to see the change made in our film as a good one and make women want to watch.
Teenagers as a group may have seen the film noir genre as old fashioned and perhaps boring. However, our product is in colour, more modern and has younger actors than usual. All of these factors make the product more appealing for this social group. The younger actors will allow teenagers to connect with the product more, this is because people of the same age group usually have the same dialect and mannerisms, therefore this social group will see this within the product and feel drawn to it. In addition to this, because our product has no age restrictions teenagers will be able to watch it no matter what age. This will give our product a wider audience. Also if our main target audience (men from 40+) are sitting watching our film noir it may influence their children or grandchildren to watch it with them, because they are old enough. Another reason this social group may want to watch our product may be because it is quite different than anything done before. This is due to the modern spin on quite an old genre, the changes that we have made to our product in comparison to the stereotypical idea's of film noir make the product unique, perhaps drawing attention to it not only from teenagers but most other social groups too.
Dissimilarly to our femme fatale, we didn't change much when it came to the detective. Here is a stereotypical film noir detective:
The main stereotypical attributes a detective from this genre has is:
- Cigarettes
- A trilby hat
- Long coat
- Middle aged
- Heavy drinker
- Fairly quiet
- A 'mans' man
