Film Noir

In this assignment we was given a genre of film that our work will be based around, and the given genre of film was Film noir our task by the end of week 7 was to create 4 or 5 final images that was going to be in our final DVD poster and DVD front cover and back, all edited.

We had to research other images from the same genre for example we had to look at other posters and DVD covers that was already out there. Then we got ideas from these and learned how the clothing and lighting was in that era, this research helped me before taking my images it made me have some knowledge of where and what images I'm going to take to make it look like the genre ''Film Noir''. The images I chose to recreate was these images.

Image From internet Recreated images

The first Image I recreated, I went to to the train station in central Nottingham, to recreate this image I had to take a portrait shot of the train track I had to get onto a platform and take the image of the long track.

The second image I had to get a model to recreate it because in the original image it is a person standing still. For this shot I had to go in a dark room and get torch lighting from my phone also I had to make a hole in a piece of paper and shine the light through it onto the models face this made the photographs lighting look similar to the original.

For the third image I had to get another model sitting down (I done this one at home) and I had to get torch lighting from a torch and placed it onto the side so it shone on her face and hair. The props used was a cigarette this image looks really similar to the original.

For the last one it was also taken at the train station in central Nottingham I had to get the timing right for this and I had to wait until the train was still and not moving, I took this picture from quite far away (mid shot) to look similar to the original.

The contact sheets I created was these from all the shots I took on my camera

Natural lighting
Torch lighting (from phone to make shadow effect)
Soft light
These were the different type of lighting I used.

When editing these images. For the first one on the contact sheet (the woman) I darkened the background to almost black with the brush tool The opacity was 45% and the flow 50% I had to keep changing the brush size to small when i was darkening it around the face and hair area so it doesn't get on to those places because I didn't want to darken the face. I already made the image black and white on the camera settings therefore I didn't have to do it in Photoshop. But what I did do was change the brightness a little higher so the face and hair is bright.

For the second image which was the train when editing it I firstly used the magic wand tool and selected the areas I didnt want to change and by this I managed to make the background black with the paintbrush tool again but this time the opacity was 90% and the flow 80% I also used the paintbrush tool to make the people not visible because its all black and dark (shadowy) I then changed the photograph to black and white .

For the third image (model one) I changed the
Drop down button from normal to lighten and then to make it even more stand out i changed the brightness setting higher, also I used the black and white adjustment to make my image look more like Film Noir.

For the final image when editing I went onto the Photoshop software and firstly I opened the image up onto it and then I made a new layer which I used the brush tool to darken the selected areas which is mostly the sides I did this by changing the brush size to around 700 and changed the opacity to 65% furthermore to get the lighter areas so it faded in, I changed the brush size to 500 and changed the opacity to 17% Furthermore I made another layer and then I copied and pasted a 'Grain texture image'' from the internet and I changed the opacity of the image to 8% so the fade has more of an effect and it looks retro. Furthermore On another layer I then used the dodge tool to brighten the end of the track up and made it lighter so it looks like the original image.

My final edited DVD front cover and back and poster

Poster

DVD front Back

What I would do differently next time would be maybe to use a hint of color for example red lipstick because the color red is used in film Noir regularly, apart from that everything went well, the photography turned out to be just like how I wanted it and all my photos look similar to the ones I recreated. I learned how to get the camera angles similar and what props to use in my photos. Furthermore when editing I learned how to edit the images more effectively.

My final photographs meet the assignment brief , My poster and DVD cover front and back fit the brief because I haven completed all the given tasks and I have understood the editing techniques which was included that is what has helped me with my final images. Also for every work I have done in Film Noir I have given as much detail as I can and have worked the best as I can.