What is the Film Noir Look ?

if only it was raining and lit by a street lamp/

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Thanks for the Mentions ....Greatly Appreciated....:D
This was Halloween night ...on my way Home
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Con Ed working on a street pipe...M6 / Nokton 1.5 / neopan 1600
 
NathanJD said:
I'll also add that the film noir look tends to incorporate uni-directional lighting and a GoBo of the sort that projects window frames at the subjects etc...

I see the "Film Noir Look" as encapsulating the look of moderately budgeted Hollywood crime films with awful dialogue and pretty actrsses form the 40's and 50's and i think it's as much about the subject as it is about the technical side. the lighting techniques are, to us, very primative but very stylistic in their own way.

for a film noir image I personally would use the following ingredients

40's-50's style dress (things like fedoras, side partings, brogues huge lapels and fur)
a striking actress (model in this case)
cigarette smoke
a single light source with a GoBo projecting a window frame shadow across the frame
an old lens
some pushed B&W film to mimic the unrefined movie films of the day

of course, a Film Noir style shoot doesn't really have to look like it came from the middle of the last century, but for me there would need to be quite a melancholic mood in the image to take it from "simple pushed black and white image" to the Film Noir style
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Generally known as B movies. Ronnie Reagan made his name in them.
 
So, any more 'noir' shots of recently?

BUMP for this excellent thread!


I myself am getting geared up to compose and contribute: stacked up on RolleiRetro100, RolleiRetro400 and Rodinal, and will be picking up a Super-Angulon within days, to complement my wartime Sonnar 50/1.5 on night shoots. Gotta figure out the dark red filter stuff to shoot this kind of pictures in daytime!
 
Interesting thread, but unfortunately I might have to spoil it be mentioning that the best 'film noir' ever made is Chinatown, a beauitfully shot color film.

I'd recommend Moriyama's work. His the perfect candidate for both visually and conceptually shooting in a 'noir' b&w style.
 
I think of it as a style and tone much more than a technique or technical problem. The subject and lighting itself is probably more important than the film stock and processing, though the real hallmark of film noir is black and white available-light photography or the appearance of using a dramatic light source (streetlights, shadows). The subjects and locations tend toward the nocturnal, and gets beyond the "studio neutral" look to use dramatic lightning that contributes to a mood of tension. Think of Orson Welles stepping out of the shadows in "The Third Man." Remember that film noir came of its own during and directly after World War II, which in turn had followed a decade of Depression and social turmoil through the 1930s. Film noir subsided with the economic revivals of the 1950s. It captured a mood of angst and hopelessness and of the individual being overwhelmed by forces larger than himself or herself. It also sought to capture a mood of gritty realism to mirror documentaries. Those who lived through the Depression and World War II and its aftermath, sought to mirror a new kind reality that included psychological instability, fear, the potential for ugliness inside of all humanity. These were escapist, theraputic movies for a wartime generation -- they allowed you to explore fears and disruption while usually not focusing on war-related topics.
 
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Here is the text of a post I made on the other thread about Film Noir on this forum.

" Film noir actually refers to a style of making movies popular in the 1940s. I found this wiki link for those interested http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Film_noir

Film noir movies normally were shot in a high contrast black and white style and lighting was set up to be very dramatic - sharp pools of light on a face or person framed by deep dark shadows, for example. Lighting was frequently very directional -often you saw deep long shadows on the ground before seeing an actor move into frame or one half of the face would be in light and the other in deep shadow.

Most importantly (and this is what "film noir" refers to), you also find in these movies a theme in which the story is dark and brooding and the hero is actually a kind of anti hero to add to the darkness (metaphorically speaking.)

A good modern example of this genre is the movie "The Good German" starring George Clooney. (It was even shot with uncoated period lenses and special film stock to get the right effect) An excellent period example was the 1948 thriller "The Third Man" "


There is a good image from "The Third Man" movie that I think is representative of the film noire "look" here on this page.

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?img...a=X&ei=mB2-TZ-WF4XuuAP00LHLBQ&ved=0CFcQ9QEwCA

As is this image

http://www.doctormacro.com/Images/C...nnex - Cotten, Joseph (Third Man, The)_04.jpg

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