Blog 7 BVA year2

Modern Film Noir Film
It's barely to see traditional noir film nowadays but it's techniques have been using all the time. Some movies are made through film noir techniques which express the mood of dark, we call them "Neo-Noir"."Neo-Noir is a style often seen in modern motion pictures and other forms that prominently utilize elements of film noir, but with updated themes, content, style, visual elements or media that were absent in films noir of the 1940s and 1950s."(wikipedia.org)

Film noir techniques(shot angle):Sin city is a new noir film directed by Robert Rodriguez and its genre is based on Frank Miler's comic book. This new noir film is not a regular crime movies as we usually see on screen. The directors actually push the beauty of picture frame to its extreme through using a bouch of low angle shot, deep focus and bird view shot.

Low angle shot:The original reason for shot subjects in low angle is because movies are basically made on stages in the past. Viewer can't see ceiling or sky through screen."An unorthodox method used in the film was the way low-angle shots were used to display a point of view faceing upwards, thus allowing ceiling to be shown in the background of several scenes."(http://www.gradesaver.com)in/ this still, viewer can see japanese killer Miho is jumping down from the roof with two broadswords. I think the reason why the jump is shot in low camera angle is not because directors want viewer to see the sky in background but the jump in this position can give viewer more visual impact and sense of reality.

Deep focusDeep focus has been wildly using in the shot of long distance and large field scenes(depth of field). "Depth of field is the front-to-back range of focus in an image — that is, how much of it appears sharp and clear. Consequently, in deep focus the foreground, middle-ground and background are all in focus."(en.wikipedia.org)In second still, viewer can see through the lowest stairs from the top and there are a lot of cops at each stair. This kind of shot angle could also be a subjective camera position. That means camera can act as the eyes of viewer. Viewers can feel as if they are the character who is watching downstairs, a kind of feeling like "you are there".