Academic Videos: Film Noir

Film noir is a genre of film from the 1940’s to the late 1950’s. It is defined by a tightly structured story which is tied together with stylistic tropes such as contrasty lighting and narration. Here are the projects from this class.

An Interview with Walter Spade

The aim for this project was to create an interview with the character trope of the Noir Hardboiled Detective by a modern news anchor. For the production of this project, I worked with my classmate Bryan Procaccini who played both the newscaster, and the detective. We worked together to make sure the script was packed with Noir references and the final scene is a reference to one of our professor’s favorite moments from Film Noir.

The lighting on the right of the screen reflects the stylistic lighting you would see in any Noir example, and the story follows a distinctively Noir arc. The initial suspect is revealed to be innocent and the least expected characters are revealed to be deranged. Many of the one-liners from the film are pulled directly from famous films such as Double Indemnity.

Video Essay: The Femme Fatale’s Relationship to Guns and the Male Gaze

For my class on Noir, instead of a written final we were assigned to create a video essay. At first, this seemed like an easy project to do, but I soon found that juggling the factual element of this project along with making sure it is engaging throughout resulted in me spending far more time on the video essay than I would have spent on a conventional, written essay. On top of this, the final product was graded with exceptional scrutiny, and I soon found that the bar was set very high for this project. As of March 2022, I have reopened the project to polish up some of the rushed elements of the original, and I will be uploading the new project in the coming weeks. For now, enjoy learning about the male gaze.

Discussion Videos: The Film Fetishists Podcast

Part of the Noir class’ requirements was the expectation of a weekly analytical podcast responding to a prompt provided by the professor. The requirements for the podcast were to facilitate an engaging and entertaining discussion of two films by responding to a very broad prompt. The turnaround for these videos was extremely quick for the length expected. Thursday the first film would be screened, then on Friday, during class we would briefly go over the requirements for this weeks video. Over the next three days (Saturday to Monday) we would then have to watch a second film and then all meet on zoom to record the podcast itself, and it would have to be edited together and submitted before 5:00 on Wednesday. The typical timeline was: meet Monday, record Tuesday, and edit Tuesday night and Wednesday morning and render Wednesday afternoon. All three members of our group had incredibly busy schedules so we would usually not even begin recording until Tuesday.

We would usually have to record from 2-3 hours depending on the level of prep we did the previous day. Some days we would be unable to meet on Monday and would have to just record Tuesday from scratch. While editing I would aim to cut the entire thing down to thirty minutes and every week would seamlessly combine the trailers for both the films which we would examine. 

Here is a brief, step by step explanation of my process.

1. Figure out what the movie we are going to watch, read the podcast prompt and download the entire film from the internet
2. Watch the films and take notes and mark timestamps
3. Discuss the outline for the film, and figure out any exceptional requirements such as 
4. Create a list of characters and set up laptop to prepare for recording by pulling up the films for scribbling through during others talking. 
5. Record video, following the outline and introducing everything.
6. Import all the video into FCPX and render up proxy files so when I do edit the footage the computer can handle the workload. Rendering proxy files does not happen whenever things are playing in FCPX, and while editing I am almost constantly playing the video as to not waste time. It also can take a tremendous amount of time to render proxy’s for the movies and zoom clips because they are all almost 2 hours so close to 6 hours of proxies sometimes.  Then sleep. 
7. Reformat the video, making it aesthetically identical to the rest of the series. Compound that to one long video clip 
8. Watch the video in two times speed, and cut out all the thinking words (um, like, etc.) as well as any silent pauses, and anything that was said that is agreed to be inconsequential, boring, or generally false. 
9. Add b-roll from the film itself for every scene discussed, adjusting the timing to support whoever is speaking. 
10. Once the material of the podcast is edited, take as much time available to edit an intro, combining two trailers from the films and inserting clips relevant to what we discuss, and add a title card and ending card, and any funny edits during the talking section. Add music where necessary.
11. Render the project in 1080p or 4k to preserve the titles and cleanliness of the video. This can take multiple hours so make sure to leave a good time buffer against the due date. 
12. Upload rendered project to YouTube, and check back to make sure it is not removed for copyright infringements. If it is appeal the contest and say it is analysis, not for profit, and falls under the category of fair use. 
13. Send link to professor Manon

Discussion videos: Film noir

Keep in mind that this was a process developed from scratch over many weeks. The first episode was my first ever attempt to produce this series.