Noir Conventions

There are five main categories of the conventions of noir films. these are:
- characters/actors
- costume
- location
- camera angles & shots
- lighting

to begin with, characters play a large role in noir films as the black and white make it hard to distinguish who is good and who is bad. top men either bad or good wear suits, black hats and a chunky cigar to show dominance within groups. Among characters of every type, cigarette smoking is rampant as it is an age of were ciggarettes are cool and heavily advertised.
females within noir mainly dress glamerious to make them look wealthy and very attractive to make a kind of jelous and conflict between groups of people. this usually drives the narrative to create a story. females are often dansel in distress and are usually a token to the person who saves her. it is noramlly that the female character is in love with the hero as they are usually very attractive, strong and have their own morals, while the villain usually is un-attractive and has no morals.

From above you can see that the clothing fits the characters role within the play. sometimes to distinguish the villain they are ugly and have facial scars to show past conflicts which makes them ugly. both evil and good carry weapons to show power and authority, however, the villains carry guns such as the tommy gun to show that they are carrying them not for protection but to injury or kill others. this shows that they have no morals and makes you want to fight against them.

location plays a key part of the narrative and to what type of film it is. mainly, but not always, the setting is within large cities to make the film interesting and compact with many problems. Also conventionally you would see that more crimes happen within cities than rural areas which means it shows that many conflicts could occur and many dangers problems. In the eyes of many critics, the city is presented in noir as a "labyrinth" or "maze" which makes a sense of lost or stuck. areas were you believe the crimes will occur are often in those convetional areas such as drug dens, bars, lounges which are usually dominated by gangs. although the location is within the city, it normally trails outside of the city were bodies can be hidden or lost.

noir films often use a large variety of camera angles such as dutch tilt, high angle, ariel and low angles. this is because it can capture the action or emosion in the best way possible. this combined with dull dark lighting mcreates a sense of mystery and hidden identity to drag the story on. also it makes you feel earing building suspense to make you watch on.

Crime, usually murder, is an element of almost all film noirs, in addition to standard-issue greed, jealousy is frequently the criminal motivation.in other common plots, there is usually a fight over the attractive female presence usually resulting in adultary affairs.