Inter-textual References

In film noir the colour red is often used as part of the femme fatale's costume, this is because the colour connotes power and dominance as well as passion and love. These are key aspects of the femme fatale because they are incredibly influential women that use their sexuality and femininity to achieve their goals. As part of our thriller we included a modern twist on the use of red. This is because traditionally the femme fatale has red lipstick, nail varnish or a red dress. Instead of this,our actress Caitlin had red hair. This involves the same connotations whilst introducing an edgy and current element as in today's society red hair is associated with confident people who aren't afraid of standing out. This works when connected with a femme fatale because they are very bold women who aren't scared of drawing attention to themselves. In Germany, red hair is connected with the devil and women who have it are meant to be evil, this could imply that our female character is immoral and has bad intentions for the protagonist despite appearing to help him during the opening. 



 

During the final part of our opening shadows are used for effect. This was a common aspect of film noirs, when shadows fall across a character's face it can suggest that they have evil intentions and that they have given into their immoral ways, this is used in 'The Third Man' when shadows cover the antagonist, Harry Lime's face. They were also used to connote hidden aspects of a character and to suggest that a character is 'in the dark' and unaware of a situation. We took inspiration from this in our opening and used shadows to suggest that our protagonist is unaware of the severity of the situation he has found himself in. By having a silhouette of our character with his head down it creates a sense of mystery because the audience don't know how serious his condition is or what's happened to him. This in turn increases the suspense in our opening and spikes our audience's interest. The silhouette also makes our protagonist appear larger than he actually is, this is similar to a shot to Holly Martins in The Third Man, this suggests that our character is powerful and intimidating. It could also imply that we don't know a lot about this man and there may be darker aspects to his personality because his dominating size could appear menacing.