Sunday 13 October 2013

Sin City

Sin City

How does the chosen text use genre conventions?

Genre conventions are features that are typical to a particular sort of genre. The film Sin City fits the film noir genre and uses typical conventions from this style of text. The film noir genre is a style of film that reflects the cold war period. There are themes of fear, mistrust and despair in films of this style and  they are often created though the use of characters, lighting and mise en scene. 

The film Sin City is shot mainly in black and white. The use or dark colours and low key lighting give the film a theme of horror, some colours, such as the red of blood are highlighted in the film to indicate things such as danger and lust. For example, in the first scene of the film, the woman's lips and dress are red, they are the only things in the scene that aren't black or dark and this means that they are significant and stand out. The colour red signifies danger and this is backed up later in the scene when she gets shot and killed.These dark colours and low key lighting effects are typical conventions of a film noir text. Another convention of film noir is the use a voice overs. In Sin City, voice overs and narrating feature throughout the whole film and tell the backgrounds and personalities of the characters. An example of this is when Marv says " so I broke his arm in three places and signed the confession ", this tells the audience a lot about the kind of character Marv is, he is tough, violent and powerful and this line of voice over reflects that. The voice overs are used to give the audience extra information or an insight in to the mind of a character, this is a common trait of the film noir genre.

Film noir texts try to give a theme of fear and horror. Mise en scene is a very effective way of doing this. Typical mise en scene for a film noir text includes things such as guns, cigarettes and dark, rain drenched streets, all of which associate to the corrupt cities that film noir texts are set in. One of the scenes in Sin City shows a group of prostitutes in dark back alleys with guns, knifes and other weapons.The streets are lit by neon lights and there is heavy rainfall. This is typical use of mise en scene in film noir, suggesting themes of violence and corruption. Venetian blinds are also commonly used in the film. For example in the scene where Marv is being interrogated. They give a streaky, lined effect across the screen and are typically associated with the film noir genre.




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