Weekly Summary 1
from: http://www.hongkiat.com/blog/film-noir-digital-artworks/
This week has been one of learning new skills and affirming old knowledge. Even though I grew up with technology, that doesn’t mean I know how to use it. When your father is an engineer, you can let him deal with your technical problems. Until, of course, you go off to college. However, now I know the basics of blogs, Twitter, etc. which was easier than I thought, but will still take some getting used to. It has been a bonding experience with my friends, though, because they are all eager to give me advice on the best way to make a YouTube video and who to follow on Twitter. Now I know to use chrome to make SoundCloud recordings, and that some authors are better to follow than others on Twitter.
Who knows what’s actually happening in this picture?
As for affirming old knowledge, I have remembered how much I love noir. I used to watch episodes of Mike Hammer and Alfred Hitchcock on TV after my parents went to sleep, but never knew that there was a specific genre attached to these types of shows. The readings for this week reference noir as a general mood of films, and that really resonates with me. In noir films there is a sense that the world is going to hell in a hand basket, but there is always someone who tries to fight back against this predicament. I never associated noir with lighter-fare shows (like Scooby doo), but I prefer happy endings anyway, so that was a welcome break. Additionally, I never associated noir with anything other than movies and TV shows until now, but it makes sense that radio broadcasts and photography are also noir. They leave the image or story up to the imagination, which is sometimes more effective than films which have both audio and video.
The problem with growing up with noir is that when it comes to listing examples it is too easy and I felt like it would be cheating to list things that were too obvious. Additionally, I would think of episodes of recent shows, but realize that they were clearly trying to be noir in that episode, which also seemed like cheating. Also, when episodes are trying to be noir, it is sometimes way overdone, so they are just throwing noir in your face. It is harder to come up with examples that aren’t from the 1950s and aren’t trying to be noir, but still fall under that category.