Film Noir Typography

Hannah Burgess

When deciding on what font to use in order to make our

title image of ‘Freeze’ with the London skyline

across the front, I first needed to

research the type of font that would be

the best for the title. The title is the most important thing as it

is the icon for our film and so it must

be individual enough to stand out but also be a signifier of our

film genre; film noir. I started by looking at

classic film noir titles.

The first thing I noticed about these title’s is that they fill up the whole frame, dead space is

limited if any is apparent. Secondly all of the fonts are all serif fonts, which means that there

are decorative pieces on the edges of each letter, as shown in the image.I then noticed that in classic film noir

titles, there is a backdrop or shadows to the title. This is very common in the classic film noir genre and is a clear

signifier to the genre, this can be seen in ‘The Shanghai Gesture’ ‘Stranger on the third floor’ ‘Backfire’ ‘Detour’ and ‘Border

Incident’Next, I looked at the tracking between each letter. I noticed that this varied

across each film, but my personal preference is for ‘The Shanghai Gesture’

where there is an increased tracking space between each letter.

Italic fonts are something that are also frequently used in the titles.

As our film is neo-noir I then went on to look at how other films of this subgenre had used typography in their titles. Neo-noir is

a film style that uses the elements of film noir but combines them with a modern style and visual elements that were absent

in film noirs from the 40s and 50s.In these title’s as they’re in colour they experiment more with

colours. I personally prefer the use of black and white in terms of the font and as our film is in black and white it is more appropriate

and fitting to have the title in black and white. I prefer the title ‘Fargo’ over ‘Drive’ because of the use of colours but also because I prefer how it is all in uppercase as I think this allows it to stand out more and will ensure that the title is big and bold at the end of our trailer. I like how in ‘Body Heat’ and ‘The Grifters’ the first letter is bigger than the following letters but it is all still in upper case, this

is something I hope to include in my title.

All titles are placed on a background, which in film noir is normally an image that is reflective of the film. However

when researching the genre film noir we found the title used for the ‘American Gangster’ trailer and instantly wanted to create our own version for ‘Freeze,’ We loved the way that the American skyline cut into the title but it was still clear

what the title said. This is something I will defiantly include in our title. However as our film is based in London I will

create a British version by using a London skyline instead, hopefully featuring famous places such as Big Ben and London eye. I also feel like there is a lot of dead space

around the title and so when making our image I will make it bigger to fill more space. .

Hannah Burgess