Two specific styles come together.
As mentioned before Wes Anderson is a big inspiration for this film, the tone, shot, and characters are going to be heavily inspired by his work. This inspiration has lead me to research more into his work and his techniques. Anderson has distinct style that is prevalent in all his films, a style that is recognizable from the first shot of the movie. Whether it be his color pallets or his camera movements, every element of Wes Anderson’s films are a trope of his style. His camera movement are based off the symmetry of the scene, often using tracking shots to express movement due to his ability to keep the style symmetrical even when on the move. His props and character placements in every shot are almost perfectly symmetrical. He often uses this when having conversations between two characters, he puts the camera directly in front of the characters and has them look slightly past the camera. It gives a certain personality to each conversation, only showing one character or group of characters at a time.
Another trope of Anderson’s work is including a family in one way or another, a family with some problems that are splitting apart or in fact, bringing them together. This heavily inspired my idea to make “The Leroux’s”, a family crime story where everyone in the family is a suspect. Anderson has had fair share of crime stories, for example “The Grand Budapest Hotel” is about a woman who is killed and the family is angry that all of the inheritance was left to a concierge at a hotel, going to far lengths to obtain their inheritance from him.
When making a crime drama you must look towards the “Film Noir” sub genre. Popular in the 1940s the sub genre was popular for its use of melodramatic tone, bleak stories and characteristics with distinct archetypes often associated with this type of film. Like the “Femme Fatale” which is characterized by sexy and manipulative, giving a certain power to the female character like never seen in this era of film. Almost a polar opposite to the “Damsel in Distress”, who constantly looks towards the hero for help, while the femme fatale looks to get what she wants manipulation and toughness. This will be seen in the character of Mrs. Leroux, who will be just as devious as most femme fatale characters. As quoted by Roger Ebert who describes the femme fatale women as “Women who would just as soon kill as love you.”
These archetypes come with distinct style and wardrobe, the male characters go with the classic fedoras with suits and ties, while the women wear clothing with low neck lines, floppy hats, mascara, lipstick, high heels and red dresses. These films are notorious for their use of smoking as a character trope. Almost every character is constantly smoking, whether it’d be to show something on screen to portray a character thinking, or to portray a stressful situation these characters are dealing with. These film noir movies even in recent years tend to be black and white, but we will be going off of Mr. Anderson's work in the way that he selects a color palette. I feel as if we can portray the gloominess and melodramatic tone through bleak colors and dull grays. So our palette will contain, the boring beige's, grays, and browns
The openings of these movies typically set up the mystery or conflict between characters. Revealing who the key character will be throughout the movie, and they sometimes show the crime that took place setting of the events of the film. We decided to start the film after the crime happened, when the investigation has already started, so we can still have the mystery of the murder of Claus Leroux. We would still like to have the feel of a comedy although the film is about a murder, like Anderson does in his films. The characters are sometimes always truthful and never lie, giving some of the dialogue a shock that some might find funny.
The openings of these movies typically set up the mystery or conflict between characters. Revealing who the key character will be throughout the movie, and they sometimes show the crime that took place setting of the events of the film. We decided to start the film after the crime happened, when the investigation has already started, so we can still have the mystery of the murder of Claus Leroux. We would still like to have the feel of a comedy although the film is about a murder, like Anderson does in his films. The characters are sometimes always truthful and never lie, giving some of the dialogue a shock that some might find funny.
The movies of the film noir genre typically don’t have happy endings, usually ending up with another conflict unfolding as the movie comes to a close, leaving it never to be fixed. Anderson’s endings are usually happy but always have a bittersweet twist. For example, I recently watched “The Royal Tenebaums” a film that dealt with a rejected father that wanted his family back, he was a terrible father to them and faked cancer to come live with them. In the end after they found he was lying he mended his relationships with his family and it looked like the future would be better in the Tenebaum family. Then unexpectedly the father died of a heart attack. The end is bittersweet because they finally made up with their father but he died before the mend would finally change things. At least he will be remembered as a good father. This is something that I will take into the making of “The Leroux’s” I want the ending to be bittersweet to have you still thinking after leaving the theater.
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