Practical Task- Typography

The typography shown in film noir movies often has a backdrop and/or shadows. This is commonly used in film noir’s and can be used to identify the genre of the film. I looked at different images of film noir movies for inspiration. I then decided that I wanted to try and create some different shadow effects.

Inspiration:

    

Long Shadow:

As I am still learning how to use Photoshop I decided to look on YouTube for tutorials on how to create shadows for text. The video I found was:

When I was looking for inspiration I saw lots film noir film titles on back drops therefore I decided to find a film noir image to use for my backdrop. The image I chose was an image of the city as this is commonly used within the film noir genre. I could then experiment with different backdrops later on.

I then chose what font I wanted to use. I decided to go with the serif font as this is commonly used in the film noir genre. I also decided that I was going to go with black and white like traditional film noir’s instead of neo noir. Using the production company name ‘Rouge Films’ I started to edit to create a long shadow as shown in the YouTube video.

I made the shadows less opaque and grey instead of black so that the backdrop could still be seen behind.

This is how the final edit looked. But I decided that I wanted to try and make the shadows look more defined for each of the letters so you could distinguish between the shadows instead of having them all merged into one.

I added lines to some of the corners of the letters to see if it would make the shadows more visible for each letter. In the end it didn’t turn out as well as I had hoped as I did not follow a tutorial and therefore am not sure if I added all of the lines in the correct places.

The final image:

Shadow:

Next I wanted to try and create a normal shadow on the text. For this I also used a YouTube tutorial:

I chose another backdrop which was another film noir style image in black and white. I decided to keep to the black and white theme and used Serif font again as I found that it linked to the film noir genre very well.

Overall, I liked the final look of the shadow and this was more of a ‘normal’ looking shadow compared to the one I had previously tried. This is the most common type of shadow used in a film noir where it is completely black just to show the silhouette. Not only is it used for text but can also be used for humans and objects. 

3D Shadow:

Finally, I looked at how to make my text look 3D by following a YouTube video:

This effect was one of the easiest as Photoshop has a button you can press to make your text 3D. I had to add a few adjustments such as how 3D I wanted it to look and the angle of the text. I found another backdrop to use to make the text look more interesting.

Keeping to the black and white theme I thought that this also looked good however it seemed to look more modern than the other two styles of shadows as it seemed quite animated. In the future I would try to make this look old fashioned to fit in with the film noir genre.