||Oral Presentation Part One—Genre and Audience||

1. Sunset Boulevard is a film that can fall under multiple different genre types. I would classify it under drama and noir primarily, with hints at comedy and mystery.

2.  For drama, considering Norma's own life experiences in stardom from being one of Hollywood's biggest to crashing as a 'falling star', her life is quite dramatic. Not to mention the twist of her butler, Max, revealing to everyone that he was her first husband can be considered as a very drama-cliche' take. In terms of film noir, Norma may not be exactly sensual, considering she's scary and creepy as Hell, but she does show some sort of inclination to at least attempt at playing the sexy female type. That, and Joe's cynical personality with everything fits that category well. Finally, the comedy can be seen through Norma's exaggerated outlook on life and her crazy delusions, the mystery is hinted at the beginning of the film when we see the dead man in the pool with no inclination as to how that came to be.

3. Sunset Boulevard can be connected to Double Indemnity considering both films had Seitz for the cinemotography and his style can be seen through that. Not only was Seitz adamant on challenging shots for that time period, but also, because of the way the sets are designed to balance both dark and light in several aspects. Not to mention, both films fall under the noir type category.

4. Billy Wilder was the director of this film and he produced during the post world war II time increment that inspired the newcoming of noir stylized films. It was dark and cynical, much like the time period then itself, and brought on a very realistic appeal as to how people around that time really did feel or act.

5. The creators can be inferred to be cynical/sarcastic people themselves with an affinity for darker humor and ridiculous twistts. It can also be assumed the creators were fans of messing around with the antagonist character since they went through and developed Norma.

6. The cynical, darker aspects found in Sunset Boulevard are an easy comparison to Wilder's take on films. The humor and touch of mystery put in as well are also similar and fit into his film type.'

The film explores different depressing aspects of almost all the characters presented in the film. Ranging from Joe's inability to pay his own mortage, Norma's fallen stardom, and Max's guilt of Norma's fall—All of these explore different, more in depth and diverse aspects of characters which is a trade of noir films as well.

A visual element manipulated well in Sunset Boulevard would be the lighting and the sets. For the sets, the way it takes place in Los Angeles, a busy and 'living' city in contrast to Norma's depressing life and surroundings is somehow a good clash in the film that doesn't breach too far into unrealistic. As for lighting, this can also fall under where it takes place and considering the film was in black and white, it's really a lot easier to see color shifts on the whites and blacks, so they had to be especially careful with that.

7. The film's theme would be...you should always marry your best friend's fiancee, otherwise you may be shot in the back several times and die in a pool instead and we all know which scenario sounds better That money isn't the answer to everything. Obviously it can't bring you back to life so whatever.

8. The audience target is obviously for anyone who can keep up with the sarcasm and cynical jokes. However, to make it more general, it's probably aimed for teens and up.