Research & Other Inspiration

Alfred Hitchcock film director and producer has carved his mark in the film industry by his distinct style of direction and his technique in the psychological thriller and suspense genres. The way he frames shots manages to convey anxiety, empathy and fear to maximum potential. He also features many twist ending which, are unexpected to the audience. Most of his films feature attractive icy blonde female characters these are all traits which I plan on using in my short film. In some sense his films almost don't come across like horror films because despite them being frightening, they explore a deeper meaning and are so distinct that they don't fall into most people's perception of what a horror film looks like. His shots don't rely on blood and gore and almost come across as understated, for example in the film Psycho the famous shower scene, the knife never even touched the female character as they simply used the a shot of the shadow on the bathroom wall creating the illusion that the female character was being stabbed.

This next scene is a scene from another one of Hitchock's classic The Birds. This is different in the sense that the film's plot is based around a bizarre scenario where birds start going crazy and attacking a small town. Despite it's plot not being very relevant to what I'm going to do, the way this film is directed is very effective. The shots of just the female character running through the town, are very similar to the initial ideas I have for this project. The empty and vacant atmosphere in them is something I'm going to try and achieve. Especially from 1:03 onwards where she's outside, the way it's edited and the way you can just tell through her facial expression I think looks very effective.

Embedding not available with this clip....
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVDT4bWPypk

The next filmmaker that I will look at is the work of John Carpenter, Carpenter was a film maker most famous for his work in the genre of horror and the late 70s, 80s slasher movies. Films like Halloween were the first in a long series of slasher movies where endless sequels were made. What I want to look at with his work though is the way he portrays locations, streets and normal locations. Somehow me manages to twist things into looking menacing and suspenseful, whether it be from the slight tilt of a shot or the uncertainty of a hand held camera shot. It's often the scenes which are in broad daylight which strike me in being most interesting, maybe it's because when daylight is meant to be a very safe time of day and moment for the relax for the viewer, being surrounded by gruesome muder scenes and uncertainty, daylight suddenly feels very unsafe.

As well as looking at the more traditional film makers I also wanted to go into a film maker who is quite similar to what I'm trying to do myself. Therefore I chose to look at the work of Chris Cunningham. He makes short advertisements, video art, and music videos. This video for Windowlicker by the Aphex Twins is not exactly similar to what I'm doing but features similarities in the sense of it's style it's image manipulation, it's outrageous and insane, especially the music in this piece.

This other video Come To Daddy by Aphex Twins directed by Chris Cunningham I also like for it's style of editing. Especially when it gets to halfway through, it's quite unclear to follow because of the fast pace of the editing yet it works in favour of the narrative of the video.

This next video by directed by Chris Cunningham is unlikely pairing between him and Madonna. The video Frozen is very similar to the ideas, in the visual effects. Parts in particular that I like are the black liquid going into the hands something I may try and do as well as the way there are three Madonnas and the atmosphere the darkness which surrounds the video and the blue tint.

The film Moon was released in 2009 and is a science fiction drama about a man who experiences a personal crisis as he reaches the end of his three year mining job in solitary.  Without ruining the film too much, this film is not not only similar to my End of The World project through the fact they are both very similar genres, however with this film there are stronger references to the narrative, of my last video and the way someone deals with a situation when they are haunted by themselves. Overall it's a fantastic film as a psychological thriller and it's not until the plot fully builds to it's climax that you finally realise what exactly is going on.