Research and Planning - Influences

The Shining – We want to achieve a similar style for the camera shots, for example long panning and tracking camera shots. We would like our actress to react in a similar way to the character ‘Wendy’ in the bathroom scene of this film. We think her fear and distress is very powerful. Kubrick plays with sound creatively and we want to try and adopting this technique for our opening, for example the sound of the clock ticking, and kettle. Kubrick gradually builds up tension very effectively in his films, and although he does it very slowly and over the course of the whole film, we will try and do the same in the two minutes.

Psycho – We were inspired by Hitchcock’s camera shots. His close-ups, and long shots, and his build up of cuts to develop tension. In Psycho, we like the thrilling quality of someone else being in the house/room. This film appeals to a mainstream audience, which is what we are also trying to achieve. The woman in our film is a similar age to the character in psycho who is murdered. She looks young, yet is a mother of two and is just reaching her 40’s. With this choice of age we are trying to appeal to young and older audience members.

Panic room – The idea of having a woman on her own with the responsibility of her child. The sense of paranoia is very effective in this film. We watched the film trailer to get ideas for building tension and for the story.

Flight Plan – The story is similar to that of ‘Flight Plan’ – a single mother whose child is kidnapped. This relates to part of our theme, ‘destruction of the family’ and to the woman being alone and vulnerable.

News – The case involving Tony Martin partly inspired the story. We were interested in the idea of how far one might go to protect their property and family in a burglary situation. Tony Martain was prosecuted for manslaughter after killing a sixteen-year-old boy because his home was being violently robbed. Our character wont reveal a gun, but we were interested in the frightening aspect that if someone is criminally trespassing in your home, you might not be able to defend yourself properly.

We were also inspired by North by Northwest, the way it didn’t seem like a thriller at first, until a sudden surprise. It showed the character’s normal life and displayed it naturalistically, this emphasized on the idea that it could happen to anyone.