American Psycho: voice over inspiration

Mac 5 have decided to use a voice over in our two minute opening, as we feel that it is an uncommon feature in our genre, which we aim to challenge.
However, we chose to use this technique because psychological thrillers are often told in a first person narrative, leaving the audience in the dark to create suspension and we think this is particularly important if we want to keep our audience engaged.
We also think that this technique creates more intimacy between the film and the audience, which is something we would like to explore using both sound and visuals, to add to the uncomfortable atmosphere felt by the audience.

The introduction of Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000), near the very beginning of the film, is one of the few psychological thrillers which uses a voice over to present a character to the audience. Here is the clip:


We are currently on the search for the perfect voice, and we are using this clip to demonstrate what tone of voice to use, to create a similar feeling of oddity - we think that this ties in nicely with the disorientated character which is revealed to the audience, making the opening all the more sinister and perhaps more intriguing for the audience.

Black Swan: editing and sound inspiration

Mac 5 have now almost finished filming (we hope) and we are about to begin editing! We have been researching movies with effective editing techniques. Black Swan (2010) is a perfect example of a psychological thriller in which shots have been manipulated to create a strange atmosphere. Here are a few I could find which are really effective in emphasizing the disturbance of the character:



I really like the fast-paced turn of the camera from 0:05-0:07 as it reflects the characters twisted thoughts, and I also really love Winona Ryder.



This is one of my favourite scenes because it is quite shocking for the viewer, and the use of the mirror to show more than one of Nina represents her multiple personalities. We really like the idea of creating layers showing more than one figure of our character to create a similar effect. We have already tried a similar technique out and we love the way it looks! It can be found under the 'editing practice' label on my blog.



The turning of the camera, and unsteady shot in this scene is really effective. We have filmed a shot in which the camera orbits around our actress and we would like to manipulate it in order to change settings - this clip helps us visualize how this would could be achieved.

This is a really inspirational movie in terms of editing, but also it terms of sound. Throughout the movie, we can frequently hear Nina's breathing over all the other sounds in the background. This is something we could think about when it comes to sound in our own opening.

Here is the full official trailer:

Donnie Darko: shot and sound inspiration

Donnie Darko (2001) is one of the weirdest, yet most captivating movies I've ever seen. Here is the rather bizarre opening, it is sort of split into two parts - a bit like on our storyboard:

This close up of Donnie's pupils dilating is one of my favourites because it is super trippy, and Mac 5 really like the emphasis on eyes - when we were searching for our actress, one of the main deciding factors was the colour of her eyes and our actress, Hannah C, has fantastic blue eyes which fit the role perfectly!




Donnie is also seeing a therapist, who prescribes him pills (that end up being placebo's). Donnie's behaviour is strange nonetheless, and the possibility of him having a mental illness isn't lost in the many alternative explanations of the movie.





Here are a few more cool stills which I could find:

This scene, in which the mirror ripples, is pretty peculiar (though important when explaining the film). It is also very inspiring in terms of sound - Frank sounds almost like a microwave, and the low bass drone in the background makes the viewer feel as if they are inside a television which is really effective in emphasizing the idea of Frank influencing the thoughts inside Donnie's head.



Though our character doesn't cross over and enter a tangent universe, she does have controlling thoughts which we would like to emphasize in our opening, and we would like Frank's tone and the mood these sounds create to have a similar effect in our opening.

Here are two more scenes which I really like: