Documenting of Influence on Production

Here we have documented our influences on production; where trying to find ideas and themes to use in our trailer, we have been influenced by multiple films. The first film that stood out to us was The Grudge. The ideas and themes that we gained from this were the idea of using a young girl as the antagonist. In the film, the young girl is represented as a curse and this is something we were considering and we thought was effective. This kind of idea is most effective in subverting the typical expectations of a young child; expecting them to be quite innocent and vulnerable, however in a horror, then being portrayed as evil. A creepy, young girl is quite conventional of a horror which is important as, despite wanting to make the trailer original, we want to use some conventional ideas/techniques. Children are simply innocent and the more they stray from that, the more frightening it becomes for us.

The second influence on our production was from the film, The Visit. The idea we gained from this was from having an elderly women as the main protagonist/antagonist in the film. This idea would be significantly effective through the fact that old people generally tend to be represented as sweet, innocent and vulnerable. Because of this typical representation of old people, if they were to be represented in the opposite light of that, in specifically our horror film, it is likely that the audience will be scared/shocked. 

The next film that we gained ideas from was Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children. The first influence from this film was the ideas for clothing for our young female character. In this specific film, all of the young children are dressed in white gowns/nighties. Significantly this gives a kind of old fashioned, historical context with the kind of clothing all of them are actually wearing. Usually, it is likely that white gowns/nighties are associated with night clothing, however in the image above, it is clear that it is not night time; therefore giving the old fashioned context with that being the clothing in previous years. Another inspiration we gained from this film was the idea of creating a historical context through the use of gas masks. This is significant in associating with war, and therefore creating a historical context which is an eerie them to have in a horror.

Our final inspiration film was Orphan. The young girl who is the main character in the film, alike with that being the case in our trailer, is presented in old fashioned, Victorian style clothing; yet again creating a historical context. This was effective in influencing the key area of mis-en-scene which is significant to consider in all film. We also picked out the idea of the young girl being based around a park location and being on a swing; significant through the fact that a park tends to be a natural setting for a young child. In association with the swing, the eerie diegetic sounds of the creaking swing would be effective in our trailer with the sound being quite eerie.