WS - Inspiration

Before even planning any filming, we looked at a number Slasher film openings and did a little bit of research to learn about Slashers. Durling the planning stages of our individual ideas, we had to try and incorporate other ideas from existing films into our idea to show that our idea would work as a full length film.

 Before talking about the films that directly influence our film, I will talk about the inspiration of Halloween. In my opinion, it would be impossible to make a successful Slasher without first looking at and seriously considering Halloween. Our film, without taking inspiration in storyline from Halloween, does take a number of smaller aspects from it. For example, we are considering having a heavy breathing killer next to the camera just before our female 'Scream Queen' turns into him. Michael Myers can often be heard breathing in Halloween. We are also thinking of masking our killer like Myers. Early ideas were to maybe do an imitation of the famous first PoV shot in Halloween, but decided against it because we weren't sure we had the time, as well as not having the equipment to do it. We didn't think doing the shot handheld would work because it would be too wobbly and jerky. So our idea certainly takes inspiration from Halloween, but not in our plot.

Our idea, Oblivious, takes inspiration from a couple of films. Part of our film is influenced by the "The Strangers" (Bryan Bertino, 2008). The inspiration we have taken from this film is the idea of the music stuck on  a loop. We have adapted this to make the music switch back on (after the girl has earlier) which creates mystery and fear for the girl. This idea came about when we decided that we wanted to include false scares and we thought it would be a good way of building tension. We also liked the idea of using music to add verisimilitude. 


Click here to visit the IMDB page for "The Strangers" 

Our main inspiration though, is the film "Scream" (Wes Craven,1996). "Scream" is widely 
regarded as the film that brought the Slasher Genre back to life after a very quiet period in it's history. Wes Craven, the director of Scream is often referred to as a genius on Internet sites that look at and review Slasher films. For this reason, and because we wanted to have a similar kind of setting/story, we took huge inspiration from this film.


Click here to go to the IMDB page for "Scream" 

We took most of our inspiration from "Scream" for the reasons stated above. The inspiration that we have actually carried over to our film varies. For our opening we have used a Scream  Queen as does "Scream". Our reasons for this were to show inspiration from other films, as well as a Scream Queen been traditional in a Slasher, and we wanted to carry through as many conventions of Slashers through to our own film. The setting too was inspired by the film, as well as traditional Slasher films. The isolated house creates fear for the character and shows that help is far away. Another convention of a Slasher is to use unusual and brutal looking weapons. This is the case in Scream and we have also adopted this idea. As well as unusual weapons, the killer often also uses cloaks and masks to conceal their identity, shown in Scream and in our production, Oblivious. False Scares are also important in our film opening, and they have a very important effect in the opening of "Scream" as they buil real tension and fear to the audience.

Inspiration from "Scream"

• A Scream Queen (Like Drew Barrymore's character in Scream)
• The Setting (Isolated house)
• The killers Weapon (a knife) 
• False scares (Such as the knock on the door, happens in Scream as well as in our film.) 
• The killer's identity concealed by a mask.

Inspiration from "Strangers"

• The music stuck on a loop.
• Loud knocking on the door.