Research: Characterisation

During our second tutorial, Neil had gone through the script and made a few suggestions in terms of phrasing and deliverance of certain scenes and dialogue as well as the overall tone of the film.

Neil suggested a few research topics for me to look into:

A characters bridge between sanity and insanity: For this I looked at The Joker in The Dark Knight, the way we as an audience would be sucked into what he was saying despite the fact he was a murderous lunatic.

This can be projected into our film by making Jeffreys speech's be make sense, perhaps because he speaks in a completely rational voice, allowing the audience to be enthralled by him, making them feel guilty for almost agreeing with a murderer.

As or character would be killing a few people he suggested A Clockwork Orange, specifically the beating scene to analyse.

Like this clip I aim to keep a distance or at least an out of focus observation of the murder scenes. Something that can be taken from this particular scene is the close up of the side of  Alex's face as he is talking the bum with his cane in his stomach. It makes him seem more eerie, and reckless, like you don't know what they're going to do next. The cane gives the audience a point to focus on an allows us to almost feel the bums pain.

Artificial conversations: The conversations that Jack Torrance in the Shining has with the bar tender Lloyd, and the way it feels like he's talking to himself.



This will be relevant for our film in two ways, the first being the way in which Ridley interacts with Jeffrey as the later is just a projection of the formers subconscious as well as the "fake" way that Ridley acts when he is on stage. I also like [1:12-1:35] where Jack talks directly to the camera, though he is actually talking to Lloyd. It makes the audience feel included in a hauting kind of way, especially as we have not yet met lloyd.

Another factor to look at in The Shining, is how the actor Jack Nicholson goes between being himself and the character of Jack Torrance.

Taken from Making The Shining, although this is Jacks acting technique it's a good point of reference for the character of Ridley to inhibit when he is on stage playing a murderer.

Having a unique element: Such as the thought process between Ridley and Jeffrey, which can be done during the edit ad not necessarily during production. An example of which would be Sherlock's though process on the BBC 1 show.

As I mentioned, I don't want to focus on the kill itself and so therefore can have a "Moment" before it, stopping/pausing time and the action to give focus to the scope of reality the main characters exist between, like with Sherlock's Mind Palace it will exist to the character alone.

Other things that he asked me to think about/ have at the back of my mind as I begin to stitch the film together include thinking about the sound and speed of the film, as it is a thriller so the deliverance of lines and the action can be quite drawn out .

I know have a host of material to consider and suggest to Tom so he can make changes and I can edit it for the final time.