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ANTRUM
Amito, D. (Director), & Laicini, M. (Producer). (2018).
Cairnes, C. (Director), & Cameron, C. (2018).
LATE NIGHT WITH DEVIL
Antrum is a Mockumentary which has a combined genre of horror and drama, a contrast compared to the films that fall under this genre so far. It's about ‘The most dangerous film’, which is made up- the prologue is built up of anticipation through interviews with people who have knowledge on the ‘film’. They show the film in its entirety, this film was the biggest inspiration to this short film. The current project is heavily inspired by Antrum. I have had an extreme interest towards ‘Lost media’ and mid century themed story-lines as having it based in an era where a lot of things are understandably lost to time already fill in the gaps of the rarity of said item in the story-line. I love the hybrid genre in this film, it is not like regular mockumentary found footage. I genuinely believe this movie will become a cult classic. I think its revolutionary for a new era of film.
Late Night With The Devil is a movie with a similar premise to ‘Antrum’ except it's more westernized and camp, the story starts by informing the viewer of a lost Halloween episode from a well known fake show ‘Night Owls’. Theres alot of fourth wall breaking interactions with the characters after a demon named ‘Abraxas’ is introduced to be possessing the main guest of the show that night. We’re informed early on that this demon feeds off of the confusion from an audience. That confusion and fourth wall breaking aspect is something I want to show in my short film.
FORGOTTEN SILVER
Jackson, P. (Director), & Botes, C. (1997).
ITS IN THE
BAG
Toogood, S. (Director). (1973–1986).
This film is a mockumentary retelling the life of a fake renowned director ‘Collin Mckenzie’. The entire film is trying to build up a reputation for this made up director. This mockumentary is made up of fake footage filmed by the Director Peter Jackson. This has the similarities of having New Zealand themes being the focal point of the short film. This way it's more of an inside joke for New Zealanders.
This TV show was a NewZealand radio show turned into a game show. The premise is that the host would go up in price to offer a random person in the audience, the person can either take the money or take what's in the bag. The bag would either contain luxurious items or something entirely random. I watched episodes of this show since it's around the exact same time where the story begins in my short film. It was very informational since I can't find evidence of this show being broadcasted in color even though it started airing the year color came to television.
USS CALISTER
Haynes, T. (Director), & Broker, C. (Writer). (2017).
GOODBYE PORK PIE
Murphy, G. (Director), & Mune, I. (Writer). (1981).
This BlackMirror episode is a sci fi horror with the main theme being consciousness and its contrast with reality, using a form of screen art (VR/Game) as a conduit. This short film is based in a near future, however the main conflict is inside the retro IP that resembles Star Trek. This is also subtext for the main character still holding resentment towards those he's entrapped in this modded world. The Star Trek setting is parallel to his thought process, as he's still holding onto an old childish show to live through in order to avoid confrontation.
This movie is a NewZealand classic about our main characters who are on the run from the cops then hijinks ensue. This movie's themes are centered around New Zealand culture and is a pop culture icon for the 80’s. The story is set all over New Zealand as they make their way from Auckland all the way down to the South of New Zealand in Invercargill. It explores and embraces all places on camera. That's an aspect of my story I want to approach with how much area they filmed in New Zealand.
MARTIN&ROWANLAUGH IN
Schlatter, G. (Creator). (1968–1973). Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In
GOODBYE PORK PIE
Cronenberg, D. (Director), & Heroux, C (Producer). (1983).
This show is an important mark for sketch television, Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In had a cast made up of comedic icons for the era. The aesthetics and themes from my story were built up off of bringing this show. It is a source of what was relevant for the time. The bold solid colors with happy undertones from the 60’s, I wanted to replicate this nostalgia.
This movie is a NewZealand classic about our main characters who are on the run from the cops then hijinks ensue. This movie's themes are centered around New Zealand culture and is a pop culture icon for the 80’s. The story is set all over New Zealand as they make their way from Auckland all the way down to the South of New Zealand in Invercargill. It explores and embraces all places on camera. That's an aspect of my story I want to approach with how much area they filmed in New Zealand.
PERFECT BLUE
Kon, S. (Director), & Takeuchi, Y (Writer). (1997).
MAGNETIC ROSE
Morimoto, K. (Director), & Kon, S (Writer). (1995).
Perfect Blue is about an idol who wants to turn her career professional by going into acting, with the subplot of a stalker, she begins to suffer a mental break after many stressful encounters from trying to make this happen. The idol begins to see her persona as a separate entity from herself that's harassing her. The story plays on whether or not her persona is her dissociating from the stress or an otherworldly presence, although the ending shows that she is in fact dissociating it also shows that there is another presence involved heavily in her downfall. Satoshi Kon is a massive inspiration to me. I find his work extremely soulful and I believe he reinvented the way of storytelling in the psychological horror genre. The ending is a perfect cherry on top of applying the laws of psychics which have a sinister meaning through using her stress induced psychosis. The idol aspect of the main character is something I wanted to display in my script with Natalie. I think Natalie and her are very similar with their mannerisms and the need for fame in the way they’re presented.
The Magnetic rose starts with our space crew getting a distress signal from a CPU floating in space. Going onto the CPU they realize that this is where memories of people from earth are stored after death, they are getting a distress signal from one of the lower levels of the large storage unit. Making their way down they are introduced to the memory storage for a woman who died in 2002 and notice that her artificial reality inside the storage is from her memory and is in immaculate condition in comparison to the rest of the degraded large file unit. The crew get split up and going further down into her memory shows how actually degraded it really is, as she manages to assimilate and entrap one crew member the other one manages to make it out by destroying the entire CPU, putting an end to the siren. This movie is honestly one of the best films i've ever seen, it was made up by three creators, originating from Katsushiro Otomo’s manga, directed by Koji Morimoto and the script is by Satoshi Kon. This story follows the consciousness theme and memories that I want to show in the pilot. This movie shows the sirens sentience through not only mere control and how maintained her environment is but how she manages to lure people and assimilate them through her control of what memories she can holograph. Causing her prey to assume the identity of people in her memories she had when she was alive.
THE CALL
Chung-hyun, L. (Director), & Lim, S (Producer). (2020).
BENNYS VIDEO
Haneke, M. (Director), & Heiduschka, V (Producer). (1992).
The Call is a movie about a woman receiving a call from her family's old home phone while visiting since it's been abandoned. The caller on the other end is another occupant of the house that's living there currently although she's calling from the year 1999 even though the main character that is receiving the calls lives in 2019. The movie has themes of time being abstract or non-liner which is what I wanted to show in my film. I really enjoyed this film when i watched it for the first time i remember immediately rewatching it again because of how much i loved the story intertwined the past and present.
Benny's video is a short film about a young boy who probably suffers from ASPD as he has little to any care for anyone else in the movie. The teenager brings over a girl and kills her while recording it with his new camcorder. The young boy's parents discover this girl's corpse in their son's room and devise a plan to cut her body up and cover up the murder so that their son can escape justice. Alot of the screentime is also dedicated to Benny’s recordings, building up his character through his previous recordings of things like farm animals dying and odd games his friends played. There's alot of extreme close ups of the tv’s in the main characters room when playing the videos which i want to have my short film resemble.
FUNNY GAMES
Haneke, M. (Director), & Heiduschka, V (Producer). (1992).
RINGU
Nakata, H. (Director), & Suzuki, K (Writer). (1998).
This film starts with a family going to stay at their holiday home, two young men come over to ask for some eggs which starts the lingering hostage situation. When they are asked the purpose of keeping them hostage they say the infamous line ‘Why not?’ which is more widely known as ‘Because you were home’ which would be said ten years later from the American ‘The Strangers’ which in my opinion is a total rip off of Haneke’s movie. There's a couple of differences between the movies however. Funny games has alot of fourth wall breaks as the hooligans continue to harass the family, compared to The Strangers which is blockbuster gore porn with a high budget and no fourth wall breaks. The two young men wink to the audience and when one of them is killed in self defense the other one rewinds his death with the TV’s remote. I really like that the fourth wall breaking not only is just in speech but that he literally rewrites the story. I wanted to have cool close ups of when there's a nod to the audience and the interaction and changing of the plot to fit the characters prerogative with my characters control over the ad breaks.
Ring is a cult classic techno horror film about a cursed tape. After the death of the protagonist's niece, Reiko wants to investigate after hearing from her niece's classmates about a mysterious tape causing the death of students. She discovers the cursed tape kills people seven days after having watched it, however to pregate death within those seven days you have to show somebody else the tape. Reiko then drives to her fathers house at the end of the film. I love this movie. I honestly think there should be more techno-horror since there's not alot of films in this genre. I am a big fan of Japanese horror and this movie was extremely impactful not only to Japanese film but also on the horror genre as a whole. Around the same time there was an emergence of technology becoming household commodities, there was also a recent rise in kodokushi. Kiyoshi Kurosawa puts kodokushi themes in his films and I think Ring started a really interesting subgenre of emptiness and isolation horror through technology being a conduit. The emptiness and isolation is something I want to transcribe through my script.
KAIRO
Kurosawa, K. (Director), & Shimizu, S (Producer). (2001).
CURE
Kurosawa, K. (Director), & Shimoba, J (Producer). (1997).
The masterpiece known as Kairo is a film by one of my favorite directors, Kiyoshi Kurosawa. This film centers the plot around a group of young people that are always using the internet. One of their friends ends up killing himself, leaving a mysterious disk behind which shows an unsettling paradoxical image. Seeing the image causes the friends to disappear one by one, heavily implying they’ve committed suicide. They only leave a black human size stain in the wall once they have disappeared. Nearing the end of the movie one of the main characters is able to interact with an abstract space that's filming her although there's nothing physically there. I'd consider the movie to be commentary on kodokushi, depression and isolation. I want to show that Natalie is somehow in an abstract space, that is why I've referenced sleep and memories in my script to use it as an example of abstract places that intertwine with our reality. This is one of my favorite movies of all time and I most likely subconsciously borrow from it frequently.
Cure is another acclaimed movie by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, it is about recent murders all having something in common with finding carvings of X on their bodies. Our main character is a detective trying to catch the perpetrator, as he thinks there is a third party involved with these random murders. He catches a man who is odd with short term memory loss, discovering that he used to study psychology and had an interest in hypnotism. It is theorized he implanted murderous urges in the killers thoughts through utilizing repetitive sounds and objects. The subliminal messages shown in cure is a really great example of how to make hypnosis scary. They tried doing it in Late Night with the devil but I think that Cure did it better. The subliminal messaging through excellent sound design is phenomenal, this movie does a good job at creeping you out with the sound of a washing machine or any luminal noise.
BANDERSNATCH
Slade, D. (Director), & Broker, C (Writer). (2018).
LACABINA
Mercero, A. (Director), & Garci, J. (Writer). (1972).
Bandersnatch is an important movie for the future of film as its one of the first interactive short films to ever come out. Bandersnatch starts with the main character who is a programmer trying to choose his own adventure game ‘Bandersnatch’. From the morning Stefan wakes up you make the choices for him which can change the story. The short film is fourth wall breaking, there's times where you can directly talk to Stefan telling him that you’re on Netflix. I love this sentient ability you have over Stefans life and that characters, including himself - reference the fact that they are in a loop and have to ‘Try again’ when he gets a low rating for his finished game. I aspire to have this level of transparency in my script, interaction and sentience takes away the safety net for the audience to be a bystander and makes them feel uncomfortable which is a good feeling.
La Cabina is a television short film about a mysterious telephone box appearing in the middle of this town's square. Our protagonist goes into the phone booth and becomes stuck, people outside unable to help. The telephones factory picks him up and the rest of the film is him being towed away while watching the entire town from the booth. The truck towing him away takes him inside the factory, revealing many corpses stuck inside telephone booths like his. This short film was really cool. I love old Spanish television. I've started to watch some with my Cuban friend online who is teaching me about his culture through old media. My interpretation of this is that businessmen and people who follow the society's abstract rules are encased and then thrown away by the government they spent their lives trying to appease. I thought this when people tried everything at first except breaking the glass, even though people see it as a downside to the legitimacy of the plot, I thought that it was purposeful. Nobody broke the glass immediately until they thought it was absolutely necessary because they didn't want to get in trouble. It felt like it was showing the sheep mentality of the people watching on assuming ‘professionals’ will help the guy out when they arrive, that's why they continue to laugh and cheer on. The only people who aren't making a joke of his situation are dressed like the ‘outcasts’ by being circus freaks who are holding a bottle with a ship in it. This probably implies that the circus freaks don't have to worry about being encased in a telephone booth since they are part of that society, that's why the dwarf quite literally has it as a commodity with a boat inside. Maybe there wasn't any meaning to it though and it was just a really cool short film. This was filmed in 1972 and it shows a lot of the pop culture of its time just through the views of the city when he's being taken to the factory. The story has great pacing and I think it's an amazing short horror story, i’ve taken notes of the pacing and am applying it to the current project.
HOUSE
Obayashi, K. (Director), & Obayashi, C. (Writer). (1977).
PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE
Depalmer, B. (Director). (1974).
House is a one of a kind Japanese comedy horror, originally meant to rival Jaws. This movie is a massive inspiration to my work, Obayashi Kon is a phenomenal editor and is most notable for his adverts having done over three thousand. The way the story is told resembles an anime, unusually having a perfect portrayal if it were trying to be serious or if it wanted to be goofy. It is rare i ever find movies that i enjoy this much i have never seen a movie like this after watching it.
The Phantom Of The Paradise has heavily influenced me, reminding me of an old Oscar Wilde tale of Dorian Gray. I love the set design and story, the nonchalant funny dialogue. Its an overall fantastic script and another film like House, its an excellent movie.
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