Question 2

Our characters were not so much inspired by that of thriller characters, but that of characters of torture-based elements from films such as James Bond: Casino Royale and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. We adopted the idea of rarely if not ever showing the torturer’s face, and considered using a darker setting but came to the conclusion the camera quality would be affected so we stuck with just not showing any appearance.

There are many similarities between The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface and our film’s torturer. We got the idea of overalls stereotypically from the film so they both have a make-do-and-mend kind of sinister appearance. However Leatherface is always covered in blood to suggest he has killed, but we decided not to use any blood on our torturer since we wanted to convey that he hadn’t harmed or killed as of yet since we adapted it into a thriller and not a gory horror. This is where we looked at the similarities of Casino Royale’s torture scene, Le Chiffre is not covered in blood meaning he has not killed, yet, or clearly just does not intend to which leaves the viewer with an enigma that we wished to adopt for ourselves ‘is the character going to die here?’

However, Leatherface looks sinister and composed as if he has killed before where as Le Chiffre is sweating and looks evidently panicked so we chose to adopt a more composed look to make it more sinister. We believed looking sweaty and panicked as well as showing the torturer’s face might throw the viewer off and give them the impression that no major harm would come to our character.

Also Le Chiffre is wearing a suit and looks too well dressed to be as sinister as we wished, since someone who wears a suit is either more of a hitman or agent. Or in Le Chiffre’s case just not capable of killing a person, so his role in Casino Royale was too only really harm and not kill which isn’t the idea we wanted portraying. Leatherface’s scruffy overalls are more sinister and show that his role in the film is a killer or wanting to cause serious, unnerving harm to his victims. This is the look we chose to use to portray our torturers role in Trespass, our film since we wanted a tense, psychological, suspense thriller that was the right mix of unnerving and hair-raising whilst not being too dark. However in both scenarios we realised a male torturer was more sinister, and didn’t consider ethnicity since it is difficult to tell with the concept of Leatherface, which is what we chose since he is masked by lighting or clever camerawork so we also gained inspiration from that. We believed that showing the face of a cleanly shaven and refined male that it wouldn’t be intimidating like we intended. A stereotypical villain would be scruffy and ragged, possibly facial hair or stubble and scars, any abnormalities in physical appearances that are considered not as unpleasant. A south-western, white American with long shaggy hair and stubble would stereotypically be used in the style of thriller we chose.

In terms of lighting, camera use and location, we gained the idea of an isolated building from both The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and James Bond: Casino Royale. We chose to use a garage with a bloodstained bench in the background to show that our victim has already been hurt and tortured.  We focused the light on Ronan to establish that he was a young, white, male victim. We came to the conclusion that using the light to show his character clearly, and the fact he is younger therefore making him immediately weaker due to younger characters being less experienced naturally so he will be less likely to determine a way out. We kept the torturer's face out of the light to hide his identity since with our style of movie the torturer or antagonist's identity is hard to determine or is not shown at all. If it is shown distinct marks such as scars, beards or long shaggy hair would only be distinguishable.
For location we represented our character as a farmer style or stereotypical south-western American psychopath which are very popularly used in tense psychological torture thrillers. The fact it is based in empty farmland with rickety old tin stables and rather derelict looking shows that our torturer is of a much less refined and more rural background and will naturally be rougher than a slick, cleanly shaven city man.

We completely adopted the camerawork of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre by not revealing the face of the antagonist and mostly showing the scenery, props and victim’s reaction with the use of close-ups and extreme-close ups since they are very conventionally used in Thrillers. We chose not to represent the antagonist in any way apart from gender. We showed that they are male because males are stereotypically seen as more dominant so can easily be placed in a position of power. We only showed more masculine features such as hands, hair and build in using close ups, low angle shots, POV shots and over the shoulder shots. There are touches of Hostel too in how we introduce props and show what the victim is in store for, including over the shoulder and POV shots of the antagonist/torturer to show what they are thinking of possibly using next.