Inspiration 7 - Sin City

Sin City has an interesting appeal to it. The story of it is fresh and original but what really striked us about Sin City, was the use of colour within the film itself. Not much colour is used at all within the film itself, everything is done in black and white, to pay homage to the comic book roots of the film. Only a select amount of objects within the film are coloured such as a pair of red sneakers or a prostitutes blue eyes. we find the overall effect of this quite astounding and were impressed by the level of focus it created as well as the contrast to the black and white background. By using chroma-key tool on final cut express, we should be able to recreate this effect quite well and this should add to the overall madness of our project and fit in well with our themes.

Inspiration 6 - The Good, The Bad & The Ugly

We decided to utilise this particular scene as inspiration as we liked the use of close ups and over the shoulder shots to portay the action and also the level of detail. Furthermore the editing was of interest to us as well as we observed that it went very well in time with the action and tempo of the song. As the standoff reached a boiling point, so did the music and it crescendoed, all of this beautifully in time with the editing. Therefore we found this scene of great inspiration due to the close ups and editing, Moreover, Clint Eastwood was present in the scene as well, so what could beat that?

Inspiration 5 - The Shining Staircase Scene

In mimicking this scene from this classic horror, we hope to add to the 'mind-trip' effect on our protagonist in the same way it does in the original. It is at this point in the film when the madness really begins to hit the female lead, and she starts to hallucinate and see some very strange and bizarre things. We believe this is an excellent example to use as a guidance to creating this effect and aim to re-create the section where the female lead runs frantically up a winding staircase, wielding a large kitchen knife, and upon her ascent, comes across two characters performing unspeakable acts on one another in a near-by bedroom. We believe the effective use of costumes helps to add to the strange and irregular situation.

Inspiration 4 - The Exorcist Head Spin Scene

Although it scared the living daylights out of us when we first watched The Exorcist, we could not deny the brilliant execution of this scene. We believe that with the proper lighting and camera angle, we should be able to do this scene justice, it should just be a matter of wearing ones shirt back to front to get the desired effect. Naturally one watching would observe that we have simply put the shirt on back to front, so we anticipate this problem, but relish the challenge of finding a solution to it. We firmly believe this scene will blend perfectly within our production due to the overall random nature of the video and that it will literally make our viewers heads spin with delight.

Inspiration 3 - Nosferatu Shadow Stairway Scene

As avid film enthusiasts ourselves, we found it almost impossible to not give this classic scene a go. We imagine that with effective lighting set up and in the correct place/angles, and the use of the banister of a set of stairs, it should not prove difficult at all to put our own spin on this scene. We think this scene will fit in quite well with our ideas of filming and should add to the overall crazy and mad effect that we intend our production to have. In short, we hope this scene will make viewers feel nostalgic but also show off our prowess with lighting.

Inspiration 2 Lock Stock Fixed Camera Shots

We would like to use this shot in the making of our video as we feel it is a very effective way of displaying disbelief and a loss of mental awareness in a given situation. In our music video we are planning to use this when our protagonist takes a pill of some sort and believe this shot will amplify the dizzy and confused state the character is likely to be experiencing. The camera follows the character's movements exactly and in essence is being controlled directly by the actor himself. It also puts the audience in a very strange position as they are forced to follow every subtle movement the camera makes and we believe this close-up style shot is the best way to engage them effectively. Also, its clear to see the sequence has been filmed two or three times and the shots overlap by slightly fading them together. This gives a sense of displacement in the character's mind and I feel is a very effectively use of editing which achieves the desired effect successfully.