Thriller Planning - Inter-textual Refrences

For our film, our production team really went deep and researched around Psychological thrillers, their conventions, motifs and plot twists. Psychological films are amazing at playing with the audiences mind, playing around with people feelings and creating illusions. It was vital to us as a group that we incorporated clever and complex ideas into our film. We took inspiration from various films such as 'Inception' and 'Harvey'.

Our first inter-textual link comes from the incredible Christopher Nolan film 'Inception'. This masterpiece creates illusions and makes the audience really take a step back and think about the film, this is the exact reaction we wanted the audience to have to our film. The link derives from the plot itself which is based around the idea of reality and nightmares being inter changeable, through which the main character is in a never ending nightmare. As well as our thriller linking with the plot of 'Inception' we were also influenced by one of their breathtaking sequences in which Leonardo Di Caprio is seen in a extreme close up waking up. In our thriller we will replicate this scene to show an inter-textual link very early on, as well as demonstrating our knowledge on the subject this sequence fits perfectly with our thriller. This use of an extreme close up is very important as it lets the audience differentiate between what is a dream sequence and what is reality. Furthermore by using this shot it will show our skills in camerawork.

Another inter-textual reference we have made in our film is from the 1950's film 'Harvey'. The inter-textual reference being that the main character in the film is insistent on the fact that he has a six foot tall rabbit as a best friend. Whilst this film seems to have no resemblance to our thriller what so ever. We actually got the idea of not being able to see Javier Martellini's face in the thriller from this film. In our thriller only Josh Masterson see's Javier, this is exactly the same as in Henry Koster's film where main character Elwood is the only one that can see his best friend. I believe that this inter-textual link whilst being very alternative is a very clever idea from our production team.

These inter-textual references displays our knowledge of the genre and film, but also shows we are able to use various ideas from different films and incorporate them into our thriller piece.

Written by Thor Forster