Since my last post I’ve been thinking more about the world that I want to create in this studio. Seeing the man, out of place to me, in the cinema, mentioned in my last post, got me interested in researching some films that use this aspect in film. The first film I thought of was the 2007 thriller 1408  (trailer below) which is a film about an author who checks into “haunted” hotels and debunks supernatural phenomena, enters a infamous hotel room. As soon as he enters the room, the room becomes it’s own world essentially, from the world the film started in, which when I first watched the movie was really chilling to me. The character describes it as a “lucid nightmare”.

There’s also a scene that I always think about during discussions about contained worlds, where in order to escape the room he climbs onto the balcony to get to the next room’s window, but on the ledge realises that there are no windows and his room is isolated in this massive hotel building. Whenever I watch a film (usually of the thriller or horror genre) that has a sort of contained world, I feel a nightmareish quality to it.

When I was considering 1408, I thought about the idea that there are two seperate worlds in this film, the actual and the one of the hotel room. When I started thinking about this, I tried to think of other films I’ve seen that explore this and one particular film came to mind; Tim Burton’s 2004 film Big Fish. This film has a fairytale element to it, because the film basically is the retelling of someone’s life, but exaggerated so much it creates this fantasy world that is dramatically different from the present world the stories are being told from. I’ve always really liked films like Big Fish that have a slightly left of centre world that stories are told in, with eccentric characters that really juxtapose themselves with the protagonist, who are quite realistic characters compared to real life.

So going forward with thinking about the world I want to create, I think I really want to create a world for this middle aged man I saw in the cinema. Creating a sort of surreal/fantasy world with strange and bizarre characters he comes in contact with. I don’t know if I would just want to set the film in this one world, or if I want to show the man in his own world to really contrast the difference to when he steps into the cinema and is met with this otherworldly place. It’s good I’m thinking about these things early on, so I can really concentrate on the tone I want to convey and the story I want to tell and how I want it to be told.

References:

1408. (2007). [film] Mikael Håfström

Big Fish. (2004). [film] Tim Burton