Genre Links and Inter-textual References

Our short film is based on a lot of research into genre and short films, and our final proposal was based on ideas from films we have watched over AS and A2 media research, so as you can imagine there are a lot of inter-textual references and genre links. I am now going to go through our final proposal stating the decision making for each main aspect, why we made it and references and links to this idea.

 It is important that as a film maker I understand that as much as I would like my idea to be as individual as possible, and it would be nice to think I have made something no one has ever though of, but this is simply impossible in our modern day world. Film production is becoming cheaper, especially for short films, and there are now millions and millions of short films out there, so I understand that my idea is creative but not unique.


Here is our narrative explained in terms of genre links and inter-textual references: 


The first decision that we made was to have our central protagonist at the age of early 20s. We made this decision because of the bast amount of horror films we have watched, me and conor have noticed that the characters are usually quite young. This is because youth is linked to being violent, rule breaking and full of emotions. We could link this decision to Halloween. In this film that I watched for my As research, I noticed how all the characters where in there early 20s. In this film all of the victims and the villain are in high school and probably a little younger than 20, but it still shows how a younger character is used in the horror genre.


Our second decision was to have the male walking by himself, being centre screened, clearly signifying he is the central protagonist. This is a link to the codes and conventions I have picked wile taking out my short film research, I noticed that in most of the short film the first shot was the central protagonist so I will be taking out the same method in my short film. For example The Black Hole, in this film the first shot shows the central protagonist center screened.

Our third decision was that the character would stumble across a set of bags that have been left and covered in blood. This decision was made on the basis that from a lot of short films I watched had a narrative enigma to set up the scene, and the blood and left behind bags creates a narrative enigma for my audience, why have they been left there, and whose blood is on them? An example of this is on the short film, This Is Me, in this film we see a male in a hospital bed, and this creates a narrative enigma, what is wrong with him?

A fourth decision we made for our short film is the sound of a crow being used when the male decides to start running. In many films the sound of crow has been linked to death, so we decided to use the sound of a crow to show the audience that the central protagonist may get killed, despite the fact that the twist in our story shows that actually he is the murderer. This is an inter-textual reference to the film, The Crow, a horror film from the early 1990s that bases the crow as a symbol of death.

Another decision me and Conor made was to have a house with smoke rising from it. We made this decision because it signifies that there is some suspicious activity taking place in the house. It also sets the scene for the house, and its activity. This is an inter-textual reference to the film Citizen Kane (1941) one of the greatest films ever made. Another inter-textual from a more recent is The Cottage. In this film a girl is kidnapped, as in our film, and as they walk up to a cottage, there is smoke rising from it.

A final main decision in our narrative was to have a blonde girl in a red dress as his victim. There are thousands of inter-textual references to this choice, as in case of many films it is normally the blonde sexually active women who is killed, we signify that the women is sexually active by showing that she is wearing high heels, as high heels are clear connotation to high sexual activity. One particular inter textual reference to this is Psycho, where the blonde women in the first scenes is killed after having sex.