Action + Enigma Codes - Roland Barthes

Action codes - what will happen next
She falls over - will he catch her?
She has been caught - what will he do with her?

Enigma codes - The audience question why
Why is there a shoe on the floor?
Why is she on the floor?
Why she is wearing a dress?
Who is she?
Who is he?
Why is he chasing her?

Binary Opposites - Claude Levi-Strauss

Good Vs. Evil
Sanity Vs. Insanity
Control Vs. Lack of Control
Male Vs. Female
Intoxicated Vs. Sober

Secret Window

2:53 - 4:32

This is actualy one extremely long take. Te shot starts at the foot of the house and gradually circles round it, rising at the same time. The camera then goes in through a window and travels through the house until it focusses on Depp sleeping on the sofa. The length of this sho is extremely effective in creating tension and suspense. Together with the music, the shot maks t seem as if the audience are entering a scene, and are simply seeing what is gong on, rather than participating.

This is a very influential shot and we used this to create ou first shot. Although ours is no where near the length of the Secret Window shot, we also mov from a lake/stream to a seemingly uninteresting object (the shoe)

Shrooms

Shrooms Trailer

Although this was a trailer it was very inspirational for our scene. Firstly, the setting is much the same as ours - a forest. There is also a central theme of drugs in each sequence, although in our scene it is forced upon the victim, whereas in Shrooms it is each characters choice. We both wanted to create the effect of blurred or distorted vision, and in this trailer the use of trails and slow motion create this. Disortion of time and space is also created by the use of intentionally jump cuts. One of the most inspirational shots to use is the low level side track of the forest floor. This is almost exactly the same type of shot we wish to shoot as it shows the scene well and in our case we can show the direction the character is running. There is also a good use of fades to black to connote time passing which we will use in the scene and the flashes of white between shots is also very disturbing to the viewer and helps to create suspense. There is also a low level shot of the forest floor, which lingers long enough for a charcters shoe to come into shot and step on the floor. The shot here is extremely close to the foot which almost makes it indistinguishable which is similar to what we hope to ahcieve with some of these shots. This shot will almost act as an insert, allwoing us to cut up the shot types and therefore engage the audience and not let them get bored.

Theory in The Anaesthetist

Narrative Structure - Todorov - equilibrium - disquilibrium - new equilbrium

Our film subverts this theory; the film opens with a disequilibrium and will then go onto attempting to create an equilibrium. However, it could be argued that the killer has restored his personal equilibirum by killing the victim in the opening sequence, and that her simply escaping was the disequilibrium.

Film title

Se titles that we thought of for our film included

• The Butcher
• The Stalker
• The London Butcher
• Numb
• Number 8
• Intoxicated

We eventually went with "The Anaesthetist" as this connotes the drugs which the killer uses to subdue his victims. It also shows that the film is focussing on the killer as the main character rather than a heroine or the police.

DVD cover

This is the final DVD cover for our film