Textual Analysis

Inspiration from other movies always played a key part in our production, due to the fact that we worked off some particulary good pieces of film. The movies we fed from included Frank Miller's 'Sin City', Victor Flemming's 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho' and the brilliant 'Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles' (2002).

All 4 films were used to the maximum extent when it came to inspiration, with all sorts of shots used, mirroring ones from the movies themselves. The style used in our piece was influenced also, by the storylines and characters themselves, adding depth to our piece. This helped make our film gain more of a standing, therefore improving its quality.

Firstly, 'Sin City' was the first movie to come to mind when we all thought of effects for the film's introduction. Sin City's black and white effect was of a great interest to us when we first started to get it to the drawing board, so to speak. Sin City's colour scheme was a great attraction to us all, with it's compete black and white personna, with certain, vibrant colours standing out. With that in mind, we decided to make our introduction also in complete black and white, not greyscale. I believe that this was extremely effective because it gave it a more haunted look - therefore creating the desired effect.

When influenced by 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde', directed by Victor Flemming in 1941, we decided to pick at certain aspects of the story line when putting our piece together. The idea of a split personality, or schizophrenia in other words, played a huge part in our own plot - with the un-named widow suffering from the condition. This is seen at the very beginning, with the diary entry. The condition will be used throughout the film as we look back into the widow's former life and see how the condition eventually led to her downfall. In this sense, we took from the movie of 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde' on the condition of schizophrenia and how it drastically changes peoples' lives.

We chose 'Pyscho' because of what an influenctual horror it had been when released in 1960. At that time, Alfred Hitchcock was the best regarded director around and nicknamed 'The master of suspense' and for good reason too, 'Psycho' was one of his many films which thrilled and terrified audiences across the globe. I decided to work of 'Pyscho' for the reason for why I worked off 'Dr. Jeckyll...' because it had a plot about the disease schizophrenia, as well as being a brilliant horror film. We can also relate ours to it because of how ours looks. 'Psycho', being made in 1960, was set in black and white and because we were trying to work off 'Sin City', ours was too. This made the two more relateable and our piece a lot better for it.

Lastly, a great influence which worked its way through to our piece was 'Sherlock Holmes and the Hound of the Baskervilles' directed by David Attwood, made in 2002 and broadcasted over the BBC. This is my favourite adaption of the Hound of the Baskervilles purely because of its intense take on a Sherlock Holmes classic. The version fell into our piece due to the surroundings of the plot - with the whole story taking place on Dartmoor. The moors were done in a very spooky way, increasing the tension to the film. We wanted the same effect throughout our film, so we picked a church to film the introduction and the death of the widow. This gave the place a timeless setting, and with the 'Sin City' black and white effect, it worked extremely well. Also, the rest of our story contained a detective, a detective modelled on Sherlock Holmes. The Sherlock Holmes in the chosen film was found as a very solid adaptation to base our detective around. This is what we took from the brilliant adaptation of a very original and very spooky story.