Director presentation - Bryan Bertino

Background:
  • Director = 3 ("The Strangers", "Mockingbird" and "The Monster")
  • Writer = 4 ("The Strangers", "Mockingbird", "The Monster" and "The Strangers: Prey at Night")
  • Producer = 5 ("Mockingbird", "The Blackcoat's Daughter", "The Monster", "Stephanie" and "He's Out There")

  • Bryan Bertino began his film career when he moved to LA, and, while working as a gaffer, began writing screenplays in his free time.
  • His first film ‘The Strangers’ was submitted for a Nicholl Fellowship with the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
  • Although it only reached the quarterfinals, he was able to meet with Vertigo Entertainment and the script was later sold to Universal Studios. 


Overall style:
  • Unlike big horror directors, Bryan’s films, especially “The Strangers” doesn’t focus on being “a body count movie”, instead, Bryan focuses on his films being “grounded around people” and keeping “things simple” when it comes to camera movements.


Camera:
  • An example of simple camera movement is the Kitchen scene, where Kristen in alone in the house. 

  • The camera is in a wide shot and remains static as Kristen wanders around the kitchen, while the killer stands in the shadowed doorway.

  • It cuts to a shot from the other side of Kristen as a medium shot.

  • It then once again cuts back to the same frame as before, this time without the killer in the frame.


This is an example of a simple camera movement and shows that, as a director, Bryan decided to use those certain shots in order to unnerve the audience. 

Performance choices:
  • “The Strangers”, the two main characters are a young couple that are torn after a failed marriage proposal.
  • In “Mockingbird” it follows three sets of people: an average working man, an isolated college girl, and a mother’s boy.
  • In “The Monster”, the focus is on a divorced mother and her headstrong daughter.
  • In all three films, the cast are grounded in terms of their performance with what is happening around them. In “The Strangers”, Kristen and James (played by Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman) are a young couple heading for disaster as Kristen rejected James’s proposal.
  • However, in the film, the two characters aren’t portrayed as a clichéd couple that lash out at each other in spite or anger, instead, they are portrayed as good and caring people towards each other, something that is rarely seen in horror films.


Chosen Scene:

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