Directing - Directors

For directors, one of my two chosen directors is Greg Mclean. He is an Australian director who has directed seven films from 2001 to 2017.

I picked him as I recently watched ‘The Belko Experiment’ – an action/horror/thriller film that focuses on the social experiment of how average everyday react to being told to murder each other. Greg’s directorial decisions in the film really helped to influence how I created my film. One of the decisions that are clear in this film, is how he really focuses on the character performance as the workers slowly begin to mentally collapse as they realize that they have to murder to stay alive. Also, even though the film is made of a huge cast, he still manages to develop the cast to make them relatable to the audience even though they may not have as much time in the screen as a normal horror film would take it. This is something I took into consideration when making my scene; I really wanted to develop my characters enough to make them relatable to the audience, as well as focusing on their performance as Kristen (Katie) slowly breaks down from the initial tormenting from the killers to her and James (Jack) finally being murdered.

Another director I picked was James DeMonaco, who has directed 5 films, 4 of them being ‘The Purge’ films. 

I decided to pick him as a director as this first film follows a well-off family who stay within their home security system during the purge but is invaded by their neighbors, resulting in death and horror. James did an amazing job in this film by capturing the incredible performances by actors like Lena Headey, he also created some incredible tonal effects through the lighting and camera work. An example of this is during the night scenes, the lighting is minimal, yet the scene has added darkness from color correction to add to the fearful tone. And, even during the morning scene towards the end of the film, the color correction is still there and still keeps the tone dark and moody, even though purge night is over.

I decided to also pick him as my director as, like my previous director, I fully enjoyed the way he captured the performance of the character and once again, the camera work and sound design within the film is really something I strived for within my scene.