Influence: Rear Window

Rear window is a 1954 Psychological Thriller. It has one numerous awards and one of the most well known today, directed by Alfred Hitchcock.

The story revolves around a wheelchair bound photographer who spies on his neighbours from his apartment window and becomes convinced that one of them has committed a murder. After story boarding and initiating some ideas we found that Rear window was a key influence in the thinking behind our end idea. We needed a disequilibrium, Rear window was a huge influence. Wendall the photographer becomes convinced his neighbour has committed a murder, this is the basis of the story line.

 As a group we like the idea that the character has certain disabilities that made him venerable and not your typical hero, he had limitations. This influenced how we built our characters. We decided that our main antagonist should have something that holds her back. A limitation was that we couldn’t make it anything to drastic, for example have her in a wheelchair as we didn’t have access to a wheelchair and it would also be impractical to film with. Instead we decided to go for something more subtle and practical that is an important part of the film and part of the iconography. We have created her to be on some type of films, although in the short the audience is not to find out what she takes her pills for but a shot shows her briskly turn around after seeing a man in the mirror, we want the audience to question if someone is really there or is it something psychological in her head?

Secondly another main influence was the use of the camera as part of the iconography (props). Were in ‘Rear Window’ the antagonist uses the camera to spy on the protagonist we decided to switch the role of the camera, as being the tool in the spying of the antagonist by the protagonist. In our short however we have decided not to shoot the villain taking the shots as we don’t have enough time as we are limited to 5 mins, instead we have incorporated the images that he has captured on his camera into the opening credits and the ending of the film.