The main things that inspire me are music, travel and movies/shows. My favourite movies and shows show me how to create a meaningful piece of work that can move the viewer however you please. My favourite genre of movies is horror, specifically slasher. The original slasher movies show me how to introduce and build characters enough so the are likeable and the audience can feel a connection and feel negative emotions when the character is in danger, while also introducing the villain so that there is tension and fear built up throughout the movie, rather than relying on jump-scares and blood, to create a character audiences truly fear, and think about long after they watched the movie. These films also teach me the importance of introducing the villain, as well as the heroine, appropriately, and thinking about is you want the villain to come across as a lifeless entity, like Michael Myers, or have a more defined character, like Billy Loomis. One of my favourite things about Halloween 1978, is that in seemingly normal scenes where the main characters are talking or doing normal actives, if you look in the corner of the frames you can see Michael Myers stalking them. For example, in the scene where Laurie and her friends stop at the shop Michael broke into, to talk to one of her friends dads, if you look in background of the scene you can see him drive past them.
As well as movies, many shows inspire me too, my favourites being Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Doctor Who, and Brooklyn 99. However, Buffy is the most impactful one. It’s filled with life lessons and day to day struggles disguised as literal demons, while ageing with the characters and watching them face normal, and supernatural, challenges as they grow up and discover themselves, the series getting darker as not only they, but the original audience, age.
https://youtu.be/3Rw2nMa1500?feature=shared
Every episode, and every season is impactful in it’s own way, but the episode that marked the end of the innocent, high-school show, as it moved into something much darker than it’s first season, was ‘The Body’.
In ‘The Body’, Buffy finds her mum dead, after a normal day with her friends. She has to cope with her mum’s death, while also having to step up to look after her younger sister and support them both, meaning she has to drop out of college, on top of saving the whole town and preparing for the apocalypse. During the episode, there is no music to make the characters emotions come though the screen, and represent the shock and confusion of everyone.
One of the final scenes of the episode is Buffy saving Dawn, her younger sister, from a vampire, while in the morgue her mum’s body is in, only a few hours after the death. Dawn not being able to resist seeing her mum one last time and getting herself in danger, causing Buffy to have to drop everything to save her, set the stage for their dynamic now that their mum’s gone. Before the death they were stereotypical sister’s, with them always fighting and upsetting each other. However, after things quickly change, Buffy becomes a lot more protective of her, more than she already was, and they fight less overtime, with Buffy adopting a mother-like figure to Dawn. Dawn’s hidden admiration and jealousy for Buffy turns to an expectation for her to be there for her-and everyone. Dawn’s innocence, impulsivity and disobedience constantly get her in serious danger, with Buffy having to save her over and over, resulting in Buffy getting angry at Dawn, but she never learns.
After Buffy saves her from the vampire, she lays on the floor where she staked the vampire. This scene can be viewed as a metaphor for how everyone sees Buffy as their protector, it does not matter how she feels or what is happening in her life, she jut has to push it down and be brave and lead the group , because that is what she’s expected to do, slaying is her job and she doesn’t get a break. She has the pressure of everyone in her life to be happy and brave, while also longing for a normal, simple life she knows she will never have, living three different life everyday and sacrificing everything, and never having to opportunity to think about herself. While she lays on that floor in the morgue, mourning her mum just moments before, she relies that she’s not a person-she’s a protector. She is on her own sacrificing her own existence, never truly experiencing life. She’s one girl against the world. She’s not expected to feel pain, she’s just expected to save everyone, all the time, while everyone grieves she has to go on, later resulting in a breakdown. She realised she’s truly alone, she lives in her own world and her existence is there for others. She goes back into slayer mode as she looks up at her mum’s body, and knows that if she doesn’t abide, that will be everyone.