Research into film influence

 Research into Film Influences

One of the main influences for our film is the 1999 Comedy 'Office Space'. This is basis for the whole setting of 'The Fall and Rise of a White Collar Worker' as the vast majority films significant events take place in an office environment. The boss in 'Office Space', Bill Lumbergh (played by Gary Cole), is an passively authorative, egotistical and smug character, and a character who we have taken great influence in creating the boss in our ofiice comedy, Gareth Hooper (played by Matthew Senior). More than just taking influence from particular characters, we have tried to capture a similar tone and mood from the movie 'Office Space'. The mundane nature of boring offfice work and the resentment towards a job are core themes of our film, and a fundamental bases of the narrative. We feel with have used this film as a template, but created a unqiue and totally different story that employs an overall darker form of comedy.

In our film, we have recreated similar scenes from existing films. One of these scenes is from 'Fight Club' in where The Narrator (played by Edward Norton) punches himself in the face to blackmail his boss. This happens in our own, with the difference being this is something our main character, Ross (played by Liam Bailey) does an attempt to get his boss fired as part of a revenge scene. Fight Club - Office Scene


Another large influence on our film was the directing of Edgar Wright ('Shaun of the Dead', 'Hot Fuzz', 'The World's End'). After watching a video analysing his style - Edgar Wright - How to Do Visual Comedy - this inspired us to try and employing similar editing and cinematography. The main thing we took from the video was realising how to create comedy whilst simultaneously telling a story through purely specific shots and editing techniques. As our film has a train journey at the very beginning, we are going to attempt a similar style of scene to the train journey in 'Hot Fuzz', which uses a range of quick shots to make an otherwise mundane scene entertaining, as well highlighting the personality of our main character and creating a comedic tone. We also decided to take another element of Edgar Wright's comedic style which is to introduce objects into a scene in a odd fashion. In the video analysing his style we were introduced to this when one character slowly lowers cake in front of Simon Pegg's character's face and offers him it, which he rejects. We have taken this idea and reformulated it, our character, Ross, is sat on the train looking annoyed, a person coughs through the gap in the chairs, Ross is visibily perturbed. Later, a protruding hand appears through the gap offering Ross some sweets as compensation for coughing on him.

We have been generally inspired by the films of Joel and Ethan Coen and have directly taken the catchphrase 'Yah, you betcha!' from their widely celebrated dark comedy 'Fargo'. However, we have left out the Minnesota accent.

We have been inspired by Tarantino's use of extreme close ups of people's face to create tension and suspense. Tarantino was in turn inspired by Sergio Leone and contrasting a long shot and then an extreme close up. This technique is itself visually striking as well as adept in creating suspense. For example, in the iconic final duel between the three main characters.

We have also been directly inspired by the 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail' 'lancelot running' scene. The two castle guards look at a man running towards them it then cuts to the same shot of the man running and then cuts back to the individual faces of the guards. This process continues for a few more shots before the man arrives at the gates and kills the guards. In our film Dr Parkes runs up the stairs it cuts to Ross awaiting his arrival, this process continues interchangeably for a few more shots before Dr Parkes arrives on the roof and talks to Ross.
Monty Python and the Holy Grail - Sir Lancelot running scene