Evaluation - QuestionTwo

How does your opening sequence represent particular social groups?

Our opening sequence only has and focus' on one main ccharacter, which is the Toymaker, however, our whole story includes the primary characters of Amy's mother and father. Therefore, we had to represent their social roles of psychologically effected males,being an only child, over-worked parents and neglected children.

With the exception of Kathy Bates as Annie Wilkes in Stephen Kings, Misery(1990), the focal villainous characters of - Psychological - thrillers is commonly males. But in this case Annie Wilkes was an obsessed fan, who kidnapped and held hostage Paul Sheldon when she didn't get the ending of Misery that she wanted. This is similar to our Toymaker character:

• White British male
• Only child
  
• Mind of a child
• Psychologically affected in childhood as father died and mother neglected him. She only gave him one doll each year on his birthday, to keep him company.
• Rarely interacted with others
• Grew bored of dolls as he could never have a conversation with them
• Became obsessed with finding something better and 'doll-like', and found that little girls were perfect. But they soon, wanted to go home but he wanted them to stay so he would kill and turn them into dolls with hot wax- much like Bo and Vincent in House of Wax (2005) who turn people into waxworks to make their figures more realistic-
• Occupation- Toymaker, he owns a rundown toyshop in which he stores and hangs his dolls in. Our opening sequence shows his workstation which would be situated within the toyshop.

Our Toymaker's persona is fuelled by his neglectful childhood, and doesn't want that to happen to other children. Therefore in his twisted mind he sees kidnapping and turning little girls into dolls as punishment for the neglectful parents. Whether or not they win his game,they are taught a lesson on how to treat their children with love and attention. An influential character for The Toymaker, is Jigsaw from the Saw(2004-present) sagas. Jigsaw uses a series of torturous games, which his kidnapped victims have to play in order to survive; like the Toymaker leaving notes for the parents for save their children. Jigsaw does this to teach his victims to appreciate their lives and to not take them for granted.

In our opening sequence, although The Toymakers character is age 47-50, we used Rachel's brother Daniel O'Connell who is 21 to portray him, However, through the elements of mise en scene, we were able to mask the age gap successfully.
- The costume was very important to the character, as from childhood, he rarely interacted with others and wanted to be very inconspicuous. He therefore wore all black as in long coat and black jogging bottoms, yet had white trainers on as he still craved some attention that he never received when a child.
-Before shooting, as a part of makeup ,we also dirtied up Daniel's hands as we felt that it would add to the Toymaker's creepiness. We also wanted to give the audience the chill that we felt when we watched the opening sequence to Se7en (1995) which was the primary influence for our opening sequence, due to the clever camera angles, movements,effects and the actual character within the frame.

- The body language and movement of the Toymaker was very precise and intricate, this is shown particularly when he is threading the needle and handling his beloved Amy doll. This is effective as his slow hand gestures, present to the audience the love and care that he wishes to show Amy. When outside of 'Amy's house', towards the end of the opening sequence, you will notice that the Toymaker, walks very awkwardly and not in straight lines, this is to emphasise the fact that he has a twisted mind and doesn't even realise that what he is doing, as in the way he is walking and the kidnappings, are wrong.
- The setting of our opening sequence was shown to be a basement workshop; withing the Toymakers shop. We achieved this by putting up black cloth covered boards,, a table, chair, table lamp, and sewing equipment. However to get the eerie atmosphere we had to attach images of innocent little girls to the back slats to effectively show his obsession with girls we also put up images of the doll to put across to the audience the instability of his mind. We scratched and tea stained the table to make it seem old, and suggest that he had been making dolls for a long time, We also scattered the sewing equipment like buttons and needles across the table to show how cluttered his mind is that he doesn't know right from wrong.
-The lighting was very simple and dim throughout the opening sequence, particularly in the workshop scenes, a deep yellow light was used to keep with the eerie atmosphere of the film as we felt it made it look dirtier, whereas the red light made the workshop seem demonic which was not the look we were going for. However, the red light within the red room shots were highly effective we felt as it gave the audience a change of scenery, but as it came up in quick flashes it created a sense of discomfort.
-Throughout our sequence The toymaker never had any human interaction as it was only him and the doll, we did this to emphasise his sick and childlike mentality. The use of extreme close up and slow stroke we felt were great as they portrayed to the audience his obsession and unnatural love for dolls and children, much like Robin Williams' character Seymour "Sy" Parrish in One Hour Photo(2002) who is obsessed with the Yorkin family. Similarly, Seymour "Sy" Parrish makes collages of the family much like our Toymaker with the innocent little girls.


To conclude the representation of The Toymakers social role was shown succesfully and suited the psychological thriller, through the mise enscene elements that we used and and the way he lived and the things he did were very similar to other villains that i have mentioned.