Saw Franchise

I researched the Saw franchise which is made up of seven films. Each film was released on the Friday before Halloween:


Saw (James Wan, 2004: Twisted Pictures and Evolution Entertainment, $1.2m: $103m [world; $55m USA], 7.7) Trailer; Wiki. 18.

Saw II (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2005: Twisted Pictures and Evolution Entertainment, $4m: $148m [world; $87m USA], 6.7) Trailer; Wiki. 18.

Saw III (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2006: Twisted Pictures and Evolution Entertainment, $10m: $165m [world; $80m USA], 6.2) Trailer; Wiki. 18.

Saw IV (Darren Lynn Bousman, 2007: Twisted Pictures, $10m: $139m [world; $73m USA], 5.9) Trailer; Wiki. 18.

Saw V (David Hackl, 2008: Twisted Pictures, $10.8m: $114m [world; $57m USA], 5.7) Trailer; Wiki. 18.

Saw VI (Kevin Greutert, 2009: Twisted Pictures and A Bigger Boat, $11m: $68m [world; $27m USA], 6.0) Trailer; Wiki. 18.

Saw 3D (Kevin Greutert, 2010: Twisted Pictures, A Bigger Boat and Serendipity Productions, $17m: $136m [world; $46m USA], 5.5) Trailer; Wiki. 18.

There have also been two video games made based on the films; Saw: The Video Game and Saw II: Flesh and Blood. 


Quotes from Reviews

Saw:  'claustrophobic, demonic ethos rarely seen today'  ★★★★☆ (Guardian)

Saw II:  'duff horror sequel'  'merely sadistic'  ★☆☆☆☆ (Guardian)

Saw III:  'strictly second-rate'  'the third entry is the weakest yet'  ★★☆☆☆ (BBC)

Saw IV:  'jittery, over-edited style and jagged storytelling'  ★★☆☆☆ (Empire Magazine)

Saw V:  'tedious, lame and pointless'  ★☆☆☆☆ (Time Out)

Saw VI:  'back to Saw basics in gripping, gruesome manner'  ★★★☆☆ (Empire Magazine)

Saw 3D:  'could do with more depth'  ★★☆☆☆ (Empire Magazine)


Budget and Box Office


The budget for the Saw franchise has increased for each new film but it has always been a low budget franchise.

Each film grossed around $100m to $150m at the box office, however Saw III grossed $165m which was the franchise's highest grossing whereas Saw VI grossed $68m which was its lowest.

Saw 3D was the last film to be released and it doubled the worldwide box office grossing of the previous film in the franchise (Saw VI). This will of probably mainly been an outcome of the film being in 3D as more people will of found the film scarier or felt more involved in the film, which is good for horrors and quite a new experience for the audience.


What the Franchise Added to the Slasher Genre

The Saw franchise has been described as 'torture porn' by critics, which has resulted in the growth of the term.

The films in the franchise also have a puppet called Billy in them. This allows the killer to visually communicate with his victims without him being seen.

The Saw films also use a lot of traps for the victims to escape from.

In the first film the only victims that die are male, which is unusual for horror films.


Killers and Weapons


The main 'killer' in the film is John Kramer (played by Tobin Bell) who was also known as 'The Jigsaw Killer' or just 'Jigsaw', after leaving jigsaw pieces. However he wasn't actually a killer, as Dr. Gordon says about him in the first film:

"Technically speaking hes not really a murderer, he never killed anyone, he finds ways for his victims to kill themselves."

John's wife had a miscarrage due to an assault on her by a man called Cecil, which eventually led him to divorce his wife (Jill). John was later told by Dr. Gordon that he had cancer and an inoperable brain tumor and was dying. He was then denied health coverage by William Easton. John then attempted suicide because of his depression but he survived it, which made him value his life more.


This caused John to try to get people to appreciate their lives more. He did this by putting his carefully selected victims in traps, telling them why they have been put in the circumstance and telling them how to escape. If they managed to escape then John believed that it would cause them to appreciate their lives more.


John began recruiting apprentices to continue what he had been doing, as his health was getting worse. The only known apprentices were Amanda Young, Lieutenant Mark Hoffman and Dr. Lawrence Gordon. Amanda Young and Dr. Gordon were both survivors of Jigsaw's traps in the first film.


Victims


In total there were about 64 deaths in the Saw franchise (including Jigsaw and his apprentices etc.), but not all of them were in traps.


Summary


Something that surprised me about the films was the short amount of time they were shot it. The first film was shot in 18 days and the second was done in 25 days.

I was also surprised at the quality of the films for their low budgets.

One of the things that might influence my own slasher opening is using subtle references from other films/directors in my opening. For example, the James Wan in the first film uses lots of references from Dario Argento's horror films, such as black gloves of the unseen killer.

Pretty in Pink Opening Analysis

I annotated Pretty in Pink which is a film produced by John Hughs in 1986.


First there is a Paramount ident which signifies that the film will have a decent budget and is probably well made. This is followed by white text on black backgrounds that say 'Paramount pictures presents' and 'A John Hughs production'. The font is sans serif and capitals which connotes that the film is a comedy and quite light-hearted. The entire opening is set in the morning which also connotes that the film is not going to be dark.


'Pretty in Pink' by The Psychedelic Furs starts playing and the black fades to the first establishing, extreme long shot of an American neighbourhood road with a old fashioned street cleaner driving through. These signify that the film is set in 80s America in a rural location.


This shot then fades to another extreme long shot. This pans to show a plain, off-white building with a carpark outside and barbed wire fencing. This is next to a railway track in the neighbourhood that was previously shown. The title 'Pretty in Pink' fades on and off in the same font that was used at the start. It continues paning to show more of the setting. The words 'Starring Molly Ringwald' who plays the main character then comes up (in the same font). Molly Ringwald had been in a few well known films before Pretty in Pink such as The Breakfast Club so was quite a respected and well known actress.


It then cuts to a series of close up and extreme close up shots of the main character putting clothes and make up on. These also give you an indication of the time period its set in as her clothes are 80s style. Names of other people come up in the same font as before until 3 minutes 15 into the opening. These include other actors, producers and other members of the the crew.


It then cuts to a medium long shot of the girl walking out of her bedroom door. This lets us see her full outfit which is pretty terrible even for the 80s and it also shows us some of the inside of her house which is plain. Her outfit signifies that she isn't going to be a very popular, fashionable person.


There is then a close up of her pouring a cup of coffee and saying 'it's 7.30' and 'daddy wake up', which anchors the fact that it is in the morning and also that she is probably going out somewhere. Then there's a medium shot of her walking into a dark bedroom where her dad is asleep. She walks over to him so it becomes a two shot and we are introduced to another character. He looks like he hasn't gone outside for a while. The daughter then starts telling him he needs to go get a proper job. This suggests that the daughter is more mature and determined than her dad.


That was as far as I got, it was a terrible film.

Bradford International Film Festival

When we went to Bradford film festival I first went to the experience tv floor which had loads about how tv shows are made and how they get from the filming to tv. My favourite parts of it were the news reading bit and the blue screen because it was interesting to see how they were done.

Because we’d already seen experience tv by 11am we then went to the Q&A with the Phelps twins. I didn’t know they were going to be there and we weren’t going to go to the Q&A but it turned out to be really good and interesting to see what it was like filming Harry Potter.

Then we went to screening 1. Some of the films were terrible like the animated fruit ones but the other ones were pretty decent and it was good to see work done by IGS students on the big screen. My favourite shot type was a two shot through a fence at the end of one of the films. It was a still frame and went to black and white which looked good.

Overall it was really interesting to see some of the different parts of making a film and seeing some short films made by young people.

Mise-en-Scene Task

We were asked to create a video that focused mainly on mise-en-scene and had a maximum of 20 words in it. Here is our result: