Film Influences

1. Film Influences By Elena May Reading

2. TV SERIES – AWAKEAmerican tv series 2012 – starring Jason Isaacs The TV series ‘Awake’ was about a man who was living a double life, unable to tell the difference between his dreams and the reality after a traumatising car crash. This is where one of the influences came for our film Euphoria. We wanted our main character to be unaware of her surroundings and not know the difference between reality and fantasy – in order to do this we thought the best theme would be for her to be taking drugs, because apparently not being able to identify the difference between reality and fantasy are side effects if too many drugs are taken. In the TV series ‘Awake’ the series concluded in rather a poor fashion – the audience was always in suspense about which of the two lives he had was real, and began to guess what the real reality was. Personally, I thought that perhaps he was a ghost and he was the one that was out of place.

3. However, this was not the case. The TV show was very good at surprising the audience – for example in one of his double lives would influence something in the other – whether it was a clue or a murder or a person. In the final episode we see in the last few scenes that he is seeing one of his two councillors (one for each of his lives) and she tells him to let go of whatever he is feeling inside of him – and then suddenly she stops talking. Freezes mid action and he looks confused and then sees a door, unknowing what to do the door opens. He steps into a room where he is sleeping (he see’s himself lying there) as if he is a ghost – this is what some of the viewers thought was going on. The next thing we know is that he is waking up, the figure that was looking at him (who we think is a ghost) disappears and he finds himself in his bed without his wife. At this point, we think that everything we saw was actually figments of his imagination to deal with the fact that both his wife and son are dead – because in each of these ‘lives’ only his son or his wife are alive.

4. Either this, or it is him that is in fact the ghost – and he is trapped between worlds. What he believes to be real, and what the real reality is Now, it turned out that the truth was that everything we saw – the entire series turned out to be one complete dream, and eventually he comes to terms with the fact that there was a car crash, however nothing happened and everything he believed he saw – his friends, family, co-workers, criminals the murderers – everything was in his head. This explains why one world would influence the other (for example, the character that committed the crime in one world would give him accidental clues in the other world – would ‘bump’ into him by accident and then once back in the previous world he would start drawing their face and then the crime would be solved. This ending to the series, I felt was a little disappointing. However, when we first started planning our film, Euphoria this was the kind of concept that I thought we should be bringing to the film – debating the question of whether any of it actually happened or whether the whole thing was one big nightmare – or whether it was real. I felt that it would be an interesting discussion point for film audiences.

5. Breaking badAmerican TV series – starring Bryan Cranston 2008 - 2013 • Breaking Bad is an American television series starring Bryan Cranston as Walter White – a chemistry teacher who is diagnosed with terminal cancer, and has only months to live. • Frustrated because of his very uninspiring job, he makes the decision to take matters into his own hands to give his family a secure financial future – by exploiting what he is good at. • Chemistry is the name and producing high class drugs is his game. He teams up with a former pupil of his who acts as the ‘dealer’ and they make a very effective duo as the business expands however they start to attract the attention of the law especially when Walters brother in law is a police officer.

6. From Breaking Bad the influences that we would have used thought the film would have been the drug dealers role, and also the level of violence that underlies in the film – we have made this deliberately un-obvious in our trailer however it would be a prominent feature of the film. • The main character in our film commits a murder under the influence of drugs, however she can not define the line between reality and fiction there for the audience is not really aware of what is real and what is a part of her imagination, so whether she really did is unknown to the audience.

7. Trainspotting1996 – starring Ewan McGregor Trainspotting was an influence of ours because of the running theme through the film, drug taking and its disastrous effects – however the main character Ewan McGregor at least attempts to stop taking them as apposed to the main character of our film who limits her days by over dosing on the drugs. In trainspotting the ending appears seemingly brighter for Ewan McGregors character, he manages to escape from his ‘friends’ whilst stealing their cuts of the money (however leaving some for one of them whom he feels sorry for. His character seems also to be glad to be rid of these people and to be starting a new, fresh life with a clean slate. In our film, it is going to be unclear whether there will be a positive outcome, because of the audience not being certain what is real and what is not real, the reality might not be very easy to define.