Literature

These are some books we took out of the school library to influence out film trailer. We read through these books and took a couple of ideas from them.

Some books we took out of the school library to read for ideas on how to create a realistic plot.

Natascha Kampusch

This is a story in the current news about a woman who was kidnapped.

• She was kidnapped off the street at the age of 10
• She was held hostage in a cellar
• When she hit puberty at the age of 12, her kidnapper (Priklopil) started to be physically, sexually and verbally abusive towards her.
• At the age of 12 he started to take her upstairs and make her clean the house.
• Priklopil didn't like it when Natascha cried, he would either cuddle her and try to make her stop crying whilst telling her how sorry he was, or he attempted to drown her, but not completely, so she was nearly unconscious.
• At the age of 14 she was made to sleep in his bed but not for a sexual reason, for the fact that he wanted someone to cuddle when he went to sleep.
• At the age of 15 she realised that Priklopil had a 1950's view of things and he believed that he should have a young housewife.
• He used to tell Natascha how fat and disgusting she was and she believed this was because he was anorexic and trying to push his anorexia on her.
• It was shortly after this that he cut the amount of food she was allowed to eat and she became drastically skinny, with her bones protruding through her skin.
• Priklopil was very paranoid about the police being able to track Natascha down by them finding one of her hairs, so he made her wear a plastic bag on her head until eventually she got her head shaved every time she was allowed upstairs to wash.
• After she became very skinny he forced her to work in the house half naked, and in the garden naked, knowing that she would never try to escape if she was naked and covered in bruises.
• He often held her outside the front door when she was naked and told her to try and run away, he didn't care that people may be able to see him because he knew that she would never run away without any clothes on
• To punish her he re-opened healing wounds
• After 2 years of being imprisoned she started to fight back but he was a lot bigger and stronger than her.
• She kept notebooks of the type of things that happened to her
• He had an intercom in her cellar
• She tried to kill herself when she was 14 by strangling herself with clothes
• At 15 she tried to slit her wrists with a large sewing needle.
• She also tried to kill herself by filling her lungs with smoke
• He occasionally took her out
• She was allowed to listen to the radio where she heard her name mentioned by the author of a missing persons book.
• Priklopil killed himself on the day that Natascha escaped
• She owns the house she was kept captive in
• She can see it from other peoples view and she shudders at the thought of what happened to her but it was her home for 8 years and she became used to that.
• She built an emotional relationship with him
• When she died she had to grieve for him because she felt she had lost someone close to her.
• She has a more acute awareness than women of her age
• She is lacking in aspects of her social skills
• She finds it hard to get close to people and from relationships with potential boyfriends. When she was locked in the cellar she craved human contact but now that she is out she is afraid of it.
•  Her father was an alcoholic and her parents had marriage problems.
• She as given literature in the cellar but has no knoledge of fashion or how young women her age should behave.
• 'You have to remember my mother lost her daughter. She had a child. She lost that child. She got the child back, but it was no longer a child, no longer someone she knew.'

• The chief police officer working on the case shot himself when people were challenging the police force for not doing enough to find Natascha.

• http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1309370/Natascha-Kampusch-My-living-hell-dungeon.html

Cry Silent Tears

*This is a true story about a young boy who was abused but his mother.

*His father was the only person he could rely on to help him.

*At the age of 5 Joe's father took him to work so he would be away from his mother. Joe's father went into work to speak to someone briefly and left Joe in the car. There was an explosion and Joe saw his father  running around on fire; Joe watched his father burn to death. After watching this ordeal, Joe was then struck dumb.

*He was left to live with his mother and brother who raped and abused him.

*Joe was locked in a cellar and forced to lick scraps of food from the floor. This happened for most of Joe's childhood, but his mother invited other people to rape her son, such as Joe's step dad.

* At the age of 14 Joe finally managed to get away and lived in a hideaway near a railway line, where he met other run aways who he spent most of his time with.

Damaged

True life story
http://www.cathyglass.co.uk/damaged.html
*A true story about a relationship between an obese 8 year old girl called Jodie with behavioural and mental problems.

*Jodie had been fostered by many different carers but her behaviour was too difficult to handle, when she first arrived and Cathy's house she soiled herself and smeared faeces all over her face and walls.

*When she met new people she would kick them and be physically and verbally abusive towards them.

*Jodie was often found performing sexual acts on herself and her dolls and when questioned about this she explained that she was loving her dollies like her father had loved her.

*Jodie was also known to self harm, and would smear blood all over her body. When Cathy asked her if she could take a photo of Jodie, Jodie took her clothes off as this is what her father had asked her to do.

*Jodie was sexually abused by her mother, father, aunt's and uncle's.

*Jodie was told by her father that if she ever told anyone, the monster under her bed would bite off her arms and legs.

*Jodie set the family dog on fire in an attempt to set her house on fire, and upset her dad.

*As Jodie grew older, she learnt to trust Cathy and started to disclose information about how she had been treated by her family.

The Grim Sleeper

The first known victim was Deborah Jackson. She was 29 when she was found with three bullet wounds to the chest. She was a cocktail waitress, who had left her friend's apartment and was walking to the bus stop when she disappeared.
Just over a year later, another victim, Henrietta Wright was found a few miles away from Jackson's body. Like the other women, she had been sexually assaulted and shot.


On August 14 1986, another body was found. Thomas Steele 36 who had once worked as a pimp, and who was in town from San Diego visiting family was found in the middle of an intersection.


Bernita Sparks, 23, had run out to grab some cigarettes on April 15 1987 and never came home. She was found in the dumpster on Western Avenue the next day.
Alicia "Monique" Alexander18 had been making a run to the store for her dad, she never returned and was found a few days later, she had been sexually abused and shot.


Mary Lowe 26 had gone out on Halloween night in 1987 to the Love Trap Bar. Walking to or from her destination at some point the killer picked her up. She was found the next day in an alleyway on Western Avenue.


One victim seemed to signal that the killer was trying to communicate something to or by his victims: Lachrica Jefferson's body was left in an alley, her faced covered with a napkin. The word "AIDS" was scrawled ominously on the napkin.
Enietra Margette was the only survivor. Lonnie pulled up beside her when she was on the way to the shops and then going onto a party. He eventually persuaded her to get into the car and he drove her to the party where she invited him in. His mood changed and he shot her. She blacked out and when she woke up Lonnie was on top of her raping her whilst talking photographs.

Research continued

The Italian Josef Fritzl
*Michele Mongelli has been dubbed the Italian Josef Fritzl
*He locked his daughter up for 25 years and raped her and his son repeatedly.
*The 64 year old groomed his son to sexually abuse his sister.
*Detectives have said that he started raping his daughter when she was 9 years old. She managed to escape once and told the police about her sexual abuse however her father managed to convince the police that she was mentally ill.
*His daughter was forced to live in a darkened room with no electricity and was only allowed out with her father.
*Michele's brother had also sexually abuse his own children aged 6, 8, 12 and 20.
The case was uncovered after police secretly planted listening devices in the household and recorded the 9 year old daughter saying: "Dad, get your hands off me. You are a bastard, stop it."

Crime Sub-Genre

• A crime film, is a film that involves various aspects of crime and the criminal justice system.
• Films focused on the Mafia are a typical example of crime films.

• Films dealing with crime and its detection are often based on plays rather than novels. Agatha Christie's stage play Witness for the Prosecution was adapted for the big screen by director Billy Wilder in 1957. The film is a classic example of a "courtroom drama". In a courtroom drama, a charge is brought against one of the main characters, who says that they are innocent.
• Often, the private investigator storms into the courtroom at the very last minute in order to bring a new and crucial piece of information to the attention of the court.
• When a courtroom drama is filmed, the traditional device employed by screenwriters and directors is the frequent use of flashbacks, in which the crime and everything that led up to it is narrated and reconstructed from different angles.

Sub genres of the crime genre:
Crime thrillers - thrillers in which crime plays a large part. Examples include Seven, Witness, Memories of Murder and Running Scared.


Crime horrors - horror films in which crime plays a major part. Examples include the Saw films, From Hell and the Hannibal Lecter film series


Crime comedies - crime and comedy films. Examples include Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, In Bruges and Mafia!.


Film noir - a genre popular in the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s, often fall into the crime genre. Neo-noir films refer to more modern films influenced by film noir such as Sin City.


Mob films - are films which focus on characters who are involved seriously with the Mafia or Gangs. Examples, Goodfellas, The Godfather, Public Enemies, Once Upon a Time in America, Road to Perdition, White Heat, Bugsy, Carlito's Way, Pulp Fiction, Manhattan Melodrama, Angels with Dirty Faces, Little Caesar (film), Mean Streets, Get Carter, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Donnie Brasco, Gangs Of New York, The Untouchables, The Public Enemy, Layer Cake, Casino, Miller's Crossing, Scarface (1932), Reservoir Dogs, Bonnie & Clyde, Pusher trilogy and The Departed.


Yakuza films - a Japanese variant of the mob film, dating back to the 1940s Examples,
 Akira Kurosawa's Drunken Angel (1948), Battles Without Honor and Humanity and Ichi the Killer.


Martial arts action - martial arts action films in which the protagonist is usually a policeman trained in martial arts fighting. Criminals often engage in acrobatics and stunts to increase the action. Examples include Jackie chan's Police Story, SPL: Sha Po Lang, Flash Point, Kiss of the Dragon, and Rush Hour Series.


Heroic bloodshed - a sub genre of Hong Kong action cinema revolving around stylized action sequences and dramatic themes such as brotherhood, duty, honour, redemption and violence, often featuring triads. Examples include The Killer and Hard Boiled.


Heist films - these films deal with a group of criminals attempting to perform a theft or robbery. Examples include The Killing, Oceans 11, Dog Day Afternoon, The Sting and Reservoir Dogs.


Police procedural films - often with a surprise twist ending. Examples: He Walked By Night (1948), Stray Dog (1949), In the Heat of the Night (1967), Madigan (1968), Klute and The French Connection (both from 1971), The Usual Suspects (1995), Lone Star (1996), and Blood Work (2002).


Detective films - professional private detectives hired to solve a crime, usually a murder or missing persons case. Examples: The Maltese Falcon (1941), The Big Sleep (1946), Kiss Me Deadly (1955), Harper (1966), The Long Goodbye (1973), Chinatown (1974), Twilight (1998).


Legal dramas - are not usually concerned with the actual crime so much as the trial in the aftermath.  Examples include Awaara, 12 Angry Men and A Time To Kill.


Prison films - are films that follow the life of the protagonists in prison. Examples include The Shawshank Redemption and Escape from Alcatraz.


Hood films - are films dealing with African-American urban issues and culture. Examples include Menace II Society and Boyz n the Hood.


Poliziotteschi - a type of crime film made in Italy in the 1960s and 1970s. Typically these films are very gritty and violent. Examples include Violent Naples and High Crime.


Mumbai underworld films - an Indian variant of gangster films, revolving around crime in the slums of Mumbai, often involving the Indian mafia.
Snuff films - a sub genre that depicts the actual death or murder of a person or people, without the aid of special effects.


True crime - films are based on real events, though details may be altered for the purposes of storytelling. Examples include Bonnie & Clyde, Dog Day Afternoon, Goodfellas, Public Enemies.


The sub genres that we are mostly interested in are: Crime gangster, Crime thriller, Crime horror and True crime.