Film Director Case Study

I decided to do a case study on the director of one of my favourite films: Insidious directed by James Wann.



He has also worked on several other of my favourite and well known horrors such as: Saw, The Conjuring and even action films such as Furious 7.

Saw was famous for its use of gore and special effects, however in Insidious, he wanted to get away from that and sought total creative control so Wann produced the movie independently. Wann stated he wanted to create a film that used restraint and silence to create horror film. He got the idea off other films such as the Sixth Sense and The Others. Im a big fan of this as well, as I believe they make horror films far more enjoyable than the expected jump scare. In my opinion these type of films also have more of a story to them than films such as paranormal activity. Wann was also the creator of Billy The Puppet our of Saw. This has also inspired me to create and use props of my own.

The idea of having a real life story for my short film also sparks an idea for creating a type of documentary. Also, Wann has been basing his work on real life stories recently; this has also inspired me to base my film on local real life stories and furthers ideas for a documentary. There are lots of local legends around the Derbyshire which I could use as a concept or base the entire short film on.


One of Wanns biggest regrets is his film Dead Silence. He was forced to create and direct this film as a back up before Saw was released in case Saw was a flop. Wann said that he was out of ideas and was so stressed that it caused him to start smoking. Whilst I think that making a back up film is a good idea, Id much rather just film extra scenes then try mixing and matching to see what works best.