Hernandez_The Shining

Film Research

This is a still of Jack, one of the main characters of the movie, staring blankly forward. It's a running theme in the film that upon arriving at the Overlook, Jack starts going insane, and spends long periods of time staring at walls or windows with an unsettling expression.

This is one of the points that really sets this as a horror, and shows how nicely the colors blend. In this shot, blood spills from the corner of an elevator, and it just drenches everything around. It hits the walls, the furniture, and absolutely covers the floor.

In this image we see Danny, Jack's son and a user of latent psychic abilities referred to as "Shining". In this instance, Danny recoils as he encounters the dead twins telling him to play with them, while viewing flashes between both the versions of them alive and dead.

In this image we see Wendy, Jack's wife, who is bar far the most normal individual in the film. Throughout the movie she takes abuse from Jack and freaks out about the weird things going on in the hotel. Of course, this does nothing but aggravate Jack, who is largely under the influence of the hotel spirits by then.

Here we see the halls of the hotel just before Jack sees ghosts having a party in the hotel. It's at this point we become sure Jack is under some sort of influence, since the job informed him that there'd be no one at the Overlook hotel but him and his family. The scene is covered in color, but largely taken over by red and white, as per the furniture and walls.

This shows Jack's first encounter with the previous caretaker of the Overlook hotel, who Jack was told went insane and tragically killed his wife and children before killing himself.

This shows Danny riding down the hall of the hotel, prior to his first encounter with the twins. The background features the standard white walls and lit corridor, with a red and orange rug over the floors.

This shows Danny's encounter with the twins as he is riding down the halls of the hotel. This changes out the fully white walls with white and blue, and retains red on the floor and on Danny's clothing.

Here we see Jack again, this time fully insane and attempting to kill his family by instruction of the previous caretaker's ghost. It features Jack wearing a red sweater and hacking at a white door, which is interesting. I mean it shows that still they go to great lengths to get some red in there.

Here we see a man with his head split open, appearing to Wendy as a living-dead man. This is a nice use of red and white since you can easily see the line going down his face where his head is sewn back together.

Essay

“The Shining” is a strong suspenseful horror following Jack Torrence and his family, consisting of his wife and son. The narrative plays out as such: Jack receives a job at the Overlook hotel, an isolated hotspot, where he has to tend to the hotel as caretaker for five months over the winter hiatus that the hotel undergoes. It follows standard suspense protocol, it’ll give you a few hints in the beginning for what to look out for (i.e., the mention of the murders at Overlook during Jack’s interview), but I feel like it handled the suspense genre very well because it didn’t rely on popups or jump scares. It was entirely based on pacing and a slow build up to an explosive finale.

The sequence of events in the movie, start to finish, is as follows, more or less. * BE WARNED, THIS LIST CONTAINS SPOILERS *

• Jack has an interview and gets a job at Overlook as caretaker, signing up he and his family for a 5 month stay.
• He begins to experience a few strange occurrences, such as seeing his family in the model of the hedge maze, and staring at empty spaces inexplicably.
• Eventually Jack has a fight with his wife, Wendy, and meets an apparition in the form of a bartender. By this time, Jack is very much out of touch with reality, and doesn’t question that there shouldn’t be other people at the Overlook hotel.
• Jack quickly comes to see more and more people at the Overlook, including the previous caretaker, who was earlier said to have killed his family while watching over the hotel. This particular apparition tells Jack to deal with his family for their misbehavior, which we can assume means to give ‘em the axe.
• Jack proceeds to attempt to kill Wendy and his son, Danny. They evade his attacks but, in the process, he kills the Overlook’s cook who comes by to check on them. During the hunt for his family, Wendy starts to see strange things happening, showing that the hotel’s facade is coming undone.
• Wendy and Danny escape Jack, who freezes to death in the hedge maze. It’s then that he becomes one with the hotel, becoming immortalized in the photo that shows him as caretaker, many years in the past.

Overall, the movie’s tone is very foreboding and suspenseful. Jack Nicholson’s performance as Jack Torrence steals the show, since he delivers a strong sense of mental collapse and instability throughout the film. The eerie soundtrack was good at setting this mood that something was always about to go wrong, even if bigger developments were going to show up farther down the line. In that respect, it works very well as a suspense film, since it exaggerated even the smaller scares, making them much more effective.

Words to Idea + Thesis Statement

“The Shining”
Suspenseful, Stuck, Isolated, Insanity, Paranormal

Thesis statement: This film is a suspenseful horror about a family of three stuck in an isolated hotel as the father slowly falls to insanity by paranormal activity.

Visual Research (Inspiration Board/Collection)

A collage of images used to research the film, The Shining.

Exploration/Formulation (Style Board/Examples/Studies)

Second concept of the first sequence. I wanted to have an opening that used the typewriter Jack uses as a form to express credits. 1/2

At first it opened with a full typewriter vector image, but later was changed to a flat surface with buttons to focus less heavily on images. 2/2

First concept of the second sequence. The maze from the movie seemed like it could be used as a solid way to keep text moving naturally with the background. 1/2

The way it moves from left to right through the maze would allow for text to appear in the walkway, but I do have concerns that having it go from horizontal to vertical might be jarring, since text would fly through the hedges. 2/2

First concept of the third sequence. I wanted to use the hallways to show us Danny's POV, and have the viewer ride through the hallways with text appearing above the doorways. 1/2

My main issue here was that it didn't fit the style of the rest of the credits, since it used a 3D perspective in contrast to the 2D style already being used. 2/2

Course

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