What interests you about intertexuality in film

Intertextuality is visual referencing between films. It is very common for a film to 'borrow' ideas from another film in order to enhance their film. Not only will they 'borrow' the ideas, they may also use the same type on mise en scene, camera shots, sound types and editing skills.

Common types of intertextuality within different genres are:

• horror - haunted house, dark colors, blood and gore. e.g saw - in saw, the majority of the film, it is just blood and gore to show the amount of deaths and fights and struggles that happened. This is also done to try and scare the audience. The people get locked in a house and the only way out is to play the 'game' that is made by the jigsaw killer. He has a very twisted mind and uses that to his advantage. A scene in saw that i found to have intertextuality is when one of the guys dies in the shower. During this scene you can see that the shower is white adn that the blood is going down the drain. This idea was 'borrowed' from 'Psycho' from the famous shower scene
• thriller - long pauses, loud/scary/creepy music, dark colors. e.g the stepfather - there is a long pause when david kills jay to really build up suspense and tension and there are dark colors when ever a death has just happened. The loud, scary and creepy music happens all throughout the film and is there to emphasise what has just happened. i.e at the beginning of the film when david is walking into the room with the dead bodies the change in pace from slow and gentle changes to slighty faster and not as soft to show what we are about to see is something bad. - these kind of things are used in other films aswell, the pauses to build up tension and the dark colors to show that it is not a happy scene. Also, the creepy music is used to try and get the audience scared into what will happen next.