Oren Peli is Thomas Hall's favorite director known for the Paranormal Activity franchise. Peli shoots his films in a documentary style on low budgets without long shooting schedules or scripts. Actors improvise based on outlines to create natural dialogue. This technique aims to focus on believability over action and increases plausibility by keeping the camera stationary on a tripod, making the audience feel more invested. Thomas was influenced by Paranormal Activity's realism from its small budget that avoided big CGI and gave it a real feel, along with treating the camera like another person there to make the viewer feel like they are in the movie itself.

1. Stylistic influences
By Thomas Hall
S

2. Directors
S Oren Peli is probably one of my favorite films directors, he worked on the block-
buster “Paranormal activity” in which he was the director, writer, cinematographer
and editor. After its wild success worldwide, he went to work on the sequels PA2, in
which he was the producer and writer and PA3 in which he was the producer. He
has quite a unique way of working on his movies, he often films them in a “low-
budget” kind of way, often not taking long to shoot his films, here is a short
description of how he works when working on movies;
S “Attempting to focus on believability rather than action and gore, Peli chose to shoot
the picture with a home video camera. In deciding on a more raw and stationary
format (the camera was almost always sitting on a tripod or something else) and
eliminating the need for a camera crew, a "higher degree of plausibility" was created
for the audience as they were "more invested in the story and the characters”. Peli
says that the dialogue was "natural" because there was no real script. Instead, the
actors were given outlines of the story and situations to improvise, a technique
known as “Retroscripting” which was used in “The Blair Witch Project”.

3. Documentary-Style movies
S “A documentary, is a type of film or television show in which fictitious events are
presented in documentary format.” I’m quite interested in the documentary-style genre of
movies (Movies such as “Cloverfield” ) They have a very unique of getting across the
feelings and emotions of characters and scenes. They a give an interesting feeling of the
viewers being in the scene with the characters and being part of the movie, which, if used
in conjunction with the horror movie genre, then it can increase the horror to a horror
film, so to speak.

4. The Paranormal activity movie
series
S My choice in movie style was heavily influenced by the paranormal activity movies, they
have sometimes been called some of the scariest films in 10 years, which I think is a major
accomplishment. Considering that the movies themselves are only small budget and yet
they have managed to scare millions of people around the world, in their homes and in
cinemas.
S I think some of the success of the movies is tied to the “Realism” involved in shooting the
movies, there was not big budget to work with, so the temptation to lash out on large CGI
monsters and special effects wasn’t there giving it more real feel to it than most horror/
Sci-fi films have these days.
S The use of the camera in these movies is also quite well done, they treat the camera like it
is another person there, and when the movies is viewed it gives the feeling of being in the
movie itself, with the character and in the setting with them.