Genre Research: American Psycho

The movie I am writing about is American Psycho by Mary Harron and Morgan J. Freeman. This one of the many movies that i actually watched growing up. This movie is about Patrick Batesman who is a wealthy, well educated 27 year old. The thing about him is that he lives a second life as a gruesome serial killer by night. He hides his psychopathic ego from his co-workers, friends and family. Soon it begins to unravel as the next victim become Paul Allen. Soon Patrick Bateman is going to hot rock bottom with his OCD thoughts of murder. 

The costume was Patrick's usual suite and tie that never seems to change as much. 

In the living room the lighting is soft but bright. In the bathroom, the lighting is dark and weary when he enters.The makeup being used was the fake blood on Allen and cuts.

The prop was the knife that Patrick Batesman used to kill Allen at the time. This scene is set in Patrick Bateman’s apartment in two places, the living room mainly and the bathroom. In the living room we see that everything is most black and white, the walls and the pictures on it with a sense of OCD as everything is set perfectly. Nothing out of order. On the living room we see that all the furniture is covered with white blankets. In the place where Allen is seated the floor is covered with newspapers as his grave. 

The choices made in this scene are in order to give an insight to the world and mind of both Paul Allen and Patrick Bateman, but especially to Bateman’s distort vision. When deep focus is used is in order to show the background or set which was already explained, this set with straight lines describes Bateman’s personality and also when the both of the characters of the scene are needed to be involved in the actual action, and when shallow focus is used is in order to show that Bateman and his mind are blurry and one doesn’t know what to expect to come out from that fog, one can see him sharply, but not his mind. The extreme close ups are used obviously to emphasize on specific details that the directors wants us to see like Bateman’s face and expressions opening a window to his mind or Allen’s body to shows that he is for sure dead, or the pills case shot to let the audience know that Patrick is under a pill treatment. The other shot are used depending on the importance of Allen to appear on the shot or not, because when Bateman is making the most insightful pint of his speech is not necessary to see Allen. An finally the angles used are very obvious, mostly high angles for Paul to make the audience feel that he is weak and fragile and low angles for Bateman to show his authority and power.