Director Research - James Wan

James Wan (born 27 February 1977) is a Malaysian-born Australian producer, screenwriter, and film director of Chinese heritage

LIFE AND CAREER

Wan was born in Kuching, Sarawak, Malaysia of Chinese ethnicity. He was raised in Perth, Western Australia from a young age. It was his dream to make films from the age of 11. He went on to study at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, completing his Bachelor of Arts degree.

Before becoming popular in the film industry, he made his first feature film Stygian with Shannon Young, which won 'Best Guerrilla Film' at the Melbourne Underground Film Festival in 2000.

He met future business partner Leigh Whannell while studying at RMIT. He would later go on to co-create and direct the 2004 horror film (and franchise), Saw with the help of Whannell, who wrote the script. Wan and Whannell made a short version of the film to showcase the script. Whannell played the role of David in the short film, and the leading role of Adam in the feature film. The three producers who saw the short film and read Whannell's screenplay agreed to produce the film before Wan and Whannell even landed in Los Angeles. Wan and Whannell decided to forgo upfront salary in return for gross profits. Shot for a low US$1.2 million budget, the producers had a straight-to-DVD release in mind. However, Saw was to become a surprise record breaking theatrical horror franchise, earning Wan and Whannell much more than they had originally predicted.

Since creating the franchise, Wan and Whannell have served as executive producers to the sequels Saw II, Saw III, Saw IV, Saw V, Saw VI and Saw 3D. He has been busy creating other works with his film school partner Leigh Whannell. In 2007, he went on to broaden his filmography with another horror movie, Dead Silence, and the action drama Death Sentence. Having worked on his last three films back to back, Wan told CraveOnline that he is ready for "a bit of time off just to chill... but at the same time I'm using this opportunity to write again. “Wan also directed a trailer for the survival horror video game Dead Space.

It has been announced that James' next film will be an adaptation of the graphic novel Fall Night, about a criminal sent to a Texas prison run by vampires. According to IMDB the film is titled 'Nightfall' instead of 'Fall Night', it is unclear which is the official title. As well as this, Leigh Whannell has stated that he and Wan are writing another project together called X Ray and described it as a film noir horror film. It has been reported that James Wan's next project will be Specter a supernatural thriller and will star Nicole Kidman.

WHY I CHOSE JAMES WAN

Wan's current film, Insidious, premiered at the 2010 Toronto Film Festival and began its theatrical release in April 2011.He is widely known for directing the horror film Saw and creating Billy the puppet. Since my short film “Ragged Twice” is a film belonging to the teen/suspense genre with a dash of comedic structure in nature, it is unconventional for me to choose James Wan as a director to research since he is popular for making worldwide acclaimed films from the “Slasher” genre. There are various reasons which encouraged me to accept the fact that I had selected certain traits of James Wan’s style of direction in “Ragged Twice”. Firstly , James Wan has been known to create enigma/suspense in his movies which makes the audience wary. Since I had the same purpose in mind for the audience of Ragged Twice, I watched and analyzed his work in detail and came to the conclusion that I should use some of his techniques in my short film. He is known to create suspense by setting the misc-en-scene in perfect order. “Perfect order” refers to the placement of even the minute details in a particular shot, for example, grass. In the first film he directed (before he shot to fame), Saw (2004), he has used this technique various times. A particular scene shows one of the main characters walking through an empty street(he is about to be abducted) , where suddenly time-slows down and the ambient sound effects focus on the conversation of the abductor, almost as if the character can hear what the abductor is thinking in his mind. I for one loved this technique and decided to use this in one of the shots in Ragged Twice. As our main character, Kamran steps into college, a couple of apparent “bullies” catch his eye. He is shown nervous, his heart pounding, and then the sound effects will be directed towards the conversation of the bullies “Hey, there’s another one!” for example, one might say. The suspense will be thrown onto the audience’s faces, since Ragged Twice is a short film and there will not be enough time to fully utilize stereotypical representations of objects in our film.

Another technique which James Wan has used commonly in his movies is that he makes the character’s emotions completely clear to the audience via the usage of frequent close-ups and extreme close up shots. I have to make it clear to the audience as to how Kamran is feeling at different stages of the short film. Throughout the Saw series, James Wan has used this lapse in which all other ambient sounds in the backgrounds are elevated, the camera focuses on the characters and only the characters.  In Ragged Twice, when the seniors are forcing Kamran to dance, the camera must switch back and forth between Kamran’s emotions and the bullies; this has been done in Saw 2(2005). Saw 2 basically revolves around the story of seven people, abducted and kept in a trap house to survive. One by one, the characters make certain mistakes, lose concentration and die. The sequence of them includes mid/close/extreme close up shots of other characters to show how they are reacting to the sequence. In Ragged Twice when the bullies force Kamran to dance, this technique will be depicted exactly, starting with a close up of Kamran, then one of the bullies laughing, then Kamran again and so on. This will show tension building up as Kamran will at first refuse to dance. This sequence is aimed at capturing the most of the audience’s attention, which is probably why James Wan’s movies are a big success.

It is no secret that the Saw franchise and “Ragged Twice” are far apart in terms of content, genre and plot, but what they resemble are the basic techniques which will be used to create enigma amongst the audience so their attention span is not broken in the middle of the short film.

ANALYSIS

Analyzing James Wan’s style of directing movies, I was able to pick up a few points why most of his movies are critically acclaimed and successful. There are certain elements that support James Wan. Firstly , his cast , the violence which is mostly considered as gore but still artistic in for example: Saw. James Wan has indeed been very successful in providing captivating thrillers with strong storylines(for example : Saw/Insidious series) and terrifying violence which has resulted in growth and popularity of the slasher film genre. He has been known to write captivating storylines and add his dash of imagination into his films. The “Saw” storyline is a classic example of a strong storyline and captivating horror which ties audience till the last part.

James Wan is a big David Lynch fan and considers him as a big influence for his groundbreaking movie , Saw. Quoting: “I can't point anything specific out, but I'm a big David Lynch fan, he's a big influence on Saw, and another director I truly admire as well, is an Italian, Dario Argento? These two guys have a big impact on us, Deep Red, Lost Highway.”

James Wan’s films are usually targeted towards mature audiences. As in, audiences to which the slasher film genre appeals to. But still, they have gained such success, this is impressive as the target audience to which James Wan is trying to appeal is limited.