Director case studyM. Night Shyamalan

Manoj Night Shyamalan was born and raised in Puducherry, India. He was born in August, 1970. Shyamalan grew to become a well known director, producer, screenwriter and actor. He began his successful career in America whilst studying at the university of New York; he won his merit scholarship in 1988.

He had an early desire to be a filmmaker when he was given a Super-8 camera at a young age. However his father wanted him to follow in the family practice of medicine but his mother encouraged him to follow his passion. By the time he was seventeen he had made forty-five movies

Shyamalan is known as an Indian-American screenwriter, making movies with contemporary supernatural plots including The Sixth Sense (199) Unbreakable (2000) The Happening (2008) and many other box-office sell out supernatural horrors. Shyamalan is known for filming his movies in and around his birth place; Philadelphia. However, Shyamalans first film was a drama named Praying With Anger which he made whilst studying at NYU. Furthermore, Walt Disney Studios Touchscreen and Hollywood, co-produced most of Shyamalans films. Shyamlan’s all time idol has is Steven Spielberg.

Awards:• Empire Award for best director• Nebula award for best Script/Bradbury award (1999 with ‘The sixth sense’)• Golden Raspberry award for worst director (2006 with lady in the water and 2010 with (‘The

Last Airbender’)• Satellite award for best original screenplay (1999)

Shyamalans personal quotes:• “I play for a living...Success is tied to a feeling of magic, which I can protect”• “The idea is to always go for the thing that's risky. I want to be courageous and original. And

original means, you don't know what 'colour' movie you just saw”• “Movie making is not like other artforms, like painting, or writing a novel, because that can be

disgested or interpreted... It takes two years to make each one of these, and it's always judged on money”

• “All of my movies have made money, and that's important for me - it's my job to make money for the studio...”

• “When you say fear of the unknown, that is the definition of fear; fear is the unknown, fear is what you do not know, and it's genetically within us so that we feel safe. We feel scared of the woods because we're not familiar with it, and that keeps you safe”

• “I have this whole picture of the film in my head and then I put it all down on paper and storyboard it; showing the movie shot by shot. I like to feel that I have thought of everything before the camera starts rolling but I think that's probably my asset and weakness as a film maker. I am giving my cast a target that I have in my mind and they are trying to hit it. It's positive because I know exactly what I want to get out of my actors and the scene. But the negative is that I might not catch the lightning in the bottle, I may not get that unexpected improvised brilliance.”

• I think I take what you might call a B-movie story, deal with B-movie subjects, and I treat it as if it's an A-movie in terms of my approach, my crew, my actors, my ethics and so on. I guess that's my trademark or one of them anyway!

• "It's human nature. Twenty-six people love the movie, and the 27th person hates it, and the only thing you can think about is the 27th person." (on critics)

• I am fully aware of the giant risk I'm taking. Being as eccentric as my mind will let me and then hearing people's responses. This requires an incredible amount of pain. Everyone around me, 98%, at some point doubted.

• If you're not betting on me, then nobody should get money. I've made profit a mathematical certainty. I'm the safest bet you got.

• Except for Pixar, I have made the four most successful original movies in a row of all time.

To find out the answers from M Night Shyamalan please watch his 10 question interview: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WY-kjcSgug&safe=active

M. Night Shyamalans influence on my project:

I feel that M Night Shyamalan inspired me to produce a Supernatural Horror film that emphasises the unknown, where unexpected happenings occur and cause terror. However, I want a plot that does not stray from reality.

M. Night Shyamalan openly explains how he storyboards his movies shot by shot. I also storyboarded my ideas when planning the trailer of my supernatural horror film, that I was going to produce. I believe that storyboarding my ideas aided me and encouraged my creative ideas to develop further with my own personal annotations and use of colour.

My favourite film directed by M. Night Shyamalan is ‘Unbreakable’. The reason being that the film is based around the character of David Dunn who learns something extraordinary about himself after a devastating accident. David has no recollection of the accident therefore how is he to know who to believe, about what really happened? The film strongly plays on the Supernatural sub-genre and leaves us as audience feeling inquisitive as to what will happen next as the storyline develops.

The trailer for ‘Unbreakable’ is very giving the audience a clear indication to what genre of film it is a from and a satisfying insight into the films unprecedented plot: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R_f1uCWKZQs