Setting Inspiration - American Psycho

Setting Inspiration - American Psycho

Another setting from a film comes from the horror American Psycho. Although this is a horror film, a setting used still creates the same effect that we would like to create with the Employer. The film itself is based on the concept of having someone who is on the outside quite ordinary, even being rich and in a high state of power, is still desperately seeking pleasure from killing others. This is similar to the concept of the Employer in our film. After he is beaten and put into a coma by Kyle, he makes himself powerful and rich, enough to get over his beating. He seems and looks like a perfectly ordinary person but can only fulfill himself by having revenge on Kyle and killing him.

Because of the similarities, I decided we should consider the office environment in which the main character Patrick Bateman lives his seemingly ordinary life as a Wall Street banker.

As shown in the image to the left, he has a seemingly normal office. We can see that he is in a state of power because the office is quite large. Other aspects that show his power and the large windows and the sofa located to the side of his desk.
This implies that even though this is a place of work, he has that much power that he can almost mix business and pleasure.

His desk is also quite clear, which is something that we definitely need to include in our confrontation scene. The desk isn't too cluttered to show that he is under pressure with any deadlines and isn't swamped with work. There are enough objects on his desk that indicates power such as the small pile of papers and the telephone on his desk.
Although there are a lack of objects that show a personal connection to the work place, this could be an element that we could manipulate in regards to our plot. It shows that although they are powerful, they have deeper concerns elsewhere much like our antagonist's revenge plot and Patrick Bateman's addiction to murdering women.
Even though when studied on a deeper level the environment shows emotion detachment, there are things that wouldn't lead you to think there was anything out of the ordinary about Bateman's character. These are things such as the pictures on the wall to create a calming environment which could subtly say something positive about Bateman's personality. There are also a lack of personal belongings but not a lack of objects in general such as the window cill having various objects on them. This could be an indicator of Bateman's personality and not show him as completely bland or emotionless, like you would expect of a psychopath like he really is.
There are also a lot of ordinary colours used like navy, light blue, white and black. These aren't colours that are out of the ordinary which could indicate him being so ordinary, but then his red tie does stand out as an indictor to death or even warning.

The subtle elements are the things that make this setting so effective and influential to the plot. The things I have seen during this research are things that I believe we need to consider when finding and creating the right setting to represent our final scene.