Paranormal Activity Case Study

Paranormal activity was a very successful horror film produced by Oren Peli in 2007. As mentioned in my older post Blumhouse productions helped create the film with its low budget of $15,000. Although it was a very low budget it managed to gross $194,917,000.

Paranormal activity was one of the first films to use a first person filming technique for the majority of the movie where the characters would be filming it from their perspective. This had later been attempted by a horror film called clover field but wasn't as successful as it wasn't as original as the Paranormal Activity franchise. This is one of the reasons why we opted to do different camera angles in our main brief as we didn't want to be seen as repetitive of the paranormal activity success. 

The director Oren Peli used a technique called retro scripting; which is where he gives the characters a plot or main idea for the film and allows them to improvise with the situation. By doing this it creates a far more realistic plot and encourages the actors to be original as they would act as they would in that situation rather than what the script is telling them to say or do. 

The film itself gained huge attention from the big names in film making; one of which was Steven Spielberg who saw the movie himself and cut a deal with Jason Blum (owner of Blumhouse productions) to split the distribution of the film so he himself could take a share of the profits.

Above is an image of Jason Blum (right) and Oren Peli (Left) as well as the star actor from paranormal activity Katie Featherstone (middle)