Influences

The idea of the lady and the cake origionally came from the poem “infedelities” by Moyra Donaldson, we found this on inspiration week and our idea spiralled off from there. Most of the poem dosent relate to our story at all, but we used the idea of finding loose change. Our origional idea was of a woman that woke up and ran to the shop with the loose change she found to buy cakes and her husband catches her but we changed this when we decided upon the 1950’s theme, to having a typical housewife that stuffs her face, that then leads to her husband being dissapointed.
When thinking about having the short film as if it was set in the 1950’s came from trying to make the wife seem like a typical housewife, doing the cooking and cleanign while her husband is at work. We knew we wouldnt be able to use a 1950’s enviroment, but we could edit it as if it was made in the 1950’s. Instead of using a black and white effect on the film, we decided coulor would be more effective as when we think of the 50’s we think of very brightly coloured things such as crockery and clothing. We dressed our actress in a bright flowery dress to also go with this theme, also with a apron so it exaggerated the fact that she was a housewife.
Charlie chaplin was the main idea behind the silent film, we decided our film would ahve a much bigger effect if it was sped up and in silence as the music would do all of the “talking”. By speeding up the film we were able to make all the actions a lot more exciting and exaggerated.
From all the short films we studied before deciding on our own, tour eiffel by Sylvain Chomet from the Paris je t’aime collection influenced us the most just in the way that it puts a smile on your face. This is what we wanted from our short film as apposed to lots of hidden meanings, we just aimed for a happy lighthearted narrative. This film is a silent film and uses the clash of modern and old fashioned which is the stlye we went for in the lady and the cake.
Nigella Lawson also influenced our piece, the idea of the "domestic goddess" was very important to our film, the idea of being a good cook and cleaner contribute to being a perfect housewife.