Saw’s creator reveals how he comes up with ideas for his sadistic traps
The creator of Saw has revealed the way in which he would come up with ideas for the sadistic traps he featured in the film.
Leigh Whannell wrote and created the first Saw film alongside James Wan, with Whannell also starring in the movie as Adam, one of the two men kidnapped.
Whannell went on to write the first three Saw films, in the process creating some of the iconic traps the series is known for.
He's gone on to create another iconic horror franchise in Insidious, as well as more recently writing and directing The Invisible Man and now the soon-to-be-released Wolf Man.
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LADbible spoke exclusively to Leigh, who opened up about how he would come up with ideas for the traps in Saw.
He said: "It’s a very mysterious process ideas, because I wish there was a button you could push to have ideas. It hits you at random times you could be going for a walk or whatever you're doing.
"Suddenly there's an image that pops into your head and, and it's very exciting if something pops into your head that you can't stop thinking about. For me as a filmmaker, I write my own films, and so I'm not somebody that's just reading scripts and choosing the best.
"I have to come up with an idea that I know is going to keep me interested for the next year or two of my life. So it's a very difficult process. I can write down 10 ideas in my notepad but if I'm being honest with myself, I might not be enthusiastic about any of them."
Specifically regarding Saw traps, he went on to say: "I remember the even the the bear trap in the first Saw movie that is attached to Shawnee Smith's face (who plays Amanda).
"That was an idea, I remember I was just pacing around in my house, and just this image popped into my head of this person with this thing in their teeth, in their mouth.
"I don't know where that came from, and now it belongs to the world, so it's a really serious thing to be like 'Wow, this thing now is part of pop culture'."
For anyone worried about the idea that those images just seem to pop into Leigh’s head at random, he addressed this in tongue-in-cheek fashion.
He joked: "I’m really thankful, I have the ability, through filmmaking to write these things down and then … rather than, like, kidnapping people and killing them, I'll put it down on paper.
"Also you're utilizing technicians like that. You're utilizing amazing production designers and prop makers to build this stuff for you. So, they definitely deserve half the credit for anything that I've come up with that is out there in the public consciousness."
The director also revealed that, while he didn’t have any ideas which were cut from Saw for being too gory, he actually had an idea from Insidious that made its way into Wolf Man after being deemed too far.
He said: "God, you know, if anything, the producers of the Saw films were the ones saying more, more, more.
“I remember there was a sequence in the first Insidious film that I wrote that was quite gory, and it would have pushed that film into an R rating, and that film just didn't quite feel like that.
“It's funny. I did get it into Wolf Man. I haven't told anyone this, but in the first Insidious film, I had written a scene where the little boy breaks his own jaw and reaches up and grabs it.”
This scene made it into Wolf Man in the werewolf transformation scene where he breaks his own jaw to fully complete the transformation.
Wolf Man is out in cinemas this Friday.
Topics: Film, Horror, TV and Film
Michael Slavin