Developing Character Names

Our film opening consists over two characters; a man and woman. These characters are essentially a young couple, living together. We have found in a few films that the character names are important and have underling connotations, and we wanted ours to do this, very much in a similar vein to our intentions with the film title. After some time discussing our ideas as a group, we have decided on our two central character's names.

Paul Bateson
Our central protagonist. This character's name came from combining three existing characters' names in films we have looked at as research. The use of the same name is a technique we have found in horror films, with the reptition of the name Loomis, originally beginning with Hitchcock's Psycho in 1960, before being used in John Carpenter's Halloween, and Wes Craven's Scream. So for our central protagonist we chose to combine character's from again Psycho, and also the more recent and controversial film American Psycho.

      The Paul comes from the iconic victim Paul Allen (Jared Leto) from American Psycho. This particularly killing is the most memorable from the film, and certainly our favourite. The classic line "Hey Paul..." will also be used as an intertextual reference in our film.
 Bateson came about by looking at the use of Bate in both films. The central antagonist in Psycho is of course Anthony Perkins playing the strange hotel manager Norman Bates. Similarly in American Psycho, the central character/killer is called Patrick Bateman. We intended to reference both characters by using Bate, which then clearly led us to "Bateson". Also after coming up with this name, we found that the phrase "Bats In The Belfry" apparently originates back to someone with the surname Bateson.
   Incidentally we found on googling Paul Bateson that the third link was two Serial Killer Paul Bateson, a man charged then released with the killings of many men. Coincidence?

Grace

We did not have a surname for Grace. Partly this was because of being unsatisified with the names we did think of, but also we simply liked the narrative enigma it creates. The name Grace though has clear religious connotations which add to the idea of her character's innocence and virtue. We also though particularly liked the way she is named after Hitchcock's main leading lady - Grace Kelly.