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I saw Hilditch as a helpless but nonetheless solid predator.  I wanted to make his movement long and snake-like that would prolong action and build tension: the driveway, the distance of his chair in the Front room to the sofa where he watches Felicia sleep, (see storyboard for this scene), walking up the stairs to the storage stocked with identical 60s food processors displaying his Mother's image, secret recordings of his female victims and his mother's memorabilia, when he walks up to Felicia's room with the drugged drink and biscuits. The space would also allow for fluid movement of the camera, perhaps used to follow Felicia in the house, when Hilditch goes to work and fantasises over what she might be doing in his house alone, it could also follow her panic and turmoil as she tries to escape, fighting off the effects of the drug.

 

Felicia stays in two rooms - the Front room where she spends her first night and Hilditch watches her sleep, and the room that Hilditch sets up as "Her room" where she rests after her abortion, and where Hilditch drugs her just before explaining to her how he will keep her.

 

I've made these rooms long with entrances at one end, and areas where Felicia is kept, or other key actions happen (for example in the storage room where Hilditch's keeps the tapes, or the sink where Felicia can wash in the bathroom) at the other end. I wanted to make the key areas in these rooms hidden or buried deep within and I wanted Felicia to look lost and trapped within them.

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Hilditch spent his evenings preparing meals with his mother (by watching VHS videos of her cooking show and simultaneously copying her actions) and eating them alone at a table set for a grand meal, whilst watching his mother do the same. In areas where these actions happen, I placed the characters crosswise in the room, close but with a long physical barrier in the form of the Kitchen Counter and the long dinning table in between them. The length of the room allowed for a long stretch of the barrier to emphasise just how much Joseph Hildich could never get close to his mother. I also gave more room to his mother, having the barrier off-centre trapping Joseph in the smaller half, keeping the dominance order.

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The entrance is the only area where Felicia only once seems to assert herself, when she confronts Hilditch about him having the phone number for her boyfriend as he comes back from work. Felicia confronts Hilditch as he arrives, the entrance has a "funnel" shape: the two cupboards squeeze the entrance area by the door which then opens into the grand house, this space works both ways, at the beginning where it allows Felicia to cut off his entrance to his home and momentarilyt Dominate him, and at the end of the film when the drugged Felicia tries to leave the house, but gets stuck at the locked doors, as Hilditch approaches her. Hilditch arrives from the garden whilst Felicia comes down the stairs - these two areas face each other at the furthest ends of the house on the ground floor. to raise tension.