give Wan the reaction he was looking for. He said, "I'll never forget that day. I remember hanging up the phone and started just going over it in my head, and without any sort of long period of pondering, I opened my diary that I had at the time and wrote the word 'Saw'." Before instantaneously writing the word "Saw" in a blood-red, dripping font, the two had not come up with a title. "It was one of those moments that made me aware that some things just really are meant to be. Some things are just waiting there to be discovered", Whannell said. The character of Jigsaw did not come until months later, when Whannell was working at a job he was unhappy with and began having migraines. Convinced it was a brain tumor, he went to a neurologist to have an MRI; and, while sitting nervously in the waiting room, he thought: What if you were given the news that you had a tumor and you were going to die soon? How would you react to that? He imagined the character Jigsaw having been given one or two years to live and combined that with the idea of Jigsaw putting others in a literal version of the situation but only giving them a few minutes to choose their fate. Wan did not intend to make a "torture porn" film, and the script only had one short segment of torture. He said the film "played out like a mystery thriller". It was not until the sequels that the plot focused more on torture scenes. Funding and short film Whannell and Wan initially had $30,000 to spend on the film, but as the script developed it was clear that more funds would be needed. The script was optioned by a producer in Sydney for a year but the deal eventually fell through. After other failed attempts to get the script produced in Australia from 2001 to 2002, literary agent Ken Greenblat read the script and suggested they travel to Los Angeles, where their chances of finding an interested studio were greater. Wan and Whannell initially refused, due to lack of traveling funds but the pair's agent, Stacey Testro, convinced them to go. In order to help studios take interest in the script, Whannell provided A$5,000 (US$5,000) to make a seven-minute short film based on the script's jaw trap scene, which