Media Language

This presentation and the research in it was done by Lily and I’ve taken screenshots of the presentation to show how I could use her research.

Federico Fellini brought about Italian Neo-realism which is about stories of the poor and working class, I could do something similar with that are about “real people” which many people find to be scarier than film about ghost or monsters.

Mis en scene and camera have primary action and secondary action – which is the movement of the camera and where it chooses to go.

For editing I need to think about how I will edit my trailer and why I need to edit parts out

I could use a montage in my horror trailer as it helps show a lot of things in a short amount of time and as it can go by so quickly it leaves the audience disorientated and you can end it with a scare.

I don’t think I would use framed editing as you are reminded that you are watching a film through out it, I want the audience sucked in and reminding them it’s a film does not help. 

Sound is one of the most important parts of horror, it is creates tension and suspense so i will be using it to my advantage.

Narrative theory

This presentation and the research in it was done by me and I’ve taken screenshots of the presentation to show how I could use the research.

Levi says that the story is moved forward through narrative, so I need to think where and how will I set it? In the past or the future? During the day or the night? Inside a claustrophobic house or outside in a seemingly never ending forest?

Camera Theory

This presentation and the research in it was done by Dan and I’ve taken screenshots of the presentation to show how I could use his research.

This show that the different from your eye and turns people into objects and distances you from them.

This makes me I need to think if I am going to be an interventionist and involve the audience more with my trailer.

This point links to Laura Mulvey’s idea about the male gaze. She said that when you are watching something you suspend your beliefs  and see it through the eyes that the camera wants you to.

Mulvey noticed that the camera in general is very male and that we objectify females automatically.

This shows that I need to think about which narrative and view point will I show my trailer, from the view of the victim, or the killer?

This states that the camera is a self reflective tool and this how I could use my trailer to make the audience go away and really think about the trailer.

Representation theory

This presentation and the research in it was done by Dan and I’ve taken screenshots of the presentation to show how I could use his research.

Gramsci’s theory of hegemony shows that I need to think about if I want to ignore what is considered the norm and to challenge them for example by having a woman as the killer or to stick with these tropes as it is what the audience is expecting.

I could also look at topics and issues of the present day such as the government using technology to spy on you and to challenging people and scare them with a very real threat that they like to over look.

From this I realised that I need to think about what audience I am targeting regarding if it’s an international audience or not as there are differences that I need to make depending on the nationality of the audience.

Audience theory

This presentation and the research in it was done by Jen and I’ve taken screenshots of the presentation to show how I could use her research.

Due to how technology has advanced we have symbiosis meaning that a producer can use input from the audience themselves. I have used this already with my online questionnaires and asking people on skype.

Do to how often the horror tropes are used, things that scared people in the past no longer scare present day audiences. Audiences need more than a simple train hurtling towards the camera (which made people run out of the cinema) so a more intellectual story is needed to appeal to the modern day audience. I think a psychological horror would allow me to do this.

Practice film evaluation

It turned out better than I originally thought it would as it was my first time editing using iMovie HD so I had to learn about editing video and audio clips and using them both together.

The is a lot to improve on however as this was my first time editing so it isn’t as good as it should be, the audio wasn’t the most fitting thing I could have used as I used the default sounds on iMovie instead of going online and geting some audio files.

Next time I will make sure the script is more fleshed out, while I didn’t work on the script for this as it was more of a task to test my editing, as the script was very bare bones and we kind of made up shots as we went along.

I need to use the camera more effectively as the camera angles weren’t used to add anything to the horror of it.

Overall it could have been much better but wasn’t the worst thing in the world.

Horror Survey Answers plus asking people on skype

 

I also asked a friend on skype about what type of horror he thinks is the best.

Horror Survey

Horror film posters

The movie poster is mostly black but has reds and oranges that denotes danger and reminds you of blood.

The only thing you see of the victim is their feet and the fact they’re wearing a dress which would then make the audience assume they were female and the shadow hands surrounding them gives a sense of the unknown as you don’t know what the evil character even is.

The title of the film is “Don’t be afraid of the dark” but the “Don’t be” and “of the” parts are smaller so at a glance the first thing you see is “Be Afraid Dark” which is enough to make you take a second look at the poster.

This poster has a dark background with a white face in the middle making the head stand out and given it a very ghostly, supernatural feeling.

While it is a fairly normal picture there are two things wrong with it and these things are enough to creep you out. The fact that her face is peeling back just to reveal another face and the fact that her eyes are amber and stand out against her ghostly white face that gives you a feeling that something is most definitely going on.

As with the other two this poster is also dark with the only colour being red which again denotes danger and reminds you of blood.

The darkness makes it so the characters are unidentifiable but you can still tell who the killer is and that it’s a male and who the victim is and that it is a female.

The caption is in capitals so it is one of the things that draws your attention the most, that coupled with the fact it say “HE KNOWS WHERE YOU SLEEP” puts extra emphasis on the female victim being extremely vulnerable.

The title of the film is blood red and the word “Nightmare” is the largest part of the title so the audience know that this is going to be a horror film and they can begin guessing as to what it will contain.

This poster is different than the others but still looks like a horror film poster as the only image is a severed leg although that shows me it falls under the “torture porn” sub category of horror rather than a slasher or a psychological horror.

The only other thing on the poster is the title of the film and you can see the teeth of a saw at the very top, which links to the title of the film. The title itself is smaller than you would think it would be and makes the assumption that having a big severed leg take up most of the room draws in more attention than a big title.

These posters have a lot in common, like the use of black and red a lot, which shows that there are trends in horror that all horror films share and are even expected to have. Even the ones released in recent times show this with films that where released in the 70s and 80s.

Photos

I did research into horror movie posters (which will be a serperate post) and based on that research took photos that fit into the horror genre.