Location Shots

Location: Parish Church of Saint Mary and Saint John Graveyard

 

The setting for our film is a typical setting for a Gothic Horror film (graveyard), in order to keep with conventions. What makes this setting unusual is that it is in the very centre of the city and includes the graves of soldiers, children and infants among those of the typical. A graveyard usually evokes some sort of reaction from people, most commonly avoidance. As children, we are often told not to walk through them at night, as homeless people often reside there, increasing the fear factor.
The images below, a forest and a derelict house, would also have been appropriate settings for such a film, as they are also isolated and would provoke a reaction from an audience.

Ted Hughes: Birthday Letters

Due my friend writing her extended project on this, I have chosen to read Birthday Letters by Ted Hughes. Although his poetry does not directly relate to the horror genre, I have found that some of his poems use aspects of horror;    as it [horror] is defined as: provoking a response, emotional, psychological or physical within each individual that causes someone to react with fear. Two of the poems I believe to have these aspects are Trophies, The Machine and Karlsbad Caverns.

In Trophies, the lines "Its real prey/ Had skipped and escaped. So the fangs,/Blind in frustration, / Crushed your trachea, the strangled sounds" indicate this. The idea of such violent imagery is certainly a element of the horror genre. "Fangs" gives the connotations of vampires and feral animals, both of which are common themes within gothic horror. The word "crushed" suggests that the action was effortless for the killer and that the victim offered no resistance. 

So happy they didn't know they were happy,/ They were so busy with it, so full of it, / Clinging upside down in their stone heavens.

Birthday Letters  explored Hughes' complex relationship his wife, American literary poet Sylvia Plath.  The poems make reference to Plath's suicide, but none of them addresses directly the circumstances of her death. Hughes was blamed for her death and released Birthday Letters a few months before his death in 1998.

Main Task Experimentation, Market Research and Questions

 



What is the scariest film you have seen?
What was your most recent nightmare?
What is your greatest fear?
What doesn't scare you in horror films?

From asking these questions, we have discovered that most people are not afraid of blood or"scary" children. From doing this research, we now know what to avoid doing. We have conducted research into the film named by our target audience in order to identify the horrific components for our film.

 
1) What age are they?
     The audience we have decided upon are young adults and teenagers, between the ages of fifteen and twenty onwards. We have not included the ages before fifteen because of the rating the film may have and the effect this may have on younger viewers. For this film, I envision a young, university student.

2) What gender are they?
     Either male or female- we are not creating a film for a specific gender, but the specific target audience that we are meant to envision, we shall say female.

3) What is their marital status?
     As our target audience is mature to a certain extent, I believe that we could say that they are in a relationship with someone they love, be it in or out of wedlock.

4) What is their job?
     I would imagine that most of the people who fall into the age group that we have specified would be in either full time education or have a job. The jobs stereotypical students might have could be waitressing, taking calls, serving behind counters in various eateries, sorting stock in various large chains such as HMV, Waterstones, WHSmith etc.

5) Do they have children?
    It is possible that our target audience would have children. The Office for National Statistics show conceptions in under-18s fell to 34,633 in 2010 compared with 38,259 in 2009, a drop of 9.5%, indicating that the teenage pregnancy rate is falling, but that it still occurs, making it likely that part of our target audience may have children. However, this only accounts for 18's and under. Although it is rare for university students to have children, it can occur. 

6) What is their geographical region?     We imagine our target audience to reside in either in the United Kingdom, Australia and the United States of the America, as they are the major English speaking countries. However, our indiviual person lives here, in Oxford, UK. We found that it is easier to imagine and to relate the target audience if they are similar to us.

7) What do they spend their money on?
     We assume that our target audience would spend their money mainly on tuition fees, food and clothes.

*Please ignore the title of the video. It cannot be changed.*

The Master and Margarita

I am currently reading the critically acclaimed novel The Master and Margarita by the Russian author Mikhail Bulgakov.
The story takes place in two settings; in 1930's Moscow and in the Jerusalem of Pontius Pilate.  
Summary:
The devil makes a personal appearance in Moscow. His retinue includes a two demons, a naked girl and a huge black cat that talks, walks upright, smokes cigars and is a dead shot with a Mauser automatic. Some of the devil's prank are sheer anarchic fun, more often they are chosen to bring out the worst everybody. When he leaves, the asylums are full, the forces of law and order are in dissaray and the population is haunted with feelings of guilt and shame. Amid this bizzare pantomime two people remain undiminished- the Master, a man single-mindedly devoted to the truth, and Margarita, the woman he loves.
Although I had not chosen to read this book specifically for Media, I have found that it relates strong to the theme/genre that we are studying: horror. Even though the book revolves around the devil, a figure typically associated with death, destruction and pain, he is portrayed completely differently as the audience would expect. Bulgakov writes in a variety of styles, most notably satire, farce, mysticism and romance. 

Genre Research: Gothic Horror

The Gothic horror genre creates feelings of gloom, mystery, and suspense and tends to be dramatic and includes the sensational such as incest, diabolism, and nameless terrors. The majority of an audience would immediately recognize the genre when one encounters it in novels, poetry, plays, movies, and TV series. For some of us the prospect of safely experiencing dread or horror is thrilling and enjoyable. 

Gothicism's origin is attributed to the English author Horace Walpole, in his 1764 novel The Castle of Otranto, which was subtitled "A Gothic Story". The effect of Gothic fiction feeds on a pleasing sort of terror, an extension of Romantic literary pleasures that were relatively new at the time of Walpole's novel. Another important literary work attributed to Gothic fiction/horror is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, also entitled A Modern Prometheus. 
Gothic literature is intimately associated with the Gothic Revival architecture of the same era. In a way similar to the Gothic revivalists' rejection of the clarity and rationalism of the neoclassical style of the Enlightened Establishment, the literary Gothic embodies an appreciation of the joys of extreme emotion, the thrills of fearfulness and awe inherent in the sublime, and a quest for atmosphere.

The ruins of Gothic buildings gave rise to multiple linked emotions by representing the inevitable decay and collapse of human creations — thus the urge to add fake ruins as eyecatchers in English landscape parks. English Gothic writers often associated medieval buildings with what they saw as a dark and terrifying period, characterized by harsh laws enforced by torture, and with mysterious, fantastic, and superstitious rituals. In literature such Anti-Catholicism had a European dimension featuring Roman Catholic institutions such as the Inquisition (in southern European countries such as Italy and Spain).

Ideas For Credits In Main Task

To have the names/titles written on the labels of medicine or product bottles. Here, the bottles are just usual household liquids that I found in our bathroom. I think this would be very effective if our film were to focus on poisioning or a similar area. However, I think that this would be very difficult to achieve on the MAC's editing program, as the type on the bottles is very small. It would be possible, if we made the camera pan and zoom. If we were to use a shot similar to the ones above, we could re-create the lables on the bottles, changing the ingredients to substances of interest in the film. For example, potassium/hydrogen cyanide. Futhermore, if we were to use different tinted glass bottles, then we would be able to fill the clear glass ones with coloured water. This idea would work well with the genre of horror because some poisons can cause a very slow, painful death, which could be very horrific to watch.

Another idea I have come up with is to have the writing on ( or to do with) sweets, in this case, personalized sweets Leon Paul. As sweets usually have the connotations of happiness, innocence and childishness, I thought it might be interesting to put a sinister twist to them. However, much like the first idea, it is complex and may require further planning. In addition, 

Title Credit Analysis: Se7en

In the establishing shot, the audience are shown a close-up of what appears to be a book or a newspaper. The book seems to be in a bad state of repair, perhaps indicating to the audience that it is used often or transported to different locations. In the background, one can see a blurred shape moving, presumably, a hand.  A high contrast/dark colour scheme has been used to reflect the darkness of the plot of the film, immediately showing the audience what genre the film is. The background lighting is surprisingly mellow, but in between the pages of book, where the light cannot reach, it is dark, possibly implying that the contents of the book are depraved, as darkness is usually associated with evil. Uncanny, non-diegetic music has been used to overlay the sequence, sounding very much like the recording of a storm, perhaps indicating that wicked or unchangeable is brewing. The titles appear in a inconsistent flashing motion, the names presented in a font that appears to have carved into a hard surface, as it is thin, sharp and angular. The ‘non-names’ as written in a thicker, rounder, bolder font, contrasting ably with the jagged font of the names. 

Here, the audience sees a drawing/picture of a pair of hands with the joints dislocated placed over square graph paper, making the audience wonder what the yet-to-be-unveiled person is up to. The light shines onto the page from the left-hand side, illuminating the page. A thin, dark shadow passes over the page twice, again indicating a human presence. The same, uncanny, electrical music continues, accompanied with a strange rattling noise. Space has been effectively used, allowing the audience to see both the picture and read the title, which is verging into darkness. The height of the shot places the audience in antagonist’s role, allowing them to see from his perspective. The proportion of the hands makes one think that they maybe life-sized drawings, again making the audience deliberate why this person would have very detailed drawing of hands with dislocated finger joints.

In this extreme close up shot, the antagonist is slicing the skin of his fingers off. Being this close to an action that may cause pain makes the viewer feel uncomfortable. The fact that this has been shown to the audience indicates importance, especially as it is taking place in the first five minutes of the film. It suggests that fingers or perhaps fingerprints are of utmost importance. The lighting helps to emphasize this, as it falls directly on the fingertips and shines through the skin that has been cut off, as well as reflecting off the edge of the blade/razor. One can see that the character has very short, dirty nails, suggesting that he works predominantly with his hands, and combined with the action or removing the skin from his fingers suggests a criminal nature. As skin grows back fast (two weeks onwards), suggests that he is planning some nefarious. The bass-heavy, non-diegetic music continues, but spikes into a noise much like that of a cassette being rewound very fast.

Further along in the opening, the audience sees this photo to a hugely gluttonous man that the antagonist most likely took. The picture is in black and white, perhaps suggesting that the antagonist has and old camera, but more likely to enhance the contrast of the victim's face via the lighting. The audience now begins to see the antagonist's sadism, through this picture and many others that are scattered through out the beginning. 

Title Credit Analysis: Final Destination 5

The first title we see appear are the presenters of the film, written in light yellow on a black background, immediately creating a stark contrast. The colour yellow is usually associated with joy, happiness, intellect, and energy, the opposite of the depressing, deathly, evil, and mysterious black, giving the audience insight about what the film may be about; energy and life surrounded by evil and death. The letters are in capitals and in an easy to read font, perhaps Arial, making it easier for the audience to read it before an 'event' takes place. The titles do not fill the space, making them look isolated, hinting to the audience the feelings that the characters may have within the narrative. The non-diegetic music accompanying the credits is slow, foreboding  but tense, pitching and leading into a climax as a explosion shatters the glass of the screen. This effect is brilliant and unpredictable, as the audience was prepared for the credits to fade in as done previously  to the sinister music.

In this shot, a different explosion has shattered the glass, with the credits still visibly painted on the glass in silver. To create tension, high violin/string music has been used to overlay the action. The speed of the glass exploding has been altered. It is very fast to begin with and then suddenly slowed down, allowing the audience to see the wonderful, fiery explosion that shatters the glass. Also, the fire, particularly if seen on a large cinema screen, would be very bright, again contrasting with black background, suggesting danger yet again.

Here, the shattering of the glass has been reversed, so that it pieces itself back together to form the whole screen. This is unusual and not what the audience was expecting as they were assuming the same to happen to this title as had occurred to all the other titles, namely the glass to explode towards them. Furthermore, one sees the object that shattered the glass, namely scissors, which is rather fitting when one notices that the credit is for the costume designer. After that sequence, we see what the breaking of the glass by the scissors looked like for no apart reason at all. Perhaps to extent the time of a rather tedious film or maybe to increase its pretentiousness.  The same dramatic, non-diegetic music accompanies the scene, with a slight suction noise as the shattered glass reverts back into the screen. 

As the titles list the actors, objects shatter the glass, specifically the ones that kill them in the film. Here, it is, ironically, a window. If one looks carefully, one can see that the window is in fact on fire, which is an impressive feat. During this sequence, the music has, surprisingly, changed. It punctuates the sequence with a series of stresses that shifted from beat one and four, to one and three, very similar to the ‘melody’ used for Hitchcock’s “Psycho".

  

In the final shot that I will be analyzing, the audience, in an unusual move from the director, are shown the ending of the film. An aeroplane explodes and various objects of debris break the glass. Again, the smashing of the glass is sped up and then slowed down for extra impact and amazement. The music in the segment begins to pick up, slowly striving for a climax, even though the ending for the film has been revealed. Curiously, the space here has been used differently. In the other sequences, the objects breaking the glass were in close proximity. Here, the main object, the aeroplane is far above the audience and the titles, giving the impression the dark background is in fact a night sky. In addition, the explosion of the plane lights up the screen and later reflects in the pieces of broken glass.