Beth Resendez A2 Media

Seminal/Prototype: These are first types of the genre, they introduce the conventions of the genre and are the groundwork's for all future films. In horror examples are Psycho and Peeping Tom . These were both made in the year 1960, and while the genre of horror has been around since the late 1800s they are seen as what created the standard stereotypes of the genre. Psycho particularly is regarded by many as the first and the best; everyone knows of the infamous shower scene and have taken this as inspiration. The creator of Texas Chainsaw Massacre is said to have been hugely influenced by Hitchcock. Before Psycho , horror movies were “monster” movies. They were fantasies in which men battled supernatural creatures – or turned into them. The monsters could be big ( Godzilla ) or small ( The Fly ), sexy ( Dracula ) or ugly ( Frankenstein ); they could be spectral and profound ( I Walked With a Zombie ) or literal and rubbery ( The Creature From the Black Lagoon ); they could come...

Narrative is used to describe and explore the conventions of: Genre Character Form Time Narrative and plot are two different aspects of storytelling. Plot is the basic outline of the key events, the beginning, middle and end; the issue, build up and then the final resolve. Narrative instead discusses how the story is told, what is the meaning/moral of the story, what information has not been directly shown? An example of this is a short film entitled 'Black Hole.' The plot was that a worker in an office discovers a black hole on a printed piece of paper. He then decides to use this to his advantage and does so by stealing a chocolate bar from a vending machine. He takes this further by then going to the safe and stealing all the money. When trying to reach for the money he accidentally falls through the black hole, causing him to trapped and locked in the safe. The narrative of this is evident: don't be greedy, appreciate what you have and don't put mo...

In a lot of cases we are faced with 'sleeper hits.' Horror is famous for this and is a good reason why it is such a standout genre. A sleeper hit refers to a film that generates a huge amount of profit and does well in the box office while its production value was far less than the 'Hollywood' films we are constantly being seen advertised. These films offer little advertisement, and have few special effects or notability and yet surprisingly do very well or become an overnight success. For example, 'Forrest Gump' is said to be a sleeper hit, and yet to a modern audience is a film so widely known it has reached cult classis level. The Blair Witch Project is well known for this accolade; its production only costing $35,000 yet making in excess £245 million, a feat almost unheard of. Its hand held camerawork was the first of its kind and obviously not costly, yet this type of filming to the world by storm, most likely down to its hyper-realism. No special effect...

Why do we enjoy horror films? If anything that happens in horror happened to us or to anyone we knew, we would be essentially, horrified. If the film we were watching was real footage we wouldn't want to watch it anymore. And yet, the films that are accompanied with the tag line 'based on a true story' are that much more exciting to us. Put it in those terms and it feels very sadistic. Some theorists have decided to explore this concept and come to the conclusion as to why horror is such a popular genre amongst an audience. Noel Carroll Carroll's 'Big Idea' was based on the philosophy of horror. We are both attracted and repulsed by horror, he says; with gore we are intrigued by the transgression and also repulsed by the act of it. POV shots in the eyes of the killer allow us to identify with the killer, a concept that is both interesting and disturbing. A few years ago, vampire films were at an all time high, bringing in a sure amount of revenue. This is do...

Horror films tend to be open to interpretation by the viewer. This is ultimately in my eye, what makes them so enjoyable. What one person sees as a simple boring supernatural horror, another sees as a 2 hour long metaphor about the trials of mental illness, i.e. The Babadook, a favourite of mine. Polysemy is the capacity for a piece of media to have multiple meanings; they are left ambiguous and open to many readings. Maria Lewis writes in an article: "Zombie classic Dawn Of The Dead was a critique on America’s commercialism, Alien looked at the masculine fear of sexual vulnerability, The Hills Have Eyes dealt with the anxieties of the nuclear age and The Babadook examined the depths of depression. They were designed to do more than just frighten." The four horror films described are four of favourites and its no wonder why. Good films that have a deeper meaning, that actually make to equate everything and thus make you think about it afterwards, as wel...

https://vimeo.com/129756191 "The Thing in the Apartment" is a short horror film with a stereotypical title and a somewhat stereotypical storyline. However the 'girl calls friend about the weird thing she just saw, now friend is unwittingly about to face weird thing' storyline here does pack a punch, creating genuine jump scares while also involving interesting camera shots and editing. The title of the movie was so obvious that it did make me click on it, obviously something that you want your film to do; with films with foreign titles I don't understand or ridiculously pretentious ones when the context of the film is a simple slasher, my attention is immediately withdrawn. With our preliminary task we simply named it 'Stop Me.' With our final task, while a name is not on the tops of our priorities when shooting it, it is something we need to consider. Short and simple is the best both within the storyline of a horror and thus in the title also. The fi...

iMom is a horror film fit for the modern world. It plays on the ever increasing advance of technology, with robots now becoming a reality, something that only a decade ago seemed impossible. So the film offers the question, what will the world look like in 10, 20, 30 years time? The film is about a robot known as 'iMom' that appears to be sweeping the world. It looks and talks like a normal human but with slightly more robotic tendencies. This particular iMom is placed in the home of a 'Mom' who appears to be more interested in her phone than her young son and baby, and follows a night wherein the mom leaves for a night out, leaving the iMom and the children alone in the house. Camera Work The film begins with a series of news reports on the iMom, before zooming out onto a kitchen and then panning down to a baby. This is an effective way of establishing the subject matter and hence foreshadowing of the film. It also once again shows a form of technology submerging w...

The Periods of Horror: 1930: Horror not known as Horror, but rather 'gothic' or 'melodramatic.' 1930-40's: Hollywood classics came to light, with the likes of 'Frankenstein' and 'Dracula.'                     B-Movie horror (the movies before the main film) became more popular                     Real world themes i.e. War and past atomic age reflected in horror 1950's: Height of Hammer horror 1960's: Counter-culture now prominent, going against the norm now the new norm, gore and violence were now popular. 1970's and 80's: Prolific horror i.e. slasher era. 90's to today: There was a lull in production of horror films in the the 90's and 2000's. The most popular are now the films based on truth or realistic situations.  Iconic horror films through the ages "The Haunted Castle" -1897 It was based on gothic literature, due to the term ‘horror’ not coming i...

I watched two short horror films. 'The Red Balloon' and 'The Smiling Man.' They both sufficiently fitted into the horror genre but in different ways. The red balloon was a short film about a babysitter looking after a young girl alone until it become apparent that something is wrong with the girl, until it is revealed that a psychiatric ward escapee is hiding in her room. The smiling man, was much stranger, and in my opinion scarier. It again was about a young girl however this time she discovers a strange smiling man/creature in her creature, who is revealed to have killed her parents. Inner. (Thematically) The Red Balloon had a young girl in it and alongside this, children's toys with a pink child's room. The child is always a signifier of danger or general creepiness in film, if you know the genre you are well aware that when a child is involved it tends to attract the paranormal. The children's toys are portrayed as creepy. This is obviously the oppos...

Ultimately we choose our entertainment because want it to effect us. The height of this is the fear and thrill we experience watching scary films. In a paper in the Journal of Media Psychology, Dr. Glenn Walters there are three primary factors that make horror so alluring to an audience, these being, tension, relevance and unrealism. If we were to watch a film depicting actual murder or death etc. we would be disgusted. Yet we so often pay money to watch premieres of films with an excessive amount of blood and gore without thinking much of it. This exact conundrum was the basis of an experiment done by Haidt, McCauley and Rozin (1994). When shown videos of cows being killed, a monkey having its head hit by a hammer and a child's skin being turned inside out, many participants turned off the video before it reached its end. McCauley came up with the logical conclusion as to why this was, as being down to the fact that the fictional nature of horror films afford view...

A short film has to essentially encompass all things a full length film normally would do: all within the space of, in our case, under 5 minutes. This is why it is so important to recognise all these factors and then try to apply to our own final task. First of all I think it would be beneficial to identify what classifies a short film. Typically the piece gains the title short film if under 40 minutes, fairly often these films will be on a much lower budget than the types you would see on the big screen. Also there tends to be a unity of time and action in these films, wherein the location remains the same and is within a short period of time. Obviously this is not always the case; one of our ideas initially was to have a day-to-day until one day something goes wrong esque film. While I do still believe this could be a valuable idea, because of our genre focusing on horror, it would be much more impactful if felt in the moment; if you could live the scene along with the main characte...

A key aspect of beginning the process of making my short film is gaining an understanding of who I am catering it to. To do this I will be investigating the typical target audience that appeals to the horror genre. Age Horror movies are clearly aimed towards the young adults and teenagers, between the age of 15-25 typically. Stuart Fischoff makes this clear in his investigation by stating the fact that young people need and enjoy intense stimulation: sounds, tastes and touch. They are risk takers when it comes to the senses. The height of this being fear and adrenaline, of which horror offers up plenty. It is stated via research data that those 60+ 'often have acquired stimulation fatigue and vulnerability anxiety regarding real or fantasy dangers.' Perhaps then this is why it is often seen that the young and reckless are the common victims of said films, while the old tend to play the creepy and bizarre; the juxtaposition of an old frail person taking on a terrifying ...

Through my blog I will be investigating short films, specifically short horror films, looking into the conventions, theories, target audience etc. that is derived/catered to with horror. I have already created my prelimary task- a 1 minute horror film- with Fiona Drake (fidrakea2media.blospot.co.uk) but my final task will be to make a short horror film alongside a film poster to go with it.

'Stop Me' our short film : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuXw8DrxDck