Class Research- Favourite Type of Horror

My personal favourite sub-genre in Psychological. I find that the storylines are much more intriguing and you learn more about the characters and their past etc. I also find that the editing and cinematography is much more varied and the use of collision cutting makes it more exciting and tense. I do like gory and action horror’s but I find them less interesting to watch.

Choice of Trailer and Synopsis

We have decided to produce a highlights trailer as opposed to a scene trailer because for the horror genre, it excites the audience and creates more anticipation if you show them all the best bits of the film in the trailer. This effectively proves that it will be worth watching because the audience for this genre nowadays is much harder to scare and so horror films have to be worth watching. It also allows for us to explore the full narrative more and create a story and idea for an entire film rather than just one scene. Also, with highlights trailers it is much easier to create suspense and jump scares using collision cutting which would be harder to do in just one scene trailer. This is done well in the trailer for the horror film entitled 30 Days of Night (2007).

Our horror film will fit the three main sub-genres of horror (Psychological, Action and Gory) because the members in our group each prefer a different sub-genre. The foundation of the film will be based on the theme of paranormal, and so psychological will be the most noticeable sub-genre but there will be elements of action and body horror. This has been previously achieved with great success with the psychological/action/gory horror entitled The Thing (1981).

The idea for our film is based around our main protagonist ‘Leo’. He is an ex-policeman and has turned to drugs and alcohol for comfort. He is very unstable in the way he is choosing to live, and so when he begins to experience paranormal activity in his home. In watching the trailer you would initially think he was simply hallucinating due to his use of substances, but it is proven to be true when the spirit gets violent and starts attacking the protagonist Leo. 

Leo calls his best friend for help and they try to escape the evil spirit that haunts his house. It is then revealed that the reason Leo left the police (and turned to drugs and alcohol) was because he had to shoot an innocent child to save her from a painful and torturous experience. As the spirit's violence grows, Leo has to confront his personal issues because the spirit was created from the darkness inside Leo’s “broken mind.”

Shooting Schedule

Shotlist

Moodboard

1) Element and fear on the protagonists face. (Still taken from Disturbia) Use of phallic weapon- garden trimmers.

2) Prosthetic makeup / fake blood on the character. Connotes madness and the fact he's losing his mind slowly, almost insanity portrayed.

3) Evil/ Darkly shown Police officer. - Our main protagonist is a police officer and we can use the dark shades/ silhouettes (chiaroscuro) to effect on our character.

4) Red eye/ evil through the character's eye. Desperation portrayed on his face, we want our character to look and 'feel' the same, almost as if he's lost all hope.

5)   Suspended character - ghost/paranormal/abnormal goings on. We want our own character to have been 'possessed' by whatever is controlling him, so we could element some of these in our own trailer.

6) Flashback / what we think is going on and what's not. For example, the screenshot- she thinks she is biting into an apple, but we see a light-bulb, which then changes back to an apple. Playing with the audience's mind and creating a restricted narrative style.

7) Red devil / evil haunting type character, that keeps in both our minds and that of the mind of our protagonist. We could take clear motivational ideas from this 'type' of villain.

8) Paranormal / haunting ghost that follows and creeps on our protagonist.​

History of Horror

The term ‘Horror’ means an intense feeling of fear, shock or disgust. It is based on the Latin word “horrere” which means “to shudder,” but that concept can have different meanings to each individual person. Horror can be a variety of different things ranging from objects to people or even events. Horror has been interpreted differently over the many years it has been present and film is one of the main ways in which horror is presented to us.

The horror genre started as literature, and the term was first used in Horace Walpole’s 1764 novel ‘The Castle of Otranto’ and this was full of mystery and supernatural beings. This novel became somewhat of a craze and has been imitated and interpreted many times since then and has now evolved into what we know as the gothic mode of writing.  Other writers such as Mary Shelley ('Frankenstein') used this novel and introduction of horror, and expanded on it to create thrills and suspense. Horror novels were the supreme of the industry for about half a century. As the century went on gothic literature started to wear out, and new writers began to further expand the horror genre and write about ghost stories and the supernatural. The majority of horror writers turned to short stories or novella to terrify their readers, with the most famous of these being Edgar Allen Poe.

The first horror films to be created have been described as surreal and disturbing such as Nosferatu and The Golem. The storylines themselves draw upon the folklore and the legends of Europe and bring monsters to life. Many of the monsters in early horror films were ghosts made from spiritual photography, which is the use of double exposures or superimpositions to create ghosts within a frame of film. This method became popular from 1860 onwards and was extremely effective and successful for its time.

Audiences of the 19^th century seemed to thoroughly enjoy seeing ghosts captured in still photography, so it made sense to transfer the techniques of superimposition onto new technology in order to tell different bizarre stories. Many of the first ‘moving pictures’ were typically action or comedy, however early filmmakers used photographic trickery to explore darker tales with supernatural and psychological themes which are known as the first ever horror films. 

Many of these earliest horror films have been lost forever due to the fragility of early film stock, however some have survived. ‘Nosferatu’, released in 1922, is the very first Dracula movie and has been described as the vampire movie that actually believes in vampires.  The vampire featured in this movie shows no evidence of being even remotely human; instead he has a rat-like appearance. This contrasts with modern day vampires such as those in ‘Twilight’ blend in with humans and are nowhere near as frightening as those in ‘Nosferatu’.

Horror movies continued to develop in the mid-1930s, and the arrival of sound in movies had a huge impact on this particular genre of film. The dreamlike imagery used in the 1920s and early 1930s in films like 'Vampyr' made a visual representation of horror using ghosts flowing silently through the terror of mortals and their outrageous deaths, which were replaced in the 1930s by monsters that grunted, groaned and howled such as Dracula and Frankenstein. Sound helps to add another dimension to terror, whether it is music used to build suspense or magnified footsteps echoing down a corridor. Even now, modern horror films use large amounts of sound for extra effect.

The horror films of the 1930s are described as exotic fairy tales, set in far off lands such as Dracula, with characters speaking in strange accents. Horror was all about looking backwards and referring to the literary classics of the 19^th century for their source material. This has continued throughout the years and even now, filmmakers are looking back on past events for inspiration. Horror in the 1930s became so popular that in 1930, 80 million people attended the cinema on a weekly basis.

‘Dracula’ was a very popular horror film and by 1931, was a well-worn story and had been told many different times. But this movie was the first time Dracula had ever been shown with sound, and this added a new sense of terror to the character. This film was highly theatrical and successful, and has inspired many films and novels since its release.

Over the next few decades, horror movies evolved and expanded, varying from more modernised versions of the old school vampires and ghosts, to aliens, to mutants, and psychopath scientists and serial killers wanting to torture their victims.

Films like ‘Final Destination’ really highlights how horror has changed over the years, because there is no visual evil shown in the films as the evil in these films is death itself. This is more of a gory horror and the horror of this film is the gruesome ways in which they die, instead of the traditional horror of who does the killing.

In the modern day, horror is one of the most wide ranging genres. So much can be done with horror films now because everybody’s fears are unique and so pretty much anything will create fear if the right setting, storyline and sound are used. It has reached the point now when people find nursery rhymes frightening such as in Woman in Black. This has been used in many horror films to show how innocence can be deceiving. Many of the older techniques have been used in modern day horrors and have evolved into something terrifying. Modern evil is frequently more human-like, making it more realistic for some viewers. With most movie genres, people feel like modern technology has helped to improve films and make them more appealing to watch as a whole, but even the more modern horrors such as 'The Walking Dead' still often rely on practical effects to continue the traditional of realistic yet fantastical films that still make us shudder today.

3rd Dawn of the Dead (2004) Image Analysis

This scene is towards the end of the film and shows Monica being killed by Glen’s chainsaw as he loses control of it. Monica’s death fits very well to the conventions of a horror as she is the typical female victim who has sexual intercourse in the film and eventually is killed off. It is a common convention of horror for the blonde victim to have sexual relations and then die which is also seen in House of Wax. It is also quite ironic how she has the most gruesome death in the film after she has been portrayed as a typical feminine girl. A close up has been used so that we can clearly see the body horror as it is the most shocking and impressive throughout the film.

This scene also fits very well to the sub-genre which is action horror as the scene occurs when the vehicle is crashing and the zombies are chasing them. There are many elements of body horror in the film in addition to the action, but as the zombies are much faster and scarier than those in the original Dawn of the Dead it is seen primarily as an action horror. In the original film, the female victim (Francine) turns into the final girl and it goes against the conventions but in this film, we are left to assume that the final girl (Ana) is brutally killed.

Also in comparison to the first Dawn of the Dead, the gore is much more extreme and shocking as there were no major censorship restrictions in the industry and on the “Extended Cut” DVD release. The director of the film, Zack Snyder, clearly knew that the modern horror audience are much tougher and it is much more difficult to shock them, which is why he wanted to make the body horror as unique as possible. This illustrates Janet Staiger’s audience theory from her book ‘Interpreting Films’ that the institutional context makes people watch horror films differently nowadays to when films like the first Dawn of the Dead were pushing the limits of censorship. 

2nd Dawn of the Dead (2004) Image Analysis

This scene is in the opening credits and in these opening credits; there are lots of references to Muslims and terrorism. This is one of the shots that show us this, as the mise-en-scene seems to have Mosques and other Islamic symbols which leads the audience to believe that the news reporter is in the Middle East. This implies that the zombie virus has spread from the Middle East and the zombies themselves are being compared to the terrorists.

This credit sequence clearly links into the American context as 3 years prior to the film’s release, the events of 9/11 occurred and so it was a cultural dominant ideology to be paranoid about Muslims being terrorists, which is implied by these scenes in Dawn of the Dead. The music that plays with the opening credits is contrapuntal to the horror genre and is upbeat and sounds like it would be heard in a happier genre, however the song ‘The Man Comes Around’ by ‘Johnny Cash’ is about Judgement Day; something included in the Old Testament which links to the idea presented in the film that there is ‘no more room in hell’.  This was a way to scare people in 2004 and Americans would still be terrified and even traumatised by the events of 9/11 and so the link between the zombies and Al Queda was powerfully upsetting.

1st Dawn of the Dead (2004) Image Analysis

This scene is at the end of the film when the remaining survivors (Ana, Kenneth, Nicole, Terry and Chips) are leaving for the island on a yacht. This is quite forward thinking- much like the original Dawn of the Dead, and is quite an important scene as we see the new equilibrium which demonstrates Tzvetan Todorov’s narrative theory. The characters aren’t happy with recent events as Michael has just killed himself to prevent turning to a zombie in addition to other members of the group dying, but the remaining survivors have a new goal and plan to make the most out of the disastrous situation. It comes as a surprise that Michael doesn’t survive the film as he is the archetypal male hero as he is strong, brave, and courageous and seems to lead the group through most of the obstacles they face. 

The close up used in this shot shows us that Snyder wanted the audience to focus on Ana and connect with her in this moment. She doesn’t have a happy or sad expression, but she looks strong and ready to face what’s to come. We see her as the strong final girl which goes against the generic conventions of horror as the blonde women usually are killed halfway through the film. This shows the development of the film industry and how it has adapted to modern society and how women are becoming more strong and independent. This is also shown in other films by Snyder including Sucker Punch, where the main and strongest character ‘Babydoll’ is a young blonde dancer. The lighting in this scene makes Ana look angelic and represents how Ana is a ray of hope for the group and will lead them to survive. She is also shown in this shot with an American flag which is a symbol of patriotism and reminds the audience that these characters are American, enforcing the view that America are independent and strong.

3rd Magazine Cover Analysis

This magazine cover contains all the key generic features that are expected in horror. Everything about it screams horror codes and conventions.
For starters, the masthead of the magazine ‘Empire’ is bright, bold red and has flames surrounding it. This is, however, overpowered by the large image of ‘Hellboy’ which is a terrifying horror character with an extremely similar appearance and relation to the devil. This image makes it clear to the audience that this character is from a horror film and also shows that this magazine includes a preview of the horror that this character is in.
The dark, black background contrasts against the red used on the cover and makes it stand out much more and become the dominating colour on the cover.  This use of pathetic fallacy connotes death, which is enforced by the devilish image.
The mention of Guillermo Del Toro at the bottom of the magazine is used in an attempt to sell him as the auteur of this movie, in order to ensure that people know this film will be good as he has had other successes that they will be familiar with.
The use of other film titles on the left hand side underneath the masthead makes it clear to the audience that this magazine isn’t just about this horror, and is informative in that they know they are not being limited to one genre. However, this does take away from the fright that the image brings to the magazine and isn’t quite as effective as the large amount of text used on this cover distracts attention away from the image. As a magazine cover, this fits well to what is expected for a magazine but as a horror magazine cover, to me it seems to be lacking in how much it affects the audience and how distracting the range of fonts are. I would prefer to create a more minimalist cover for my own coursework, as I believe this would stand out on the bookshelf.

2nd Magazine Cover Analysis

This magazine cover for ‘Total Film’ is disturbing and chilling, and really captures what a horror is. The character, Jack Nicholson, is a character from one of the most renowned horror films of all time, which is ‘The Shining’ from 1980.
The images used on this front cover of a magazine appear to be Polaroid images of the same face pulling different facial expressions which have been placed together which results in a photo-montage of an unsettling character.
The high contrast black and white is very effective, especially for the horror genre as the older horror films were filmed in black and white. Also, it contrasts boldly with the red masthead and headline which makes the images much more disturbing.
In addition to this, the colour red connotes blood and danger which fits the typical horror film codes and conventions and so makes it more recognisable as a horror film magazine cover. I really like how bold this magazine is as a whole, and it would stand out on a shelf compared to other subtle magazines. As a whole cover, it perfectly fits the horror genre and presents horror characters in a generic way. The lack of information about the horror itself on this cover makes it all the more creepy and mysterious. The image itself dominates the magazine cover and results in it being very overpowering, which symbolises the dangerous power that this character had in this horror film.

1st Magazine Cover Analysis

This magazine cover isn’t a bad presentation of horror, but I feel there are aspects that could be improved in my own work.
The main image of Johnny Depp that has been used is very chilling to look at and if looked at for too long, can become disturbing and creepy. This is due to how he is presented as his character in the horror film ‘Sweeney Todd’. His general appearance in this image makes him look somewhat like a ‘psychopath’ often used in horror movies. His pale complexion and staring eyes make the image uncomfortable to look at creating the intended portrayal of the character.
The colour scheme of blue and white adds to the character's icy and cold appearance, which makes the magazine cover more fitting to the horror genre.
However in contrast to this, the amount of text used on this page takes away any possible chill and terror that this image could have provided. In addition to this, the position of the character’s face is behind the text and so it doesn’t draw as much attention and doesn’t stand out in the bold way that it should. Also, the large text that says ‘Johnny Depp’ unnecessarily highlights the fact that this character is played by an actor, again taking away from the illusion. The font used on this magazine cover is all sans serif which gives the magazine cover an informal feel that suits its mainstream target audience of casual film fans. It is implied by the lack of boldness and gore that would be seen on most horror magazines that they are trying to soften the impact of the film because its target audience is not specific to horror fans.