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Thursday 29 November 2012

Research into Genre: Sub-genre/idea/iconography

Horror genre- Scream (1996) An example of a horror film, the first 12 minutes:


Scream (1996)
The opening 12-minute prologue scene in which all-American girl, sweatered Casey Becker was alone preparing pop-corn to watch a video at home when she received an initially playful phone call (she was asked a trivia question: what was her favorite scary movie? - and she replied Halloween (1978)); shortly afterwards, the repeated terrifying calls turned obscene, threatening and ugly ("No, you listen, you little bitch! You hang up on me again, I'll gut you like a fish, understand?...Can you handle that... Blondie?") and freaky when the caller said: "I want to know who I'm looking at"; when she rushed around to lock all the doors, and demanded to know what the caller wanted, the caller simply replied: "To see what your insides look like"; when the doorbell rang and she said: "Who's there?", she was reminded by the caller: "You should never say 'Who's there?' Don't you watch scary movies? It's a death wish"; she then threatened that her boyfriend would be arriving soon: "He's big and he plays football, and he'll kick the shit out of you!"; she was instructed to turn on the patio lights, where she saw her bruised boyfriend Steve tied up and gagged with duct tape across his mouth; in a game of movie trivia, the phone-caller first asked: "Name the killer in Halloween?" and then after she answered correctly, a second question: "Name the killer in Friday the 13th?" followed by her wrong answer: "Jason" (she was corrected with the proper answer: "Mrs. Voorhies", Jason's mother) "Jason didn't show up until the sequel"; her boyfriend was killed for her wrong answer; outside, Casey was chased across the lawn by Ghostface (wearing a Halloween costume), stabbed in the upper chest, choked, startlingly murdered on her front porch with a few more fatal stab wounds, and then hung from the front yard's tree for her parents to view; later, "Her mom and dad found her hanging from a tree limb, her insides on the outside".

The sub genre: of Scream is that Ghost-face is a stalker/serial killer this relates to our film because our killer is also a stalker as he looks at the girl's Facebook pages and watches/follows them in the van, he also kills the girl's turning him into a serial killer if he wasn't already. 

The idea:
Ghost face was created by Wes Craven and Kevin Williamson. The mask is based on The Scream painting by Edvard Munch and was created and designed by Fun World employee Brigitte Sleiertin as a Halloween costume, prior to being discovered by Marianne and Craven for the film. The character is used primarily as a disguise for each of the antagonists of each film to conceal their identity, while conducting serial murders and as such has been portrayed by several actors. Similar to our film, as our murderer also conceals his identity to show the main characters from figuring out who he really is. 
A good horror film has to have a good plot, this means also getting to know the characters as the plot moves on,  also try not to confuse horror with humour, so it can have humour as well as horror but you can't mean it to be one and it end up being the other, therefore it has to have a perfect mix. Another point that horror films can have is that it can be about more than just gore, which is also why it needs to be realistic and the cinematography has to cause tension and atmosphere. Therefore Scream not only has all these important features but our film will also include these to make a good horror film, that makes sense, flows and has character. The music Scream uses is always tense to create suspense for the audience to realise that something is about to happen, then when it comes to a climax it is more likely to make the audience jump, therefore our film will have to include climatic music to create an atmosphere to scare the audience. 

The Iconography of horror films:

Symbolic images which recur throughout the history of the horror film
  • The haunted house
  • Symbols of death
  • The disfigured face or mask
  • The screaming victim (in modern horror ‘the final girl’
  • The phalic murder weapon: knife, stake, chainsaw
  • Binary oppositions of good and evil eg Dracula/Van Helsing
  • Darkened places where the ‘monster’ lurks: woods, cellars
  • Blood and body parts (body horror)

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