- Sound
- The first shot and mise-en-scene
- The central protagonist and narrative
- The transition to the main film
- A look at the Studying Horror Cinema book
SOUND
As sound goes, zombie movies usually have eerie music with long, low pitched notes with high pitched, short notes over the top. This messes with the audience's heartbeat making them feel the intensity of the genre more. In romance movies, they often have light, relaxing melodies that appeals to a female target audience. The comedy genre can vary as there are many different ways to go about it. When it comes to foley or ambient sound, it is exaggerated for the comedic effect.
SCREAM EG.
- Female high pitch scream
- Heart beating fast and speeds up
- Phone ringing
- Crash
- Wolf howling
- Violin strings - intertextualising shower scene in psycho
- Knife slashing sound
- Audio bridge
The 1st shot has a lot of narrative enigma, whether that's with the character (like Warm Bodies) or with the fact that there are zombies and the character doesn't know about it (like Shaun of the Dead). There is a lot of exposition through the mise-en-scene as well, like in Shaun of the Dead, we can see a lot of junk on the coffee table, eluding to the fact that his character is a slob.
The mise-en-scene provides a lot of exposition for where the movie is set and about the characters. In Shaun of the Dead, we see the messy coffee table portraying the character as a slob. In Warm Bodies, we see a run down airport providing exposition on where it is set.
CENTRAL PROTAGONIST AND NARRATIVE
Like most films, the central protagonist is shown through the rule of thirds, a voice over, close up shots and others. In Warm Bodies, we get the voice over and close ups of parts of the zombies body, so the audience doesn't know he's a zombie. In Shaun of the Dead, we don't get narrative enigma of his character as the first shot is of a close up of his face, however there are a lot of shots where other characters are speaking but the camera is still on his character.
TRANSITIONING TO MAIN FILM
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STUDYING HORROR CINEMA
For the past week, I have been reading the book Studying Horror Cinema by Bryan Turnock. I found out some things which I found interesting.
COMPLEX DISCOVERY PLOT
Four narrative stages:
- Onset
- Audience made aware of monster
- Discovery
- One or more central characters discovers that the monster's existence
- Confirmation
- The wider community is convinced of the monster's existence
- Confrontation
- Humanity confronts the monster and may or may not be victorious
Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968) - relatively straightforward example.
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Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) - contrasted.
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SYMBOLIC STRUCTURES OF IMPURITY
- Fusion
- Simultaneous occupation of two or more normally exclusive categories
- living/dead, human/animal, human/vegetable
- Fission
- Occupation of two or more categories, at different times
- werewolves, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
- or in different spaces
- the doppelgänger
- Magnification/Massification
- Takes an existing source of potential horror and either magnifies it
- giant spiders
- Or masses it
- swarms of cockroaches
- Metonymy
- Representation of something inwardly monstrous, though appearing normal, through association with a recognisable source of horror
- Norman Bates' association with the stuffed corpse of his mother
SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF
- Often in Gothic novels to claim the work was based on "found" documents
- Stoker's Dracula - entirely diary entries, journals and letters by and between book's protagonists
- Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde rely on these devices.
- Continued through horror films
- Genre depends on audience's ability to suspend disbelief
TERRIBLE PLACE
- There's a monster or terrible place convention
- Identified by Carol Clover
- Somewhere which seems like a safe haven but in fact acts to trap the victim with the monster
- Often a house or tunnel
- In Gothic literature, often a ruined abbey or castle
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