Effect of horror films.

What effect do you think horror can have on audience.

Normal  reaction:
Jump,scream, continuous jump after film is over, closing/ covering eyes, nervous laughter, crying.

Extreme reactions:
Heart attack, psychosis, re-enactment, collapsing, mental scarring.
e.g:

• Most vulnerable women and young kids.
• Who's responsible?     Parents watching over their kids.

Different theories of audience recption

What gaze is used in these films?

Bond- Female gaze.

Twilight-Male gaze.

Studying genre at a textual level.

Similarities and differences between Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

Psycho Vs Texas Chainsaw Masscre.

Similarities:

• Date and Time shown at the beginning of both films.
• 'slasher'
• Both Documentary 
• Multiple killings
• Disguises unhidden
• Isolation
• Inspired by Edgein
• Fast, quick shots to create horror.

Differences:

• Colour / Black and White.
• Not Ellumination film.
• Shows dead person (Psycho)/ Show 2 dead people (TCM)
• Knife/ Chainsaw 
• Leather face= Monster / Norman= Normal.
• Teen Vs Adults
• Final girl survives.

Case study.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

• Film was released in 1974
• Cult horror film (slasher)
• Directed, written and produced by Tobe Hooper and Kim Henkel
• Cast mainly non-professional actors.
• Hooper was hoping for a PG rating but he failed. the filmed has an R rating.
• Film costs only $83'532.
• Dinner table scene shot in 27 hour shoot.
• Film is a documentary style.

Laura Mulvey.

Visual Pleasure and narrative cinema.

• Women are presented as sexual spectacle and objects of pleasure for the characters and audience.
• Men fetishist women imbuing them with an over valued and unrealistic status fetishistic scophillia.

Paul Wells.

• What conclusion can I draw from this study?

The relationship to being frightened changes with age and relates to border factors affecting emotional responses.
Audience between 1970-80's are most anaesthetised to explict special effects, whereas 'monster' films 20 and 30's reported very strong personal responses to images and iconography of horror (when cinema was new and unknown.
Young audiences are aware of artificality and are become harder to shock. which films play into this knowingness of horror conventions? is this part of the fun?

• What are the limitations?   

on the basis of this theory, what horrifies audiences changes according to conditions in society and ways in which audiences experience film going so what scares us now?

Nosferatu.

• My Respond to unnamed women.

weak, powerless, submissive, vulnerable,passure.

• Psychoanalytic Theory- Spectatorship and the 'Male Gaze'.

Her femininity and sexuality is focused on by camerawork- audience is influenced by how the male character responds to her. e.g pity, attraction.

However fisher (director) deceives the audience by the women givening Haker's and then there's an extreme closeup of her fangs. she momentarily has control.

Why Watch Horror Movies?

-Who do you talk to?
I talk mostly to my friends not parents
-Sources of information.
When friends go to the cinema and tell me all about it and advise me to go and watch it myself (word of mouth), the internet (web 2.0), adverts, social networking for example Twitter and Facebook.
-When watch horror is watched?
When I'm at home alone or when i invite friends round, sleepovers,
-Have I ever decided to not watch horror?
when at home and there was a horror film and I didn't want to watch it so I change the channel.
-How would i describe my experiences with horror films.
Well i don't watch a lot of horror films so I could feel scared when watching it. also thinking bad things may happen in reality which is frightening.
-Main audience/
15-30 year old, Both Male and Female.
-Effects?
Entertaining, humor, shared experience, escapism, fear but ultimate safety.

Alfred Hitchcock.

• Highly influenced film maker.
• Most respected man of time.
• He is a director and producer.
• Directed more than 50 films.
• His films draw heavily on fear and also contain black or droll humor.
• Many of his films contain appearances of the man himself Alfred Hitchcock.

Horror films.

The opening scene of psycho.

• The use of black and white is used even though colour was available was so that the audience can make their own judgement and minds up themselves.

• Role of the audience is that they made audience feel like spies sneaking into the middle of the couple. also the scene made me feel very uncomfortable. the director shot a closeup shot on the couple this was purposly shot so the scene wont look like a romance scene.

Steve Neale (1990)

Genre do not consist only of films: they consist also and equally of specific systems of expectation and hypothesis which spectators bring with them to the cinema, and which interact with the films themselves during the course of the viewing process. these systems provide spectators with the means of recognition and understanding.

Case Study.

Shaun Of The Dead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfDUv3ZjH2k

Conventions I've noticed in many horror films.

Blood, zombies, screaming, deaths, location unknown, isolation, shadows, domestic settings

• Mise-en-secene: isolated or at home
• Camerawork and editing: handheld camera fast cuts to create tension.
• Characters: Outcasts, evil, survivors.
• Themes: Deaths
• Icons: Weapons, Candles Knives (Used because knives are very frightening and real)
• Music and Sound: Screams, panting, breathing deeply, crying, shouting, tense, strong beats, strings

Key Concepts (area of study) of media studies.

• Textual analysis
• Representation
• Genre 
• Institution

The key areas for analysing film conventions.

• Sound- Diegetic and non-diegetic
• Effects- Speed, effects, type of cuts.
• Camera work- shots, movement, angles.
• Mise-en-scene- Light, set, props, costumes, makeup.