Task 4
- 1. Why is horror the best genre? Horror has been around since the creation of communication. The genre horror has been successful as it has been the genre that has had the most movies created and the evolution of horror has been growing the most than any other genres. Movies that are based on the horror genre, consist of scenes with violence, jump-scenes, disturbing, fearful and shocking figures. Horror movies were designed to try to scare and raise the audiences blood presses, with screams and laughter. Horror taps into the psychological and emotional effects on the parts of the human’s brain. The horror movies address the audience’s innermost fears and desires, scaring people with their fears. Horror seen as aesthetic, visually pleasing, but the use of sound and silence is important just as the actions as it helps to create tension, causing people to be ‘on the edge’ of their seats when watching the movie. Also, horror movies leading people to develop cognitive effects such as, when people have watched a scary movie, they will become more aware and paranoid as if they hear a sound they will tend to run away or open doors slowly, as done by characters in the movies. Furthermore, horror movies sometimes even reflect the social and political anxieties of the cultural moment. The first horror movie was made in 1896, Le Manoir du Diable, which was released in the United States as The Haunted Castle and in Britain as The Devil's Castle. The horror film is originally named as Le Manoir du Diable and was created and directed by one of film's earliest visionaries, Georges Méliès. It is a French short silent film, three minutes long, that consists of a flying bat, a medieval castle, a demon figure, skeletons, ghosts, witches and a crucifix to dispatch evil; which then becomes a popular feature used in other horror movies made later, as the crucifix object helps the characters in the horror films kill and send off the evil figures that try bring harm to them. Therefore, this object is effective to use in a horror film that consists of demons, ghosts and other evil figures as the crucifix will fight them off. When the film was created, it was seen as a different and new recording to people who lived during that era, as even though the film was only three minutes long, a much shorter film than ones created today, the audiences thought that it was a great film made with the genre of horror. The film was made to elevate amusement and wonder from the audiences rather than fear as the audience found the evil figure included in the scene as negative and evil. Furthermore, this lead to other horror movies to be made as the audience were scared of certain figure, other movies would include them too, hence the growth of horror movies. Referring to the audience spectatorship, horror is the main genre that creates audience spectatorship because when the audience watch horror movies, they are
- 2. active and passive but more active than passive. This is due to because people are likely to scream, get scared and jump. These effects will then lead to the audience to talk to other people watching as well about what had just happened and often whilst something is happening, they speak as if they are in the movie saying, “Don't go in that room!”. Also, most horror movies that contain a killer, leads to people to be active as people will talk to one another, saying who they think is the killer from the characters. Furthermore, due to modern technologies, horror movies have also been able to be shown in 3D, three- dimensional. This would definitely lead to the audience to be passive as the three-dimensional effects would allow people to experience the movie in a different way than from watching it normally and lead the effects getting closer to the audience. Therefore, the audience are more active than passive whilst watching a horror movie because people interact whilst watching the film. The audience are also active after watching the movie because some horror movies will leave people with a question, leading people to talk about what just had happened in the movie. However, there are some parents in which causing the audience to be passive as when they are receiving information, as listening to watch the characters are saying in the scenes. Horror movies have led to increasing LARPing, Live Action Role Play, growing within the genre. For instance, events have been created like ‘Comic-con’ where people who are fans of a specific movie will dress up as a character from the movie and come together to share their similar views and affections about a movie. In addition, at some comic-con events, actors and producers from the movies may even attend the event, leading people to get closer to movie. Also, theme parks have contributed to festivals that link with the movies such as, Thorpe Park, in United Kingdom, creates ‘Fright Night’ every year when it’s Halloween to celebrate the scary festival. At the theme park, even though there will be rides for people to go on, there will also be new areas around the theme park which have been set up relating to the festival, Halloween. Having people dress up as characters from the horror movies and decorate the place with objects that reflect the festival and the horror movies.
- 3. Horror movies have also been shown in theatres as they have become a popular genre chosen to watch in theatres. Movies such as, Ghost Stories and Women in Black, which was the longest show presented in the theatres. This link give you access to buy the tickets to watch the Woman in Black movie in the theatres. https://www.thewomaninblack.com/ Films impact psychological and emotional effects. The psychological effect is long term as once the audience have watched the movie; it will affect them over a long period of time, still remembering the scary scenes. Whereas the emotional effect is short term as it only scares them at that moment when watching it. No other genre has impacted people like horror does, impacting the psychological and emotional features. An example of a horror movie that has affected the audience's psychological and emotional effects is the Exorcist (1973). The movie made people run out the cinema, faint and throw up due to the disturbing scenes, not because the movie was poor, but because the scenes shown in the movie were disturbing and spooked people out, referring to the emotional effect. Also, referring to the psychological effect, some people are still haunted from watching the movie.
- 4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OtrZoqN-xo&safe=active These two images have been captured from the documentary about the Exorcist movie. At one part in the documentary, there is an interviewer who questions the audience's views and opinions about the movie once they have finished watching it. Most people loved the movie but mainly people were so scared and frightened due to the movie being as horrific as this was the first movie to be the scariest. According to Blumler and Katz’s Uses and Gratification theory (1974), four functions were created that would suggest a society function was develop based on to fulfil the needs of the audience. Stating why people choose to watch a horror movie than any other genres. The first function is diversion, this suggests that people tend to be bored, therefore will pick to watch a horror movie that will cause them to feel scared and raise their adrenaline. The second function is personal identity. This means that when the audience watch a movie, they can relate to a character in the movie. For instance, in the movie ‘Cabin in the Woods’, the characters were mainly based on teenage ages, relating to the audience. Therefore, the audience, primarily teenagers watching the movie can see themselves as one of the characters and make conversation with their friends, suggesting to one another what character would fit their personality. Moving on, the third function is personal relationships which mean that there is substitutional of relationships with on screen characters than in real-life. This suggests that some people watching a movie may feel a connection with a charter in the movie. For example, there are many fans of a particular character watching the movie, therefore this emphasises the personal relationship function from Blumler and Katz’s theory. Lastly, is the surveillance function. This means that the use of media text for information, as the audience can gain information from the movie and watched from different areas.
- 5. The evolution of the horror genre has evolved massively and seen through audience reception. Audience reception suggests how different horror films are reviewed by spectors and the audience. This is because people who watch a movie will review the movie, whether if it is good or bad. In the past years, horror movies would of not have been given very good reviews due to people noticing that the movies created before would have just produced scenes that would show killing and death. But then, as the horror genre grew, the films began to get better as movies were beginning to higher reviews as the movies started to create messages and storylines to give the audience more information rather than before, just presenting scary scenes without any information for the audience to interpret. An indie film, also known as independent film, is produced without a major film studio and rather produced and distributed by independent entertainment companies, which are primarily based on a low budget. Indie movies are created in order to allow producers to create a movie that will be able to be presented in high quality but may not have spent a huge amount of money on it. For instance, the Blair Witch movie (1999) is an example of an indie film. The movie was presented as found footage which suggests that not a lot of equipment was used to record the film as found footage focusing on the character(s) holding a camera and filming the scenes from their point of view, but there were some scenes that would show scenes as not from
- 6. found footage. The movie’s budget was estimated to be around $60,000. This budget is quiet cheap compared to other horror movies created like, the SAW movie, which was around $10 million dollars. Stuart Hall originally developed the theory, encoding and decoding (1973). It suggests how media texts create message, encode, that will be then shown to the audience which they will try to understand, decode, what the message is saying through the media text. Horror movies may use this theory as a movie will be created with a message that will be presented throughout the film and then the audience will try to interpret the message. Although, not all horror movies may use the encoding and decoding theory as they may just show a storyline in the movie, without creating a message for the audience. For example, most horror movies use this theory as before the movie starts, it may say ‘based on true events’. This will suggest to the audience that some of the scenes in the film have happened before to other people in real life, which the movie has related its scenes to. A horror movie like ‘The Exorcist’ (1973) was based on a book which was based on real events that was about a young boy, Roland Doe, who was possessed by demons in 1949. The movie consists of scenes that were similar to what had really happened to the boy. The movie creates a message to tell the audience that people had been possessed before in the past and then the movie was created to tell the audience that there had been people that were affected by evilness. It tells the audience that possession by demons can happen. Therefore, as other horror movies began to show that the movie was ‘based on true events’, people would believe that the scenes shown in the movie would have really happened before, leading the audience to become more scared due to knowing that this had occurred before to someone.
- 7. Mulvey’s male gaze theory (1975) has been used in horror movies. The theory emphasises women in media texts as sexual objectification to the audience, primarily to receive attention from the male audiences. In the movie Cabin in the Woods, has shown some scenes that use the male gaze theory. For example, in the scene where, Anna Hutchison who plays as Jules, is at a fireplace, begins to dance in a sexual way. The scene begins with a close-up on her bottom and then moves back, as a long-shot, to show her full body. The camera keeps a central focus on her actions as she moves around in a provocative way. In addition, the clothing that she is wearing short and tight clothing, as revealing, which allow the audience to see much of her skin. Intertextuality refers to other films or television programmes referring to other films. It is used fairly even in horror movies as referring to other horror movies. For instance, in the Scream (1996) movie, it uses intertextuality as referring to The Exorcist (1973) movie. Billy, a character form the Scream movie, mentions having watched this film on television. The reason why horror has the most intertextuality is because other horror movies try to reference things from other horror films, make it more believable, like in our world. In ‘Paranormal Activity 3’ movie, the little girl’s bedroom is shown in the scenes, with mainly objects in the colour pink. This suggests that the girl is at a young age and allow the audience to recognise as the bedroom belongs to a young girl due to way it's presented in the movie, showing it as how a little girl in real life would have her room like too. Another reason why directors of horror films tend to use reference of other movies is to immortalise and popularise the other previous films. Horror movies are different from other genre movies as horror does not compete with each other because they dedicate to other horror films, like a book club. Whereas, like other genres compete with each other, not using reference to movies with same genre.
- 8. Women in Black film (2012) is an example of a movie which has had the meaning of the film changed due to the change of the storyline structure. The first Woman in Black movie was started as a book in 1983 and then turned into a movie in 1989. The first film in 1989 starts off with people in a church whereas, the second film in 2012 starts off with a scene with young girls playing with dolls in their room. The first movie follows the book’s structure, but on the other hand, the second film tends to follow a different structure but still includes the women in black clothing that tends to haunt both the men in the movies. Social media has fairly contributed to the growth in people's awareness and connection to horror movies, impacting the popularity and reception of the genre. This is because before a horror movie is shown in the cinema, people tend to watch the trailer or a short clip of movie which will give them a rough idea of what the movie will be about. Also, social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube allow people to know when a movie will be released which they can then go watch in the cinemas. In addition, after people watched a particular horror movie, if the audience enjoyed the movie they tend to follow pages about the movie and leave reviews of their opinion in the movie. Also, some movies have even gone the extra mile to create profile pages of characters from the movie, as real life characters in our world, The Blair Witch movie have done this approach, in order for the audience to follow as they would want to get closer to the movie. Social media allows people to become aware of a movie and gain more information about it.
- 9. In horror movies, they all use antagonists which is evil but as the years have gone by, specific antagonists have been created in certain years. From the 1920s to 30s the antagonist was mainly monsters, 40s to 60s was creatures (sci-fi), 70s as slashers, 80s with supernatural, 90s with teen slashers/zombies, 2000s with supernatural/slashers and 2010s mainly with supernatural/slashers (psychological thrillers). Pre and post viewing experience refers to the audience's opinions on the films before and after their release. The audience’s opinion on the film before and after the release varies. For instance, some movies may present a trailer or short clip of the movie before releasing it and then the audience may enjoy it and think it’s good, but then they watch the movie and end up not liking it. From personal experience, when I watched the trailer of the movie, Paranormal activity, the trailer made the scenes from the movie look very frightful and scary. But, once I watched the whole movie in the cinema, I thought the movie wasn't that great and scary to watch as most of scenes were quiet boring, just showing footage from the camera tape. However, when I watched the Scream movie, I thought it was different and caused me to watch the rest of the film series. I thought that the film series for Scream was fearful and made me feel an adrenaline when watching the movies. Scream 4 was the movie that I feel is better than the other films as the ending was with a twist and I was not expecting it at all. I searched for reviews for the movie Scream 4. The images below show what some people had to say about from watching the movie.