Summer Homework - JASON

HORROR RESEARCH: JASON

HORROR

I picked to give some information about these three movies as they are three of my favorite horror films and all show different types of horror. So To begin my research I wanted to show some examples and just first of all establish what horror actually is.

Directed by	Jaume Balagueró Paco Plaza
Produced by	Julio Fernández
Written by	Jaume Balagueró Luis A. BerdejoPaco Plaza
Starring	Manuela Velasco Ferrán Terraza Jorge-Yamam Serrano Pablo Rosso David Vert Vicente Gil Martha Carbonell Carlos Vicente María Teresa Ortega
Box office	$32,492,948

REC (stylised as [●REC]) is a 2007 Spanish horror film co-written and co-directed by Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza.

The film premiere was in August 2007 at the 64th Venice International Film Festival, out of competition. It was also shown in October at the Sitges Film Festival and at the Málaga International Week of Fantastic Cinema in November, before going on general release in Spain later that month. It was also shown in February 2008 at the Glasgow Film Festival and had a UK release in April.

It was released on DVD in North America in 2009.

REC received acclaim from most critics. As of May 17, 2009, the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 96% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 20 reviews. Reviewing the film for the BBC, Jamie Russell called it "A runaway rollercoaster of a fright flick", praising the "faux-docu handheld style", and the sense of claustrophobia and confusion, claiming "[Rec] will definitely jangle the nerves", while criticising the lack of substance and "one-dimensional" supporting cast.

Bloody Disgusting gave the film four and a half stars out of five, with the reviewer saying, "[REC] has it all and is probably one of the best Spanish horror films in recent memory." Bloody Disgusting later ranked the film eleventh in their list of the 'Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade', with the article saying "Out of all the “shaky-cam” films... this one is arguably the best."

It also received a number of awards:

Goya Awards (22nd edition, 2008): Best New Actress (Manuela Velasco), Best Editing (David Gallart). Nomination: Best Special Effects (David Ambid, Enric Masip and Álex Villagrasa)

Fantasporto 2008: Best Film Prize

Fantastic'Arts‎ festival of Gérardmer 2008: Jury Prize, Prize of the young Public, Prize of the Public

Festival de Cine de Sitges 2007 : Prize of the Public, Critics Prize, Best Director Award, Best Actress Award for Manuela Velasco.

Reaper Award 2009: best Indie/Foreign production

The sequel, REC 2, premiered in September 2009, at the Venice Film Festival, and was commercially released in Spain in October. The sequel deals with the events immediately following the end of the first film. Two more movies have been announced, [REC] Génesis and [REC] Apocalipsis', set to be released in 2011 and 2012 respectively.

I loved this film and found the handheld style make the story very authentic.

I mixed the handheld camera “found footage” style and mixed it extremely well with the sub-genre of Zombies to create a very original film.

Directed by	Rob Zombie
Produced by	Malek Akkad Rob Zombie Andy Gould
Written by	Rob Zombie
Based on	Characters byJohn Carpenter Debra Hill
Starring	Malcolm McDowell Sheri Moon Zombie Tyler Mane Scout Taylor-Compton Brad Dourif Danielle Harris William Forsythe
Box office	$80,249,467

Halloween is a 2007 American slasher film written, directed, and produced by Rob Zombie. The film is a remake/reimagining of the 1978 horror film of the same name, the first in the rebooted Halloween film series and the ninth Halloween film in total.

Based on 107 reviews collected by Rotten Tomatoes, Halloween received an average 24% overall approval rating, with the consensus "Rob Zombie doesn't bring many new ideas to the table in Halloween, making it another bloody disappointment for fans of the franchise." By comparison, Metacritic calculated a normalized score of 47 out of 100 from the 18 reviews it collected. CinemaScore polls reported that the average grade cinemagoers gave the film was "B-minus" on an A+ to F scale; it also reported that 62% of the audience was male, with 57% being 25 years or older.

I felt that the remake of the original Halloween was very credible and really showed the dark side of Michael well.

Directed by	Neil Marshall
Produced by	Christian Colson
Written by	Neil Marshall
Starring	Shauna Macdonald Natalie Mendoza Alex Reid Saskia Mulder MyAnna Buring Nora Jane Noone
Box office	$57,051,053

The descent turned out to be one of the most successful British horrors to date.
Filmmakers originally planned for the cast to be both male and female, but Neil Marshall's business partner realized that horror films almost never have all-female casts. Defying convention, Marshall cast all women into the role, and to avoid making them clichéd, he solicited basic advice from his female friends. He explained the difference, "The women discuss how they feel about the situation, which the soldiers in Dog Soldiers would never have done." He also gave the characters different accents to enable the audience to tell the difference between the women and to establish a more "cosmopolitan feel" than the British marketing of Dog Soldiers.
The Descent premiered at the Scottish horror film festival Dead by Dawn on 6 July 2005. The film commercially opened on 329 screens in the UK and received limited releases in other European countries, eventually earning more than £6 million in box office receipts. The London bombings in the same month was reported to have affected the box office performance of The Descent.
A very well shot horror which gives British filmmaking a good name as it is very rare to get a good horror come from Britain. Very scary and i enjoyed it a lot.

George a Romero

I chose to look at Romero because of what an influence he has been to horror in particular zombie films.

George Andrew Romero is an American film director, screenwriter, and editor best known for his gruesome and satirical horror films about a hypothetical zombie apocalypse. He is nicknamed "Godfather of all Zombies."
Romero was born in New York City to a Cuban-born father of Castilian Spanish parentage and a Lithuanian-American mother. His father worked as a commercial artist. Romero attended Pittsburgh's Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating in 1960, he began his career shooting short films and commercials. One of his early commercial films, a segment for Mister Rogers' Neighborhood in which Mr. Rogers underwent a tonsillectomy, inspired Romero to go into the horror film business. He, along with nine friends, formed Image Ten Productions in the late 1960s, and produced Night of the Living Dead (1968). The movie, directed by Romero and co-written with John A. Russo, became a cult classic and a defining moment for modern horror cinema.

Horror films

Horror films are unsettling movies that strive to elicit the emotions of fear, disgust and horror from viewers. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres. Horrors also frequently overlap with the thriller genre

The term "horror movie" first appeared in the writings of critics and film industry commentators in response to the release of Universal's Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), but has since been applied in retrospect to similar films from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Horror films deal with the viewer's nightmares, hidden worst fears, revulsions and terror of the unknown. Although a good deal of it is about the supernatural, if some films contain a plot about morbidity, serial killers, a disease/virus outbreak and surrealism, they may be termed "horror."

Plots written within the horror genre often involve the intrusion of an evil force, event, or personage, commonly of supernatural origin, into the everyday world. Themes or elements often prevalent in typical horror films include ghosts, torture, gore, werewolves, ancient curses, Satanism, demons, vicious animals, vampires, cannibals, haunted houses, zombies and serial killers. Conversely, stories of the supernatural are not necessarily always a horror movie as well.

Early horror movies are largely based on classic literature of the gothic/horror genre, such as Dracula, Frankenstein, The Phantom of the Opera, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. More recent horror films continue to exploit the monsters of literature.

Horror trailer

A common convention is the ever growing “found footage”. Apollo 18, Rec, and Paranormal activity use this model, but The Blair Witch Project was really the first of its kind. The now infamous trailer began with the subscript "In 1994 three student film makers disappeared in the woods near Burkitsville, Maryland while shooting a documentary. A year later their footage was found." a few review quotes and that's it. That's the whole trailer. The audience knows something horrible happened to those kids, but you have to watch the movie to find out what.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZu1cTg-xUM

Some horror trailers ask a question. They set up a situation, and then leave the viewer wanting to know more. One of the best examples is the original 'Alien' (1979) trailer. The camera splices shots of the film with a long, slow pull back of a large, alien egg. The egg cracks, emitting an eerie glow there a few action shots but nothing too reveling and the trailer ends with the subscript "In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream." The trailer doesn't really tell us about the characters, doesn't establish much at all. All we know is something horrible is going to come out of that egg, something that makes people screams. We, the audience, want to know what's in that egg.

The music is also very effective in this trailer as it matches the eerie, scary feel of the visualshttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0oYNvmNZP2o

Some trailers like to let us know what is going to happen and what is going on. They want the audience to know that there is going to be gore and blood and what sort of torture is going to be used. ‘Splatter’ films use blood and extreme violence so like the films, the trailers don’t like to hold back as much as other horrors.
Films like saw, final destination and the devils rejects were famous for this. One film, hostel was famous for doing this and showed some of the torture being used in the film, in its trailer. Letting people know what they are coming to watch.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYbaveZ0NYY&oref=http%3A%2F%25

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Summer Homework - HOALIE

HORROR RESEARCH: HOALIE

The conventions of horror

Horror films are unsettling and made to:

• Frighten and scare
• Relate to the audience by showing them there biggest fears
• Panic
• Shock
• Make the audience feel on edge
• Have a terrifying finale

Characters:

• There is often a lead character in which is afraid of something, the majority of the time this lead character survives whatever if frightening them but on the odd film sometimes they do not survive.
• There is always a main character of ‘thing’ that scared the viewer and the ‘good’ character in the film, the majority of the time this character will harm or kill someone or something. This character usually gets defeated by the ‘good guys’ in the film but occasionally it will win and leave the audience in fear.
• The outcome of a Horror movie is usually that the good person survives and defeats the bad guy; however some Horror movies would leave the bad guy running free as this would leave the audience in fear and make them remember the film.

Camera angles/movement:
Camera angles are also used to cause suspence for the audience, as different angles may stop the viewer from seeing the whole picture there for things may jump out and surprise the viewer this may put them on edge.

• 

  Low angle
• High angle
• Extreme close up
• Extreme long shot
• Point of view shot
• Tilt
• Pan
• Arc
• push in pull out
• close up

Lighting:
Dark lighting is usually used in a horror movie as this makes it seem more scary as the audience can’t see everything , it could also bring out some of the audience fears if they are scared of the dark. It also makes everything seem more mysterious.

• Profile
• Under lighting
• Low key
• Back lighting

Sound:
Dark, slow, deep tones are used mostly in a Horror film , this is to make whatever happen seem dark and mysterious. With their  not being high notes the audience can see that what is happening will not be good as high notes are usually related to happy times. Dark and sad tones are usually related to horrible times. With the music being slow and depressing it would put the audience in edge and make them feel nervous with what is about to happen.

• Eerie/Scary music
• Stabs
• Ambient
• Contrapuntal
• demonic laughs
• nursery rhymes
• incidental music
• sinister music

Editing:

• Long takes to build up fear and suspense
• sharp cuts
• fades
• graphic matches

Example

Scream

• You may not survive the movie if you have sex. 
• You may not survive the movie if you drink or do drugs. 
• You may not survive the movie if you say "I'll be right back." 

Additional rules (according to the killer):

• You may not survive the movie if you ask "Who's there?" 
• You may not survive the movie if you go out to investigate a strange noise

Scream 2

• The body count is always bigger. 
• The death scenes are always much more elaborate, with more blood and gore. 

Scream 3

• "You've got a killer who’s gonna be super human. Stabbing him won’t work, shooting him won’t work, basically in the third one, you gotta cryogenically freeze his head, decapitate him, or blow him up." 
• "Anyone, including the main character, can die. This means you Sid." 
• "The past will come back to bite you in the ass. Whatever you think you know about the past, forget it. The past is not at rest, any sins you think were committed in the past are about to break out and destroy you." 
• Basically in the third movie, all bets are off.

Three different Horror Films 

The Ring (Ringu)
Directed by: Hideo Nakata
Produced by: Taka Ichise
Written by: Hiroshi Takahashi
Release date: January 31, 1998
Budget: $1.2 million

I came to this only knowing the hype and the slightest bits of the story. I knew it was meant to be scary and I wasn't disappointed. The plot is good to describe it in one word but there are a few holes in it and something's aren't well explained. However it is a good story to follow as it is a form of a ghost hunt as they try to unravel the mystery. The whole thing has an air of uneasiness about it.

There's no blood or gore, just a real sense of being uncomfortable. The director has seen teen horrors before so he teases us, he has shots of people with doors just over their shoulder, or the TV lingering in the rear of the shot knowing that we are conditioned to expect something to jump out but then nothing does. Instead the scares come slowly and blatantly really not being shocking but just making your skin crawl.

The acting is superb all round. The real star is the director who uses music and sound effects to get the eerie effect but also uses images that are weird to just creep out the whole film.

The Messengers
Directed by: Pang Brothers
Produced by: Sam Raimi, William Sherak, Jason Shuman, Robert G. Tapert
Written by: Stuart Beattie, Todd Farmer, Mark Wheaton
Release date: February 2, 2007
Budget: $16,000,000
Box office: $54,957,265

While the story is typical, it managed to keep my attention and I was at least interested. The cinematography really soared in this film. Everything was very nice looking and the atmosphere was great. The backdrop of the house and the surrounding land really made it feel like it was in the complete middle of nowhere, and the old house itself, while it was your typical haunted house, was admittedly spooky looking.

The directors did a horrible job at building up suspense. They mainly relied on cheap scares like loud noises and random jumps. The music was really over the top and it just made it easier for the viewer to telegraph the next "scary" moment. I also didn't like how they pretty much just used one location for the whole movie. The house was the centerpiece of the story and that's where the majority of the filming took place so it got a little boring after awhile to see the same area. Also, I didn't like the close-ups of the actors. During a conversation, the camera would continually jerk from character to another in the span of five seconds and it got really annoying. The directors did create a decent atmosphere and they do get some points for making their movie stylish.

Ju-On: The Grudge

Directed by: Takashi Shimizu
Produced by: Takashige Ichise
Written by: Takashi Shimizu
Release date: January 25, 2003
Budget: $3,500,000

There are things that writer/director Takashi Shimizu does better in this version, and things he does better in the American version. In this version, I loved the brutal opening sequence. Although it's somewhat present towards the end of the American version, it is much more effective here. I enjoyed the more traditional Japanese home-, this film was shot on location in an actual house, whereas the American remake was shot on a house constructed on a soundstage. The Japanese house is more claustrophobic. On the other hand, the soundstage house was a bit grungier, which works nicely in the context of the remake. I liked this film's transition in the famous "stair crawling" scene, and I also loved some of the more dissonant music here.

Director Shimizu wrote the thing so he has to take some of the blame but to his credit he directs very well & Ju-on: The Grudge has an absolutely terrific atmosphere, I'd say it's probably one of the creepiest films I've seen in a long time & there are some very effective moments here, The ghosts are eerie & that sound they make that everyone mentions is also rather unnerving.

Horror Film Director 

The Conventions of a Horror Film Teaser Trailer

After watching several different horror teaser trailers, the first convention that was made paramount within these are that a lot of fast and quick paced imagery and clips are used to help emphasise the tension and suspense of the teaser.

I have also noticed that with teaser trailers very little story line and plot is given away, thus being to prevent too much of the main action being revealed. This helps to ensure the sense of unknowing and enticement. Horror films generally aim to shock, scare, entice, alarm viewers of factors that play on individuals common fears and present an extraordinary situation. During a teaser trailer snippets of infliction or pain are introduced to attract and ensure that the horror representation is implied.

Very often dark and gothic elements are introduced, thus being demonstrated through the area, music and body language (facial expressions) of the characters. These factors all help to entice and attract the audience. Very short and quick paced glimpses of these elements are revealed, so that it prevents too much of the action and shock to be shown. Several jump and gore scenes are all used to express the horror representation, which all help in contributing on playing with people’s psychological well-being.

Horror and thriller films can be closely linked to sci-fi or fantasy films, in that many of the aspects portrayed within the plots demonstrate factors of all things supernatural and inhumane. E.g. ghosts, vampires, werewolves, curses, masked serial killers etc… are examples of some of the common elements used within horror films.” and “Shaun of the dead”.

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Summer Homework - REBECCA

HORROR RESEARCH: BECKY

 MEDIA HORROR FILMS

Horror films are unsettling movies there to deal with the viewer’s nightmares and fears. They are there to scare us yet also to entertain us. Horrors films try push right to the boundaries getting more brutal and scarier so films we once called horror may now be seen as thrillers. There are many sub-genres within horror many which overlap with fantasy, science fiction and thriller. The sub genres would be slasher, vampire, zombie, J-horror, thriller, monster and psychological. All of these sub-genres will have typical conventions that help us distinguish between them. For example horrors have a typical convention of the victim falling over when being chased by the killer. When watching a horror, conventions like that are not surprising to us and most of the time we know what to expect.

In slasher horror films typical conventions would be a final girl. There is  almost always a 'final girl' who usually has a unisex name e.g. Sidney. She would be the good one out of her group of her friends, the one who is still a virgin, doesn't drink or do drugs and is usually is the main character, often resulting to being the survivor in the film. The 'final girl’ would be alive to confront the killer and the one left to tell the story. These female characters in horror films are treated more like decorative objects and are seen as dumb and pretty lacking in IQ and are often high school girls. The killer/monster in films especially slasher usually has a trademark characteristic weather it is the way they kill, who they kill, weapon or simply the clothing and masks. In slashers it would typically be a male killer usually with a history of child trauma and are masked, mute or have a signature weapon. The violence in a slasher would be quite high level being very graphic creating a lot of terror and gore. 

 Examples for these conventions would be films like “Scream” and “Halloween”.  Both scream and Halloween have the killers with trademark characteristic about them which would be the masks and they also both have a 'final girl'. 

Splatter would be similar to slasher when coming convention but there is not usually a final girl. In splatters you would expect extreme gore as it goes straight to the blood and guts without hesitation. These films through special effects tend to display how venerable the human body can be. Occasionally the gore becomes so excessive that it becomes a comedic device. Again in splatters a lot of the killers are covered by masks or have that trademark.

An example of splatters would be “Saw” and “Chainsaw Massacre”.

With psychological and supernatural horrors the conventions really would be possessions, dark forces and spiritual presences. A lot of it would be very jumpy and there would hardly be any violence bloody and gore similarly to J-horrors.  Its acts on the fear of the unknown so there is little violence as it’s based on that fear and superstition and the idea of evil forces existing in the world.

Conventions would be loud noises and strange things happening without explanations. 

Another sub-genre within horror would be zombies. Theses are creatures usually portrayed as either a reanimated corpse or a mindless human being.  Zombie films are generally horror films however some do crossover into other genres such as comedy, science fiction or thriller. Zombie films would have a lot of typical conventions such as the way the look and walk around. They are always in packs contaminating and changing everyone they bite. There is also usually a group of people that stick together as they haven't been turned into a zombie yet but by the end only a couple would have survived.

Examples of zombie films would b
e “Dawn of the Dead”, “28 days later

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