media work

1. By Kesia Trevor-Massey

2.  Research was important to our project as we needed to connect to a target audience
and also connect on a wider scale to the horror genre. So I decided to take in to
consideration the key horror conventions for example D.I.S.T.I.N.C.T. This means,
setting, technical, iconography, characterisation and themes + tones. These are all
equally important when creating a horror trailer as I will go on to explain further in this
post.
 As a class we watched multiple horror movies as inspiration, for example, Halloween,
The Crazies, The Woman In Black and The Cabin in the Woods. These films each gave a
different horror theme in each movie, for example, Halloween focused more on the
slasher style movie which wasn’t unusual for its release date in 1978. Whereas The
Crazies focused more on gore and apocalyptic genre of horror. The movie that my group
liked the most and decided we would get the most inspiration from would be The
Woman In Black. This was because it focused more on the paranormal horror, which is
seen as the ‘scariest’ genre of horror in the 21st film industry. It focused on the revenge
plot of a wronged ghost.
 Apart from our class screening of horror movies I also applied my own knowledge of
horror movies to this project. Although my knowledge of horror movies is limited
compared to others as my personal preference of film is not the horror genre. I do enjoy
watching trailers and applied my knowledge of horror trailers in the making of my own.

3.  Don’t
 Ignore
 Setting
 Technical
 Iconography
 Narrative
 Characterisation
 Themes + Tones

4.  When creating a horror movie it is important to take in to
consideration the setting of your film. This is because you need a
place that will converge with the horror genre and make the trailer
and film scary to the audience. Also it needs to be in a setting that is
believable, allowing the audience to actually believe that something like that
would happen in that setting, this will make the audience’s fear factor increase making the trailer
and movie more enjoyable overall.
 It was important for me to take in the Binary Opposites theory by Claude Levi-Strauss. This theory
basically means, for example, say one character was bathed in light and another character covered
by darkness; this could indicate that the person in the light is the ‘hero’ of the film, Whereas, the
‘Villain’ would be the person in the darkness. We took this theory into consideration while thinking
of setting as we wanted someplace that would be dark and muggy so that it would indicate to the
audience that something bad was about to happen in the plot.
 The marshland setting we chose was perfect as it was dark, muddy and we felt that it had the
potential for a horror setting.
 However, having said all that more recent horror movies like, Poltergeist, Insidious and
Paranormal Activity all feature nice looking, sunny suburban houses. I think this was done
because it gives a shock to the audience when something bad happens inside the house as
it will not be expected because of how light and nice-looking the setting is.

5.  When thinking about technical codes it is important to think about
sound, lighting, focus, mise-en-scene and shots.
 Sound – Through my research that most trailers use diegetic and non-diegetic sound. This
was something that we later incorporated into our own trailer. Voice overs are often
used in horror trailers and therefore in order for our to converge we also used a voice
over in our own trailer. And some diegetic sound that was used in out trailer was
screaming coming from the main character.
 Lighting – Horror films often consist of a lot of low key lighting and
little high key lighting. This is conventional to horror movies as it
well know that scary things happen in the dark and the producers
are trying to increase the fear factor in the audience. So in my
own horror trailer we used lots of low key lighting and low
contrast lighting to create a moody and dramatic effect.
 Focus – horror trailer use a range of focus, from deep, selective
and soft. This is so it is more interesting to the audience. We did the same as we used
deep focus to look at everything in the surroundings and used selective to focus on the
main character and also soft to sometimes have the edges blur together.

6.  Mise-en-scene – This is basically what is in the shot. In horror trailers that I have
researched I have often found that the main character is often in the shit no matter
where the setting is. This is something we incorporated into our own trailer where
the ghost is often in nearly every mise-en-scene.
 Shots – It is important to get a variety of different shots throughout the film making
process as it makes the trailer more interesting overall. We used lots of close up
shots and wide shots with high and low angles.

7.  Iconography is used in films to describe the visual language of cinema,
particularly in the field of genre. It is important to genre conventions
as we expect to see a certain object of screen when we see a
particular genre, for example, horror movies often have props such a
knifes, guns and blood. These are all things we expect to see within a
horror movie. In modern horror films we expect to see the use of dark
lighting (low key lighting). These are all genre indicators and are
called the iconography of the mise-en-scene or genre.

8.  When doing research on horror films I watched a lot of different types of horror movies.
Something that I came to realize was that they each follow a narrative structure, this
made me realize that this was something we needed to plan out ourselves. So in order
to achieve this my group sat down and planed the plot of out horror film, this would also
make filming easier. However, horror trailers I have come to realize follow a structure
too, they often start of slow and use longer clips and towards the end of the trailer the
pace quickens, music gets louder and more dramatic and clips get shorter and shorter.
We took this into consideration when editing out own trailer.
 Todorov’s Narrative Structure theory is very important
when it comes to the plot of the movie as suggested
earlier. The theory explains that every movie starts of
with an equilibrium then disruption of the equilibrium,
after that, recognition of he disruption then an attempt to
repair the damage and finally a new equilibrium is made.
When writing out plot we decided to follow these rules
made by Todorov.

9.  Vladimir Propp’ Character Functions:
1. The villain (struggles against the hero)
2. The donor (prepares the hero or gives the hero some magical object)
3. The (magical) helper (helps the hero in the quest)
4. The princess (person the hero marries, often sought for during the narrative)
5. The false hero (perceived as good character in beginning but emerges as evil)
6. The dispatcher (character who makes the lack known and sends the hero off)
7. The hero [AKA victim/seeker/paladin/winner, reacts to the donor, usually marries
the princess

10.  When researching characters in
horror movies it became clear that
Propp’s character functions theory is
evident in not only horror movies but also other genre’s. This theory is
evident in our own work as the villain is first seen as the ghost,
however, the audience later find that it is actually the teacher who is
the villain. Also the hero is ‘chloe’ as she saves the day by getting rid
the teacher ‘john’ and allowing the ghost to get her revenge.
 Another theory I looked at was Bordwell and Thompson’s time and
space theory. They believed that a chain of events within a media
form cause effect on a relationship occurring in time and space and
the narrative shapes this material in terms of time space such as;
where and when things take place.

11.  Whilst doing my research on horror films i found that there were some reoccurring
themes in nearly every horror film, for example, the main themes of horror films
are:
 Ghosts, serial killers, demons, exorcisms, hauntings, gore and revenge.
 Of course all of these themes are used for entertainment to the audience and to
also scare them.
 Taking into consideration these main themes of horror we decided to also use a
standard horror theme. Whilst creating the plot of our story we decided to use a
revenge plot with a serial killer as the villain.

12.  Whilst researching for my horror project it became clear
that women are often sexualised in horror movies. There
have been many theory’s to this observation, here are a few:
 Laura Mulvey – The concept of gaze is how the audience (mainly
men) look at women or how woman are presented. The camera
often lingers on the curves of the female body. This relegates
woman to be seen as objects.
 Jeremy Tunstall – He argues that woman are represented in 4 ways; domestic,
sexual, consumer and marital. He says that women are depicted as busy housewives,
as contended mothers, as eager consumers and as sex objects.
 Carol Clover – This theory argues that the person who usually survives the slasher
movies is the sexually inactive girl. She usually has dark hair and is rather
masculine. This theory could be used in a way to show the audience that sex is a
dangerous thing.

13.  When creating a horror movie it is important to create a target audience. My group
also decided to create a target demographic as all movies have an age rating
restriction on. Ours we decided would be a 15 as it had elements in that would not
be suitable for a younger audience. In order for us to get a good understanding of
our target audience I also made various questionnaires asking things like ‘horror
preference’ and how they may have found out about upcoming horror movies. We
also screened our first draft in front of our class and got feedback on the plot and if
they liked or disliked it.

14.  As our film is loosely based on ‘The Woman In Black’ we figured it would handy to do
some research on marketing and distribution of the film. One thing I did notice
about the film was that it was rated a 12A, this is not something that I agreed with
as I thought it was rather scary and inappropriate for children of that age, with my
understand of horror films I thought it should have been rated a 15.
 The woman in black promoted their film very well
and also used a well known actor in who had a big
fan-base.
 The release of the film was massive having 2,855
screenings in the USA generating $20,874,072 and
412 screenings in the UK generating £3,153,020.
As mentioned earlier it was advertised over a wide
range of media platforms which is a reason for why
it was such a big success.

15.  Claude Levi-Strauss – Binary opposites
 Tzvetan Todorov – Narrative Structure
 Vladimir Propp – Character Functions
 Bordwell and Thompson – Time and Space
 Laura Mulvey – Male gaze
 Jeremy Tunstall – Character Roles
 Carol Clover – Final Girl