Research Type: Questionaire

1. Out of the following types of villain/killer, which is the most frightening to you in a horror film?

Insects

Mythical creatures & animals

Masked killers

The Paranormal/supernatural

Psychotic children

Other

2. Where are many of the horror films you watch set?

Public building

Characters' own home

An isolated and unfamiliar place to the character

Underground

Forest

Other

3. What is the main component to you that add to the overall effect of a horror trailer?

Music

Voice overs

Fades & ellipses

Other

4. How often do you watch horror films?

Often

Sometimes

Never

5. How often do they scare you?

Often

Sometimes

Never

6. Are you attracted to gore, sex and violence in a horror film?

Yes

No

Sometimes

7. Have you recently seen a horror film?

Yes

No

8. If yes, was it a subgenre of horror?

Yes

No

Unsure

9. Gender:

Male

Female

10. Your age:

12 - 15

16 - 18

19 +

Exploring The Research Methods

Why the interest - gore, plot, characteristics, sub genre

Target audience expectations - themes

Recognition of horror - visual, sound

Setting, music/sound, narrative, iconogrpahy

Personal experience relation to film

Fears, unknown, unencountered

Bar chart

Pie chart

Polls/survey

Questionaire

Observation

Votes

Experiment

Case studies

Interviews

Beginning Audience Research

By performing research on my target audience, I can relate aspects of our trailer to them and take their specific interests and preferences into consideration.

Quantitive research is useful in the way that it provides clear, factual evidence that a conclusion can be drawn easily from, whereas qualitive research provides information on the individual candidates, and although this is more in depth, it is more difficult to simplify.  I believe that Quantitive research will be more beneficial as it is quicker and easier for those taking part, attracting a larger number of participants and hopefully a wider range of opinion.  It also allows me to present my findings and directly consult them when creating the trailer. 

Alien - 1979

Ridley Scott - Director

Scott's box office disappointment with The Duellists was compounded by the success received by Alan Parker with American-backed films — Scott admitted he was "ill for a week" with envy. Scott had originally planned to next adapt a version of Tristan and Iseult, but after seeing Star Wars, he became convinced of the potential of large scale, effects-driven films. He therefore accepted the job of directing Alien, the ground-breaking 1979 horror/science-fiction film that would give him international recognition.

Alien

While Scott would not direct the three Alien sequels, the female action hero Ellen Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver), introduced in the first film, would become a cinematic icon. Scott was involved in the 2003 restoration and re-release of the film including media interviews for its promotion.

At this time Scott indicated that he had been in discussions to make the fifth and final film in the Alien franchise However, in a 2006 interview, the director remarked that he had been unhappy about Alien: The Director's Cut, feeling that the original was "pretty flawless" and that the additions were merely a marketing tool.

Approach and Style

Strong female characters.


Some of his movies feature strong conflicts between father and son that usually end with the latter killing the former (Blade Runner, Gladiator) or witnessing the event (Kingdom of Heaven, Robin Hood). The Lord of Darkness in Legend also mentions his "father" on a few occasions. As part of the conflict between father and son there are some repetitive scenes: in Gladiator, the son hugs the father seemingly as an expression of love but this embrace turns into the suffocation and death of the father. There is a similar sequence in Blade Runner.

Scott utilises cityscapes as an emphasis to his storytelling (i.e., a futuristic Los Angeles in Blade Runner, Tokyo in Black Rain, Jerusalem in Kingdom of Heaven).

In Gladiator, Blade Runner and Kingdom of Heaven, a son gets to know his father when he is grown up. Other common elements are that the mother is not seen, and that the son or father is seen performing his last actions. For example, Roy Batty is dying when he saves Deckard, Maximus dies after killing Commodus and Godfrey of Ibelin kills some enemies after he has been mortally wounded by an arrow. In addition, the hero is saved from death before attaining his greatest deeds: Deckard is saved by Rachel, Maximus is saved by a slave and Balian is saved by a Muslim enemy. Similar situations can be seen in Tony Scott's Man on Fire.

Military and officer classes as characters reflecting his father's career, such as in G.I. Jane and Black Hawk Down and Kingdom of Heaven.

Storyboarding his films extensively. These illustrations, when made by himself, have been referred to as "Ridleygrams" in DVD releases.

Like Stanley Kubrick, Scott was once known for requesting a great many takes. This was evident on Blade Runner: the crew nicknamed the movie "Blood Runner" because of this.

He often makes use of classical music (the Hovis advertisements, Someone to Watch Over Me).

Extensive use of smoke and other atmospheres (in Alien, Blade Runner and Black Rain), plus fans and fan-like objects (Blade Runner, Black Rain and the large Boeing jet engines in the 1984 TV advertisement). Fans are also used in Hannibal, for symbolic purposes.

Consistency in his choice of composers, using Jerry Goldsmith (Alien and Legend), Vangelis (Blade Runner and 1492: Conquest of Paradise) or Hans Zimmer (Black Rain, Thelma & Louise, Gladiator, Hannibal, Black Hawk Down and Matchstick Men). Scott has also twice used songs by Sting during the film credits ("Valparaiso" for White Squall and "Someone to Watch Over Me" for the movie of the same title).

Halloween - 1978

John Carpenter - Director

His first major film as director, Dark Star (1974), was a science fiction black comedy that he wrote with Dan O'Bannon (who later went on to write Alien, borrowing freely from much of Dark Star).

The film reportedly cost only $60,000 and was difficult to make as both Carpenter and O'Bannon completed the film by multitasking, with Carpenter doing the musical score as well as the writing, producing and directing, while O'Bannon acted in the film and did the special effects.

Halloween

Halloween (1978) was a smash hit on release and helped give birth to the slasher film genre. Originally an idea suggested by producer Irwin Yablans (titled The Babysitter Murders), who envisioned a film about babysitters being menaced by a stalker, Carpenter took the idea and another suggestion from Yablans that it take place during Halloween and developed a story. Carpenter said of the basic concept: "Halloween night. It has never been the theme in a film. My idea was to do an old haunted house movie."

The film was written by Carpenter and Debra Hill with Carpenter admitting that the music, not the film, was inspired by both Dario Argento's Suspiria and William Friedkin's The Exorcist.  Carpenter again worked with a relatively small budget, $320,000. The film grossed over $65 million initially, making it one of the most successful independent films of all time.


Carpenter relied upon taut suspense rather than the excessive gore that would define later slasher films in order to make the menacing nature of the main character, Michael Myers, more palpable. At times, Carpenter has described Halloween in terms that appeared to directly contradict the more thoughtful, nuanced approach to horror that he actually used, such as: "True crass exploitation. I decided to make a film I would love to have seen as a kid, full of cheap tricks like a haunted house at a fair where you walk down the corridor and things jump out at you."

The film has often been cited as an allegory on the virtue of sexual purity and the danger of casual sex, although Carpenter has explained that this was not his intent: "It has been suggested that I was making some kind of moral statement. Believe me, I'm not. In Halloween, I viewed the characters as simply normal teenagers."

Techniques

His films are characterized by minimalist lighting and photography, static cameras, use of steadicam, and distinctive synthesized scores (usually self-composed). He describes himself as having been influenced by Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Nigel Kneale and The Twilight Zone.
With the exception of The Thing, Starman, and Memoirs of an Invisible Man, he has scored all of his films (though some are collaborations), most famously the themes from Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13. His music is generally synthesized with accompaniment from piano and atmospherics.
Carpenter is an outspoken proponent of widescreen filming, and all of his theatrical movies (with the exception of Dark Star and The Ward) were filmed anamorphic (proportional to T.V screen) with a 2.35:1 or greater aspect ratio.

The Monstrous Feminine

"What is it about Jaws, Alien, Little Shop of Horrors and Poltergeist that plays on men's fear of women? And what is it that they fear most? The Monstrous-Feminine examines the role of women in horror films. The author argues that when a woman is constructed as monstrous, it is almost always in conjuction with reproduction and mothering functions. In this exploration, using detailed analysis of Carrie, The Exorcist, Psycho and Alien among others, Creed identifies the seven faces of female monstrosity-archaic mother; monstrous womb; vampire; witch; possessed monster; deadly femme castratrice and castrating mother. The argument then moves on to challenge the Freudian concept that a woman terrifies because she is castrated-Creed holds forth that the woman acting as castratoris what creates horror for men.The Monstrous-Feminine goes on to discuss and analyze what these images mean for feminist film theory, as well as revealing important clues about masculinity." - review from Google Books on 'Barbara Creed's: The Monstrous Feminine'

Extract from the Freuden text that 'The Monstrous Feminine' is based on.

In 'Carrie', the film's most monstrous act occurs when the couple are drenched in pig's blood, which symbolises menstrual blood in the terms setup by the film.  Women are referred to as 'pigs', women 'bleed like pigs', and the pig's blood runs down Carrie's body at a moment of intense pleasure, just as her own menstrual blood ran down her leg during a similar pleasurable moment in the shower.  Here, women's blood and pig's blood flow together signifying horror, shame and humilliation.

Audience Theory - Cultivation


Cultivation research looks at the mass media as a socializing agent and investigates whether television viewers come to believe the television version of reality the more they watch it. Gerbner and his colleagues contend that television drama has a small but significant influence on the attitudes, beliefs and judgements of viewers concerning the social world. The focus is on ‘heavy viewers’. People who watch a lot of television are likely to be more influenced by the ways in which the world is framed by television programmes than are individuals who watch less, especially regarding topics of which the viewer has little first-hand experience. Light viewers may have more sources of information than heavy viewers. Judith van Evra argues that by virtue of inexperience, young viewers may depend on television for information more than other viewers do, although Hawkins and Pingree argue that some children may not experience a cultivation effect at all where they do not understand motives or consequences. It may be that lone viewers are more open to a cultivation effect than those who view with others.

Audience Theory - The Copycat

Copy Cat Theory

This is the original traier for the film 'A Clockwork Orange' that I found on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/embed/u7rOcTA3KXs

Copy Cat Theory = Copycat crimes are criminal acts that are modeled on previous crimes that have been reported in the media. A film that sparked many copy cat violent killings and attacks was 'A Clockwork Orange'. The Director bannded his own film because of these events.
Clockwork Orange was released in British cinemas in 1971 with an X rating. It got four Oscar nominations.

It was adapted from Anthony Burgess’s novel written in the invented street slang Nadsat.

The film’s violent scenes sparked copycat attacks. In one, a 17-year-old Dutch girl was raped in Lancashire by a gang chanting Singin’ in the Rain.

In another a child was beaten by a 16-year-old boy wearing white overalls, black bowler hat and boots.

Stanley Kubrick, the film’s director, voluntarily withdrew the film from British cinemas in 1973.

After the director’s death in 1999, the film was re-released in Britain.

Channel 4’s screening of it in 2002 was its first on British mainstream TV.

In 2003 Peter Foster, of Bridlington, Yorkshire, received two life sentences for murders 13 years apart; the murders were said to replicate the film’s attacks.

Audience Theory - Desensitisation

Suggesting that constant exposure to such accessible violence on a regular basis within the media no longer makes such a strong emotional impact upon the audience, possible causing them to also be insensitive towards violence in everyday life.

Thousands of studies have looked at whether there is a link between exposure to media violence and violent behaviour. Over 98% say yes. The evidence from the research is overwhelming. According to the American Academy of Paediatrics, "Extensive research evidence indicates that media violence can contribute to aggressive behaviour, desensitization to violence, nightmares, and fear of being harmed." Children become immune to the horror of violence, gradually accept violence as a way to solve problems, imitate violence they observe on TV, and identify with characters (victims or victimizers) they see on TV.

Desensitisation theory

View more presentations from lwalton9.

Audience Theory - Uses and Gratifications

During the 1960s, it became increasingly apparent to media theorists that audiences made choices about what they did when consuming texts. Far from being a passive mass, audiences were made up of individuals who actively consumed texts for different reasons and in different ways.

In 1948 Lasswell suggested that media texts had the following functions for individuals and society:


surveillance

correlation

entertainment

cultural transmission

Researchers Blulmer and Katz expanded this theory and published their own, stating that individuals might choose and use a text for the following purposes

Uses and Gratifications:
Diversion - escape from everyday problems and routine.

Personal Relationships - using the media for emotional and other interaction, eg) substituting soap operas for family life

Personal Identity - finding yourself reflected in texts, learning behaviour and values from texts

Surveillance - Information which could be useful for living eg) weather reports, financial news, holiday bargains

Since then, the list of Uses and Gratifications has been extended, particularly as new media forms have come along (eg video games, the internet)

Audience Theory - Reception

This theory extends the concept of an audience remaining active through the way an individual recieves and interperets a text, and how their gender, class, age and ethnicity may affect their reading.

This work was based on Stuart Hall's encoding/decoding model of the relationship between text and audience (the text being given a message/messages by the creator, and the audience understanding) and the difference between the reception of the message between members of the audience with different backgrounds. However, by drawing on common beliefs and experiences of the public the producers can relate the text to the audience. This is known as "preferred meaning"

Audience Theory - The Hypodermic Needle Model

This theory was the first attempt at an explanation for how an audience will react to the media. It suggests that the audience will passively receive the information present in a media text, without challenging the data. This theory was developed whilst media was still quite new - radio and cinema had only been introduced less than 2 decades prior to the development of this theory. Governments were beginning to use advertising to communicate a message, and produced propaganda used in forms of media such as newspapers, cinema, radio and posters.

The theory suggests that the experience, intelligence and opinion of an individual are not relevant to the reception of the information within the media text. It suggests that, as an audience, we are manipulated by the creators of media texts, and that our behaviour and thinking might be easily changed by media-makers. It assumes that the audience are passive. This theory is still made relevent during moral panics, and is used to explain why certain groups in society should not be exposed to certain media texts, for fear that they will watch or read sexual or violent behaviour and will then act them out themselves.

Audience Theory - Media Effects

"The media are responsible for a range of social problems."

Carrie 1976

The Director




1976

Brian DePalma

Very well known director who has been making films since the 60's

Carrie was his 9th feature film

Carrie marked a return for DePalma to major studio film-making (united Artists)

Other films of note in his filmography have been The Untouchables, Casualties of war and Raising Cain

Controversial director - often criticised for his blatant use of graphic violence - think Scarface

He's often been labelled a misogynist - as have many "horror" directors



Background of the film



Based on a Stephen King novel - the first Stephen King novel to be brought to film

The film, although distributed by a major studio was made on the relatively meagre budget of $1.8m

The film, like Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre was a major success for the studio grossing over $33m at the US box office

The filming took just 50 days to complete

DePalma is well known for being heavily influenced by Alfred Hitchcock

The name of the high school in the film is Bates High in homage to Psycho

Carrie is one of only a few horror films to have received numerous Academy Award nominations - Sissy Spacek and Piper Laurie (Carrie's mother in the film) were both nominated

DePalma wanted Bernard Herrmann to compose the score (Herrmann had worked with DePalma before) but he died before the film began. (Herrmann was the composer of the score for Psycho)

The four note violin theme for Psycho is used at pivotal moments in Carrie

The prom scene took over 2 weeks to shoot with 35 takes



Why the film is considered an important member of the horror canon



Not easily identifiable as a horror film. It is interesting to note that when I looked the film up on the internet, its genre is listed as drama/thriller/romance/fantasy/horror..

Difficult to define - some have considered it a subversion of the Cinderella tale, a psychological or supernatural thriller, a teen angst film, a feminist text and a text dedicated to the idea of the "feminine as monstrous"

One of the first horror films aimed at a teen audience - despite its Rating

One critic described it as an "observant human portrait"

A watershed film - perhaps because the "killer" is female

Introduces a "revenge fantasy" element to horror - think Nightmare on Elm Street

Some important filmic techniques are explored in the film

6 min slow-motion scene used to create suspense and tension

Split screen used in the Prom scene so that we don't lose focus of Carrie but we can still see the death and destruction she is unleashing

A shot of Carrie and Tommy on the dance floor

Laura Mulvey

"Visual pleasure and narrative cinema" - 1975

Using the theories of Freud and Lucan, it is apparent that women are viewed unequally to men, they are more sexualised.

Notion that cinema strongly influences an audience more than they think.

Voyeurism - the compulsion to seek sexual gratification by secretively looking at sexual objects or acts; the actions of a peeping tom.

Psychoanalytic Theory: Spectatorship & the "Male Gaze"

Exploring theory behind the male gaze.

"Film has been called an instrument of the male gaze, producing representations of women, the good life, and sexual fantasy from a male point of view". - Jonathon Schroedar 1998

After discussing the male gaze theory with women and men, I believe that the "Female Gaze", although present in film, is often overlooked.  Women identify similar things as an audience that men do in film, such as visual stimulus concerning their sexual orientation, and exploration of their fantasy displayed on screen, although this is less common as film rarely caters to the "Female Gaze".  As society changes and women are seen as equally sexual beings as men, male gaze blurs.

Paul Wells Research into Horror

12 subejcts from the following age groups:

16 - 25

26 - 40

41 - 45

56 - 80

. Asked for earliest horror film seen and latest horror film seen.