AN: Analysis of an Opening Sequence: Halloween (Carpenter, 1978)

Genre

• The film Halloween is a part of the slasher sub-genre which is clearly demonstrated in the opening sequence by the killer's use of a large knife which he uses to then kill his stock female victim who is seen naked before her murder. This convention follows a predictable formula for a slasher horror murder establishing the film in the first 5 minutes.
• Whilst the build up and carry out of the murder follows traditional expectations of the genre, the initial reveal of the killer's identity however defies convention by both revealing his identity in the opening scene, but also the reveal that the killer is also a child who is related to the victim challenges the audience's expectations immediately and makes the audience question the killer's motives.
• the opening follows the the characteristics of the genre in the build up to the kill which utelises the setting of a big large dark house, the recognisable weapon, and the defenseless female victim all following stock aspects of the genre.

Film Language

Camera

• A majority of the opening sequence is shot in an extended POV shot from the view of the killer as he enters the house locates a weapon before finally murdering his victim and running out of the house. The shot acts to build tension as well as a sense of powerlessness as it follows the killer's every move and helps detail what is going through the killer's mind through what he observes and does, such as picking up the knife or watching the victim and her boyfriend.
  
• When the killer murders his victim he looks away and looks at the knife, this conveys a feeling of distaste towards the killing whilst the mask the character wears restricts the view of the audience causing a claustrophobic sense of unease as their view of the action is heavily restricted.

Editing

• the opening sequence uses very little editing as it consists of one continuous POV shot from the killer's perspective. This technique causes discomfort in the audience as it is uncut whilst the reliance on timing over editing gives the sequence fluidity.

Mise-en-scene

• In the sequence a key prop which is used is the clown mask which is first seen when the victim and her boyfriend are making out on the sofa and is then later used by the killer to mask his identity, this contrasts with it's earlier playful use to convey the feeling of guilt on the audience as the audience empathises with the young couple in the scene with the mask's sudden change in use further discomforting the viewer.
• The sequence takes place at night and as such takes advantage of low key lighting, this is used to make the house feel cold and oppressive setting up the location's purpose and sight of the first murder.
• Time is taken to show off the killer's choice of weapon which in the case of Halloween is an impractically large knife, the size of the knife and the way the character holds it are designed to implement a raw sense of fear in the audience as the intentions of the character they have been following becomes clear.
• The strewn out clothing and subtle adjusting down of the jumper as the boyfriend walks downstairs hints as to what the pair were up to and reveal some of the reasoning behind the killer's actions.

Sound

• The sequence starts quiet with the only sounds being the giggling and flirting of the teenage couple as the killer walks up to and around the side of the house. The lack of non-diagetic sound in this part focuses the audiences attention on the couple and conveys the killer's intentions.
• When non-diagetic sound is introduced to the scene, it is introduced through a high pitched screech as the killer checks the window before leading to a quieter but continuous high pitch sound over the rest of the scene. This high pitch sound anchors the audience's reaction to the situation triggering a basic fear response creating a rise in tension.
• When the victim is murdered the killer turns away; this forces the audience to rely on the extra diagetic sound to understand what is currently happening. At this point all that can be heard is the stabbing and the screaming of the victim. This leads to a feeling of nausea as the fact the murder cannot be seen suggests greater brutality than is shown.

Titles

• the film goes for a more traditional approach to the implementation of titles by having on long sequence where the opening titles are written on the screen and not into the action. the sequence does however hold a very long slowly zooming in image of a jack o lantern to the film's main theme adding to the unease and building suspense.

Narrative

• The opening storyline follows the killer as he enters the house to murder his older sister who is sleeping with her boyfriend. The situation uses the stock characters of the young sexually promiscuous teenage couple, as well as a large forboding house, and a large iconic weapon.
• The use of the extended POV shot allows the action and sequences to flow between one another in an expected order.
• The main themality of the narrative is the unspoken reasoning behind the killer's murder which is hinted towards being focused around sex and sexual activity.
• Tension is created through the introduction of the high pitched non-diagetic sound, and is maintained through the slow movement through the house slow reveal of seperate elements such as the weapon, the couple's activity, and so on.

Representation & Ideology

• The main social group represented in the sequence are teenagers who are shown as being sexually active and uncaring and playful through the young couple making out on the sofa and then moving upstairs where it is hinted they have sex through strewn out clothing.
• The opening instills the values of a dislike towards casual sex and a disregard of family and parents through the killer's distasteful murder of his sister with the only presentable reasoning being her actions with her boyfriend.

Media Audiences

• The film is primarily targeted towards a teenage male audience shown through the sequences use of brutal murder and female nudity.
• The opening allows for a range of possible readings, the preferred reading of it is that the killer is related to the victim of the murder and that was murdered for her sexual promiscuity. Alternative readings could be that the killer is deranged or possessed and killed his victim without reason, or that the killing could be out of jealousy of the victim and her boyfriend.
• I personally see the opening scene as being a murderous psychopath upholding his own personal beliefs on what's right and wrong through the murder of his sexually active sister. My reading can be seen as being shaped by the fact i am a male teenager and that i see no problem with the activities of the young couple that i feel no empathy for the killer's actions.

Institutional Context

• The film being an independent low budget production has very little in the way of big name actors with the main standout name in the cast being Jamie Lee Curtis who obeys the "final girl" archetype prevalent in slasher films.
• The studio which made the film is a small independent studio called "Compass International Pictures" which is reflected in the films budget being $325,000
• The opening is done without any pro-filmic or post production effects and consists of a long POV shot and a crane shot around a house; the film also relies on audience imagination for the core impact of the murder to be felt. These aspects indicate both a low budget but also good production skill as they are able to make the opening very visceral and engaging with very little in the way of effects being used.

JD: Psychological Horror Mood-Board

Psychological horror is a sub-genre of horror, this style of horror often relies upon the characters distress and emotional instability to build up tension. this sort of horror plays on archetypal shadows, and/or the darker, or even concealed parts if people's personalities, the idea of this sort of horror is to create a sense of discomfort by using universal psychological vulnerability and fears.

Group 5 Prelim

This is our groups prelim task, we experimented with the 180 degree rule and tried out some new camera shots, notably the steadicam shot, which we had not used before, we thought it gave the appropriate feel to the clip, and it gave the impression of being there in the situation with the antagonist, making it more visceral.  

AN: Institutional Context: The Evil Dead

Independent Production: The Evil Dead (Raimi, 1981)

Production

• To generate investment to make the Evil Dead, Raimi made a short film called Within the Woods to show off his talent as a horror director to potential producers.
• The Evil Dead was made on a very small budget of just $100,000 as Raimi failed to attract any large investment leaving him to ask for donations and i some cases beg people for money to make the film.
• Most of the crew for the film was made up of Raimi's and his friend (also star of the film) Bruce Campbell's friends and family with the actors coming either through ads or were previously cast in his short film.
• Steve Frankel was the project's only prop/ set designer and as a result made most of the props for the film.
• The film was shot on 16mm film and was blown up to 35mm for printing.
• Due to the low production values the camera had very little proper mountings or rigs with the camera being strapped to a piece of wood to emulate steadicam for some sections.
• The film heavily used "fake shemps" (a replacement actor for someone in a film) when the actual actor wasn't available.
• The film used large amounts of practical pro-filmic effects including gallons of fake blood, prosthetics, stop motion animation for melting corpses,and large glass contact lenses.

Distribution

• The film was shown to Stephen King who loved it and gave a key line to the advertising campaign saying "the most ferociously original horror film of the year".
• The poster art for the film was made by an undiscovered artist Graham Humphries and became a huge success for the film's distribution with it's old and grungy aesthetic.
• The film was banned for a period of time in many countries for it's excessive violence and gore which helped drum up interest around it's controversy.
• The film caught the interests of New Line Cinema which after great response from preview screenings gave Raimi enough money to pay back his investors in full and agreed to distribute the film.
• The film had the unique for the time marketing spin of being released on DVD and home video simultaneously which heped to further increase buzz around the film.

HM: Research into Horror Reading source

• From horror people can have an experience they would not have in everyday life and can be very visceral. Horror brings out feelings we experience in modern day life and amplifies them. Such as adrenaline and nervousness.
• This aspect appeals to audiences making it highly successful. For example Nosferatu(Murna, 1922) expresses and amplifies disease and hunger which was prevalent in that day and age connecting to the audience. This makes horror highly popular.

  

• Horror monsters in their cultural contexts can give an insight into anxieties and concerns of the contemporary culture. This is expressed through the worries that people suffer in everyday life and the monsters they have to face metaphorically. Its therefore possible to identify general cultural and contextual trends in monsters created. 
• The political uproar of World War 1 produced contexts in both Dracula(Browning, 1931) and Dracula, which involved corrupt aristocrats.
• The film Psycho(Hitchcock, 1960) emphasises theories on the cultures understanding of the human psyche.
• Social conflict was shown in Living Dead (Romero, 1968) by putting a black man as the lead character which at the time was unthinkable as racism was rife within America in the 1960s.
• In the 70s horror became more violent and sadistic, this was prevalent in The Exorcist(Friedkin, 1972) and The Last House On The Left(Craven, 1972).  
• By the 80s horror had become even more visceral in mutilated images. This increased the production of slasher films. This was down to the audience becoming used to seeing these kinds of images.
• In the 90s horror connected with the comic horror affect. An example is scream(Craven, 1996) 
• The 2000s saw CGI becoming more widely used to create monsters bringing horror up to date with modern day technology. This also made horror into a larger pool of ideas as a genre as more realistic things could be created allowing people to display even more visceral and horrific images such as Saw(Wan, 2004). Political points were touched on such as overpopulation in Dark water(Salles, 2005) 
• Horror continues to provide a cultural catharsis over 100 years since it first hit celluloid unlike genres such as westerner's.  

 

 

This is our groups first attempt at any sort of filming, the filming day was a learning curb to say the least, this day allowed us to try out a great many different shots, such as worms eye view shots, continuity shots and many more, it also allowed us to trial out editing abilities, as we attempted to get out film as smooth as possible.

AN: Opening Sequence of a Horror Film: Nightmare on Elm Street

·         Close up shots of Krueger’s hands as he builds gloves creates a sinister feeling

·         Most prevalent sound Krueger’s breathing and soundtrack shows the antagonist’s anticipation

·         Long lingering shot as girl runs down the corridor creates a feeling of discomfort

·         Girl runs into dark industrial landscape from pure white light suggests danger and makes the location more oppressive

·         Never a full shot of the killer makes him enigmatic

·         Close up of the girl when she wakes up connotes fear wild eyes show her terror

·         Tracking shot of girl symbolizes how Krueger is following her

Group; production log - Wilderness wood

AN: Supernatural Horror Mood Board

Supernatural horror tends to follow the same conventions in how it uses some form of ghost, spirit or demon as it harasses or tries to take control of the living, supernatural horror tends to rely a lot on jump scares and creepy imagery to unnerve and scare the audience. The protagonists tend to be "normal people" who struggle to combat the threat due to its nature.

AN: research into horror: reading source 1

1) In the horror genre women were often shown as being weak and and powerless against the antagonist usually to be saved by the male hero, however in the 1970s many directors such as George A Romero decided to restructure how female characters were portrayed which led to them becoming stronger and started to be seen as the main protagonist actively trying to stop the threat.

2) The conventional stalk & slash film tends to follow a group of teenagers to somewhere remote where they drink, take drugs, have sex and so on. This usually then leads to each member of the group being picked off one by one until one is left to confront and defeat the murderer to reveal their identity and reasoning.

3) Slasher films were heavily marketed towards a young male audience with their extensive amounts of female nudity and gore.

4) At face value Slashers are taken to be basic and puerile entertainment for teenage boys however when you look into the moral values of the antagonist the ideas behind them become a lot more poignant with the idea that they instead show how the killer is punishing the teenagers for attempting to escape the social norm presented by their parents and adults, albeit very harshly.

5) The final girl is the concept of the last survivor of the killer's murdering spree will be a girl with qualities that set her apart from the others in the group, for example in the earlier stages of the film the final girl usually doesn't participate in the drinking etc and is instead distanced, this usually leads to her after all of her friends having been killed to trap confront and then kill the antagonist in a brutal way. Examples of this concept can be seen in films such as Friday the 13th (Cunningham, 1980), Nightmare on 

Elm Street (Craven, 1984), and Scream (Craven 1996).

HM: Mood Board psychological

 

• The blood and reaction shots in these shots from horror films accurately portray the way in which horror is represented as a genre to the audience. Most of the shots from these scenes tend to be in the dark which is typical of the horror genre.

 

HM: Wilderness woods recce

A few shots from wilderness Woods the Recce

Today we experimented fully in filming, photography and the use of a woods as a set. This allowed us to use the surrounding area to increase visual effect such as people coming in and out of shots threw trees. We were also able to make use of the good light. With a tripod we experimented with low angle shots which in some were pull focus as seen below. Panning shots were also experimented with the use of a tripod.

 

 

Group: Wilderness Wood Location Recce

What's the Purpose of the Trip?

The purpose of the trip is actively searching and analysing areas in which we think filming a horror film would be effective. We shall do this by sampling the area with still shots and takes. As a group we feel woods would be a conventional starting point on which to develop ideas to film horror.

Risk Assessment

a risk assessment aims to identify the possible dangers of the visit and helps us analyse how to reduce said dangers/ risks.
We have identified for Wilderness Woods:

• Protruding roots on the ground could be a trip hazard for those wandering around. this could cause some form of injury or lead to the damage of equipment if it is dropped. to minimise this risk, care must be taken whilst walking with equipment, always looks where you're going.
• Poisonous mushrooms could lead to poisoning etc, to avoid this, leave the mushrooms alone.
• Slippery leaves/ ground, may lead to people slipping over and hurting themselves in all manner of ways. to avoid this wear grippy footwear and watch where you are stepping.
• Rain can lead to people getting soaked and catching a cold, or it may lead to electrical and mechanical equipment getting damaged. to prevent this happening we shall wear/ carry with us waterproof clothing and umbrellas to help protect ourselves and equipment if it stats raining.

So what's the Plan?

we have decided for Wilderness Woods to try out some supernatural elements of horror. we thought for this we could incorporate some form of movements like moving leaves, we would achieve this by moving string beneath the leaves. another thing we could incorporate is some high angle shots to emphasise how isolated the woods are. We will also try panning shots and tracking shots to see the effects. we can incorporate some props such as creepy dolls or masks to use in our recce to experiments with possible shots and effects around them.

Group