To gather information for audience expectations we created a survey and sent it out to years 7-13 in the school. Our aim was to see what people expected from the horror genre, and their likes and dislikes of it.
We chose 10 questions to ask and then put it on Survey Monkey:
https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/MX7F3VC
1. How old are you?
2. Do you like to watch horror films?
3. How often do you watch horror films?
4. What interests you about the horror genre?
5. What type of horror film do you like?
6. What is your favourite horror film?
7. What do you like about this particular film?
8. What age rating do you think a typical horror film would be suited to?
9. What do you expect to be featured in a horror film?
10. What do you dislike about horror films? The results from this survey and feedback from the showing of our opening to other media students are included on a later post titled, 'Test Audience Feedback'.
Hitchcock used cinematic devices such as
suspense, the audience as voyeur, and his well-known "MacGuffin," a
plot device that is essential to the characters on the screen, but is
irrelevant to the audience so is therefore always hazily described.
A central theme of Hitchcock's films was murder
and the psychology behind it.
Psychology of characters
Hitchcock's films often feature characters struggling in
their relationships with their mothers.
For example, In North by Northwest (1959), Roger
Thornhill (Cary Grant's character) is an innocent man ridiculed by his mother
for insisting that shadowy, murderous men are after him.
In The Birds (1963),
the Rod Taylor character, an innocent man, finds his world under attack by
vicious birds, and struggles to free himself of a clinging mother (Jessica
Tandy).
The killer in Frenzy (1972) has a loathing of women but idolises his
mother.
The villain Bruno in Strangers on a Train hates his father, but has an
incredibly close relationship with his mother (played by Marion Lorne).
Sebastian (Claude Rains) in Notorious has a clearly conflictual relationship
with his mother, who is (correctly) suspicious of his new bride Alicia Huberman
(Ingrid Bergman).
Norman Bates has troubles with his mother in Psycho.
Inspiration for suspense and psychological thrillers
In a 1963 interview with Oriana Fallaci, Hitchcock was asked
in spite of looking like a pleasant, innocuous man, he seemed to have fun
making films which involve a lot of suspense and terrifying crime, to which he
responded,
“I'm English. The English use a lot of imagination with their
crimes. I don't get such a kick out of anything as much as out of imagining a
crime. When I'm writing a story and I come to a crime, I think happily: now
wouldn't it be nice to have him die like this? And then, even more happily, I
think: at this point people will start yelling. It must be because I spent
three years studying with the Jesuits. They used to terrify me to death, with
everything, and now I'm getting my own back by terrifying other people.”
Modern day 'Psycho' trailer:
'Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho as embodies "the fear of the
boy next door".
The terror lays in the fact that the killer "could be
the person sitting next to you"
Anthony Perkins's maternally obsessed misfit in Psycho who
most perfectly distilled the modern fear of the monster who looks just like
you.
After half a century of terror, Psycho is still ensuring that
no one feels safe in the shower.'
Wes Craven
Wes Craven, the 'Master of Horror' left behind a legacy of genre-defining films that have shaped and satirised the horror movie:
'Romero directed and co-wrote Night of the Living Dead, which became a cult classic in the horror genre and a defining moment for modern horror cinema.
His ‘Dead’ films were a heavy influence on the Resident Evil video games, and as a result the film, despite the company rejecting Romero’s script for the film and choosing Paul W. S. Anderson’s instead.
Some critics have seen social commentary in much of Romero's work. They view Night of the Living Dead as a film made in reaction to the turbulent 1960s, Dawn of the Deadas a satire on consumerism, Day of the Dead as a study of the conflict between science and the military, and Land of the Dead as an examination of class conflict.
Romero ranked his top ten films of all time for the 2002 Sight & Sound Greatest Films Poll. They are The Brothers Karamazov, Casablanca, Dr. Strangelove, High Noon, King Solomon's Mines, North by Northwest (a film on which a teenaged Romero worked as a gofer), The Quiet Man, Repulsion, Touch of Evil and The Tales of Hoffmann. Romero listed the films in alphabetical order, with special placement given to The Tales of Hoffman, which he cites as "my favourite film of all time; the movie that made me want to make movies." Romero has also cited Carnival of Souls as an influence on his work.
Other inspiration for Romero's filmmaking, as told to Robert K. Elder in an interview for The Film That Changed My Life, was the film The Tales of Hoffmann.
"It was the filmmaking, the fantasy, the fact that it was a fantasy and it had a few frightening, sort of bizarre things in it. It was everything. It was really a movie for me, and it gave me an early appreciation for the power of visual media—the fact that you could experiment with it. He was doing all his tricks in-camera, and they were sort of obvious. That made me feel that, gee, maybe I could figure this medium out. It was transparent, but it worked".'
Throughout horror films there are common conventions used for the sound, these include:
-Long, suspenseful notes that contrast with short, sharp ones that surprise the audience
-Extreme changes in the pitch of notes
-Squeaking door and floorboards
-Screaming
-Orchestral music is the most popular sound used in horror films as it has great dynamic range, and can easily be varied in compositions for different films. It has been used since the birth of the genre and is still renowned today.
-Films such as Psycho include infamous sounds like the violin screech which is automatically associated with stabbing in the shower scene.
-Other famous music includes the piano notes from The Exorcist and the two low notes from Jaws.
A
psychological thriller is depicted by the heavy focus on unstable emotions of a
character or characters.
It generally focuses on a person’s mental state rather
than their physical ability as the psychological focus is to do with the mind
and character’s behaviour. In the film it normally involves a character having
a battle with their mind.
These types of films involve suspense, tension and
excitement in order to keep the viewer’s attention to make them want to watch
it through to the end. Psychological films stimulate the audience’s mood
from the realism of the film.
Todorov’s Narrative
Theory is present in many psychological movies.
1. There is equilibrium
2. This equilibrium is the disrupted by an event perhaps
3. There is then the recognition of this disruption
4. An attempt is then made to try and repair
the damage made from the disruption
5. A return or restoration of a new equilibrium is made
Psychological thrillers follow certain themes that can
shape the personality of a character:
Black
comedy Black comedy (or dark comedy) employs farce and morbid humour, which, in its simplest
form, is humour that makes light of subject matter usually considered taboo. Identity The definition of ones self. The characters are often confused about or doubt who they are and try to discover their true identity Death The cessation of life where characters either fear or have a fascination with death Mind The human consciousness; the location for personality, thought, reason, memory, intelligence and emotion. The mind is often used as a location for narrative conflict, where characters battle their own minds to reach a new level of understanding/perception Perception A person's own interpretation of the world around them through their senses. Often, the characters misperceive the world around them, or their perception is altered by outside factors e.g. like an unreliable narrator Reality The quality of being real where characters often try to determine what is real and what is not Existence/Purpose The object for which something exists. This is an aim or goal humans strive towards to understand their reason for existence. Characters often try to discover what their purpose is in their lives and the narrative's conflict is often a way for the characters to discover this purpose
Examples
of these types of films:
Black
Swan
Fight
Club
Zodiac
Psycho
Inception
The
Sixth Sense
Secret
Window
Equilibriumis shown through social realism Social realism is a naturalistic realism focusing specifically on social issues and the hardships of everyday life.
Breaking this is psychologically thrilling. To disrupt and break this equilibrium and social realismyou play with what is real and what is not
Characters and their states of mind:
Emphasis on characters possibly more than the plot
Mental resources rather than physical strength
Preying on the mind – deceptive games/demolishing the others
mental state
