Genre Presentation

Video link for slide 4: 

Fright Night

• The lighting for the trailer is dark, which is a convention of a horror movie because it creates mystery and suspense. Most of the clips in the trailer are in the night which goes with the genre because vampires can only come out at night.
• In vampire films there is usually a lot of sexual content, like in this one, the vampire kidnaps girls from the main characters classes and sexually attacks them, as well as girls there are guys going missing from his class too.
• In a lot of vampire horrors, the 'new neighbours' turn out to be strange and later on the main character finds out that it's because they are vampires, so I'd say Fright Night follows the conventions of a vampire horror in this way.

References

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1438176/ - accessed 28/09/11

The Grudge (2004)

• 
  • The trailer starts off with the name of the production company, in what looks like water and hair, which shows to the audience that the film has something to do with murder maybe?
  • The background sound would be non-diegetic because it doesn’t have a source to where it’s from. It’s just the sound of wind, whereas the scene is of water. It continues to have the sound of wind whilst showing the busy streets of Tokyo and also whilst it shows the lonely house.
  • The text is ‘washed in’ with the hair and ‘washed out’ again, but the font of the text is in plain black text, but it’s the way it comes in that creates the suspense and makes you as the audience wonder what the film is about.
  • The fast pace of the quick shots you the basics of what the back-story of the film is, for example the water sounds, show that someone was drowned and then it shows dark smoke floating around, which is the evil spirit or ‘The Grudge’ left behind.
  • Then there’s the voice of the main character telling you about her experience in the house, telling you about what she felt, something bad happened here? It also shows you what she saw; the house was telling her about what happened there?

References

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0391198/ - accessed 26/09/11

Dracula (1992)

• ·         The codes and conventions of a Vampire Horror are very dark lighting, which creates mystery and fear as well because a majority of audiences are afraid of the dark so this will make it scarier for them.  
• ·         The music in this type of horror is high violin music playing in the background. In Dracula the sound of lighting is used a lot as well which creates suspense and tension.
• ·         The use of blood is also very apparent too in this genre, which is a huge aspect because Dracula’s known as a blood sucking monster.
• ·         The colour red is also used a lot in this film as it is the colour of love as well as blood, which is a main part of this film seeing as it’s about the vampire coming to England to seduce a visitors’ fiancée and cause havoc in the foreign land.
• ·         There are scenes based around sexual content which is kind of a focus of the film because Dracula's here to seduce someone’s fiancée. There is a lot of use of the colour red as it is the colour of love and romance.
• ·         The title of the film is in red and looks like blood dripping on a black background, with the director's name in white and normal text font.
• ·         I think Dracula is a good example of the sub-genre because it has the main elements of what is expected in a Vampire Horror and I think it's a good example of horror movies in general because it has the elements that most horror films have such as dark lighting and music that creates suspense and tension.

Genre Codes and Conventions Research

The Genre of our production is . . . Horror . . .

Horror films are designed to cause:

• Fright and panic
• Cause dread and make the audience feel alarmed
• Invoke the audiences hidden worst fears
• And often conclude in a terrifying end.

Pre-production

As part of our pre production planning we had to make presentations on a media concept and teach it to the rest of our class.
My presentation was on Genre.

More Ideas!!!

We had a group discussion in lesson today along with the teacher and decided to change the plot of our trailer. Our production is still going to be a Xmas horror, and there's going to be narrative on the trailer which is going to be told in a fairytale fashion, which is exactly what the film is not about but it leaves the audience guessing and thinking more about it. In the trailer there's also going to be children singing carols in the background.

We decided to call it 'Silent Night' because it doesn't make it too obvious about what the film is going to be about, it creates some mystery and leaves the audience trying to guess what it could be about, whether it might be a family Xmas movie or something else. We decided that the film is going to be quiet dark and decided to take inspiration from the director of 'Pan's Labyrinth' Guillermo del Toro.

It's based around a story going round about a murderer in the neighbourhood, who dresses up as Santa and kills children.

While he wonders around he hums along to 'Santa Clause is coming to town'.

It's going to be set on Xmas eve and based around a boy and his older brother. We wanted the Santa story to be scary, because the older sibling would tell it to the younger to scare them, but what they don't realise is that it's actually a true story. This is the back story for the killer, and tells you what happened and why.

The younger brother starts to get freaked out and keeps hearing and seeing things after he's told the story. On Xmas eve the boys get a phone call from their parents telling them that they are stuck at the airport due to the weather.

Later on the older brother gets murdered by Santa and realises that the story is true, but it's too late.

Ideas???

After deciding on our group we spoke about what we were going to do for our production.
Before the summer holidays me & Levinia spoke about what we wanted to do.
Our production is going to be based around the horror genre. We decided this because the codes & conventions are easy to recognise.
Also because we have to have our production finished around Christmas time, we decided to use that as a basis for our plot.
Although we have taken inspiration from the film 'Black Christmas' we believe that our trailer will be quiet original. We can also use the film later on in the research and planning process.


Here are 2 slightly different trailers for the film:

Groups Update!!! ;D

We've decided on our group now!
After a long discussion we finally decided on who will be in our group based on who best suits each role.
Our group consists of...
Dean - directing
Tom - filming
Levinia - ideas & directing
&
Me - editing

Groups :O

At the moment we're all thinking about what the groups should be...
Deciding who works well with who...