-Teen (I Know What You Did Last Summer, Scary Movie)
Our film fits with the teen and social sub genres as our actors will be teen and our genre is social. Our film is mainly influenced by the film One Missed Call (2008)
We felt that it was important to brainstorm our ideas as a group first to gather the whole groups ideas and thoughts and then have them written on paper so that we could always refer back to our initial ideas. Having initial ideas are also important as they give us a foundation for our horror trailer and we can always build upon it when the time comes to begin story boarding our ideas for the trailer. The initial ideas aren't solid ideas, they may change but we wanted to have them on paper so we could always refer back to them.
We may also start our horror trailer at a party, as this is conventional of most horror trailers involving young people, like Final Destination and Wrong Turn.
What's influenced us?
Some films that have influenced us:
•- One Missed Call (2008)
•- Final Destination (all)
•- Hostel (2005)
•
As Facebook is such a modern thing to use, we feel we can appeal to our audience as they may want to see this film because they may use Facebook and may want to find out what actually happens in this film and find out why all of this terror is happening.
We are also communicating our ideas via email. This is effective as everyone can see it and everyone is able to share their ideas through a conversation.
Horror:
• noun 1) an intense feeling of fear, shock, or disgust. 2) a thing causing such a feeling. 3) intense dismay. 4) informal; a bad or mischievous person, especially a child.
The modern horror genre as we know it is only around 200 years old (it begins to have form and conventions towards the end of the eighteenth century) but it has distinguished antecedents. Every culture has a set of stories dealing with the unknown and unexplained, tales that chill, provoke and keep the listener wondering "what if..?" Horror films are the present-day version of the epic poems and ballads told round the fires of our ancestors.
The Gothic Tradition.
The term 'horror' first comes into play with Horace Walpole's 1764 novel, The Castle of Otranto, full of supernatural shocks and mysterious melodrama. Although rather a stilted tale, it started a craze, spawning many imitators in what we today call the gothic mode of writing. For half a century, gothic novels reigned supreme. As the Age of Enlightenment gave way to the new thinking of the early 19th century, Romantic poets of the stature of Coleridge and Goethe reflected the strong emotions of the movement through a glass darkly, recognising that fear and awe aren't so very different sensations.
Nineteenth Century Masters.
Some of the greatest mid- nineteenth century novelists tried their hand at horror fiction, paying tribute to the dying traditions of the gothic. As the century advanced, many writers turned to the short story or novella form to spook their readers.
The End Of The Century.
As a Viennese academic called Sigmund Freud was beginning his explorations into the recesses of the human consciousness, literature too took on a more psychological bent, with many writers trading freely in madness (building on the work of Poe), and the horror that lies beyond the boundary we call sanity. These stories deal not with events, but with the slow unravelling of minds; the reader is left to decide whether the causes are supernatural or psychological.
Cracks in the baby’s face suggests a broken childhood and cracks in life and family as the film title is “The Abandoned”. The film title could suggest that whoever or whatever has been abandoned has lost it’s identity after being abandoned.
The title graphics are shady and blurred. This can be a suggestion of the childhood being blurred and fragmented. This can also suggest that although the title is blurry, the memory of being abandoned never fades.
The colours on the poster are very dark colours, conventional of horror films, apart from the eyes, which are blue. The eyes seem the only bright part of the poster. Eyes can suggest many things about an individual, like emotions and how a person may be feeling. As they are in colour, this can suggest that they are significant. The eyes are crying blood, which are also in colour, suggesting blood is also significant in the film. The colours were possibly chosen to suggest the genre of the film, which is horror. We know this because dark colours are mainly associated with horror films.
The target audience for this film could be for an older audience as it seems like there are strong themes and some possible upsetting scenes as there is possibly being a baby abandoned and this could be upsetting and inappropriate for a younger audience. Also, the colours can suggest that this will be a dark, scary film and dark colours are associated with death, sadness and scary things. Also, possibly seasons, like winter.
There are some clues in the narrative, like the baby could have been abandoned at a young age. Also, the cracks in the baby’s face could also suggest a fragmented narrative or a fragmented life of the baby, especially as there is cracks in the face of the young child.
The types of characters seem to be broken and young. There is only one character on the poster, which perhaps could be the main focus of the film. The facial expression of the child seems pretty blank and motionless, but they eyes can suggest otherwise. They are a bright colour, perhaps desperate for some emotion and happiness.
There is an enigma to the film poster, the audience do not know why the child is crying tears of blood, or why the eye is bright blue, or even why the child has no colour to the lips and cracks in it’s face. These are the questions that the audience want answered when watching this film.
The colours used for this poster are relevant to the genre of the film. The dark and strong colours are part of the typical conventions of a horror film and tell the audience straight away that this is a horror film. The colours attract the audience because as soon as they see the dark colours, they will immediately know that this is a horror film and may appeal to them because of the genre.
The poster is a portrait poster. The portrait size could suggest to the audience that there is real depth to the film and that it is not a shallow film. It has real depth and meaning to it, and could requite the audience to play close attention to understand the deep concept of the film.
The image is the main part of the poster, and the title of the film is underneath the childs chin, which could suggest that the child has been abandoned of love and mothering hugs, and as the face is starting to crack, the child is becoming even more lonely.
The date of the film release (February 23rd) is a quiet cinematic period, suggesting that it didn’t have such a high budget and didn't want to be in any big competition with any family films which would attract a mass audience. Also, the cracks in the face suggest quite a wintry theme, which could be why the film release is during harsh February winter.
The film poster has the tagline of “Death Never Runs Out Of Time” This tagline can suggest that no matter how old you are, death will always find time to catch it’s prey, and you are never too young to die.
The target audience is probably of an 18+ age. It is probably this age as there are probably strong themes and issues in the film and there seems to be a focus around death
.
The poster has been made attractive to the audience because of it’s colours, image and title of the film. All of these have the conventions of horror films which will attract the horror audience to see this film.
Lions Gate and Universal produced this film. These two companies are well known companies across the world and as they are successful, the audience will know that this film will be a success and will want to see it.
The age rating of the film is a 15. Suggesting that the film is not too violent and gory, but it should not be shown to a young audience as it is inappropriate. However, the baby’s cracked face could be an indication the age rating should be higher.
The poster doesn’t seem to list a website. Perhaps it doesn’t have one or maybe wants to keep the film in suspense, instead of looking at it online and finding out more about it online.
The unique selling point of this film poster as that it has a image of a baby with a cracked face on, which hasn’t really been done before and could be quite shocking to the audience. Also, the blurry film title is also different, as it can suggest a lot about the film, like being abandoned was a blur, or the past is all a blur.
Silent filmofferedtheearlypioneersa wonderful medium in which to examineterror. Early horror films are surreal, dark pieces, owing their visual appearance to the expressionist painters and their narrative style to the stories played out by the Grand Guignol Theatre Company.
Genre provides key elements for an audience to recognise, so that they may further appreciate the variation and originality surrounding the representation of those elements.
The mainstream types of genre are:
Science-Fiction (Sci-Fi)
Romance
Romantic Comedies
Horror
Comedy
Comedy Horror
Action and Adventure
Mystery
Sport
Musical
Drama
Thriller
I will have to consider and research more into these types of films when completing my coursework.
There are two basic approaches to the study of film:
-The first approach to analysing film genre is descriptive, which involves viewing a film as belonging to a category, or as being an example of an established type. The film is perceived as sharing aspects and attributes (such as structure, theme, or visual style) with other films in the same category, and is analysed comparatively. This approach relies heavily on the use of readily identifiable elements such as costume, location, character archetypes, shot transitions, or plot content.
- The second approach is functional, where the genre film is perceived as collective expressions of contemporary life that strike a particularly resonant chord with audiences. The repetitions of patterns in a genre film are the repetitions of social questions that we need answers to as part of our shared social experience.
Horror films had some time comparatively little seriously discussion, and only in the second half of the 70s was the genre put on the genre of film studies. From 1935 to the late 1940s account of local authority bannings of horror films and of reports on their harmful social effects, especially on children, proliferated in the British trade press. The 1950s witnessed renewed panic around spectacular international success of a narrative development of the genre by the Hammer studio.
Anglo-Saxon journals in the mean time devoted space to 'special effects' and returned again to the question of social/psychological significance of the 1970s boom in horror with violence, frequently against women. In the late 1970s/early 80s feminists mounted public protest at the perpetuation of a widespread cultural misogyny by such films.
The horror film has consistently been one of the most popular and, at the same time, the most disreputable of Hollywood genres.
The chief route to cultural legitimation, therefore, has been thoroughly popular anthropological or Freudian/Jungian reference, which assumes ‘inside us a constant, ever-present yearning for the fantastic, for the darkly mysterious, for the choked terror of the dark’
Psycho-Sociological explanation,
The problem facing all such accounts is to explain the meaning of the monster, or of the threat that produces the horror. ‘Normality’ is our everyday common sense world- in more recent interpretations, the world of the dominant ideology sanctioned by the established authorities.
Horror/Science Fiction films of the 1950s are frequently understood as reflecting a ‘doom-centred, eschatological fear’ provoked by cold-war politics and the nuclear deterrent, which yet relied on the scientist and ‘co-operation with the military’ for protection.
Psychological thrillers, and film noir have all contributed to the genreric realisation of this popular obsession. The second-sub genre, Charles Derry labels the horror of Armageddon, which in continuity with the 1950s science fiction mutant monster cycle.
Rather than political traumas, many writers focus on the American ‘way of life’ as symptomatic of the distortions and repressions consequent on the development of American capitalism. Consumerism is identified as a prime symptom, which behind stands middle class life, or the family and patriarchal social relations as sources of horror.
(Information from: The Cinema Book 2nd Edition. Editor: Pam Cook & Mieke Bernik.)
As soon as the trailer starts, we hear non-diegetic music, which sounds quite scary so this suggests immediately that the film may be a horror film. There is dripping water that drips fast but lands in the puddle quite slowly, this could be an indication to the passage of time, time could seem like it is going fast in this unknown place, but in actual fact time is passing slowly. We then cross to a long shot of a (possible) male dressed in overalls with a mask on (conventional horror villain, Texas Chainsaw Massacre), hiding his identity from his possible victim and audience. Then, there is a medium shot of a male tied to a chair half naked where a mask is pulled from his head so he can see what location he is in, then a look of horror comes to his face which then definitely shows the audience that it is a horror film. The trailer then jumps to a medium shot of a table of weapons that can cause pain and fear, which again show the audience that the genre of this film is a horror.
As the scene crosses back to the male on the chair, he has realised where he is and we hear the diegetic sound of him screaming in fear of what may happen to him next. Alot of the film trailer is in the dark, also suggesting that it will be a dark film with dark themes, for example, torture, death and sick twists within the film. The darkness of the trailer is conventional of horror films, and immediately shows to it's audience that it is a horror. Body parts and facial expressions are evidently important as there is a lot of focus on them throughout the trailer. There is focus of the victims who are looking scared to show to the audience that they are in danger, but the audience do not know why, this creates suspense for the film and will may the audience want to watch it to find out why they are in danger.
The word “torture” then flashes up on screen finalising that the film is a horror and that torture is an important theme in the film and will be a running theme throughout the film, and something that the audience of the trailer should be made aware of as soon as they view the trailer, so that they know it is a horror and may appeal to them.
The trailer has some narrative structure, it shows the beginning, the victims about to be tortured, it does not show how they got there, which could be left up to the audience or be revealed in the actual film. The middle is them being tortured, with a finger in a spanner as it looks, and the end is the victims trying to escape, crawling across the floor at any measures just to escape. The rest will more than likely be revealed in the film. The sound in the trailer has murmurs, moans, crying and whining, these can all show the conventional parts of a horror as these show that the film is a horror and that the film is possibly gore filled and can be seen as scary due to the crying and moans of fear. The sound is mostly natural, which can suggest that everything going on the film is completely real and it isn't an imagination.
Other films that the production companies have made are also shown on screen to perhaps show that as they have made previous successful films, this one will be just as good and successful as the other films, which again will entice the audience to see the film as previous films have been successful. Also, as Quentin Tarantino has directed it, and his previous films like Pulp Fiction, it is an indication that this film will be just as good as the others because he has directed it.
Blade Runner is a 1982 American science fiction film directed by Ridley Scott. It is loosely based on the novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick.
The film depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in November 2019 in which genetically engineered organic robots called replicants—visually indistinguishable from adult humans—are manufactured by the powerful Tyrell Corporation as well as by other "mega–manufacturers" around the world.
Blade Runner was released in 1,290 theaters on June 25, 1982. That date was chosen by producer Alan Ladd Jr because his previous highest-grossing films (Star Wars and Alien) had a similar opening date (May 25) in 1977 and 1979, making the date his "lucky day". Blade Runner won 3 out of 8 BAFTA nominations in 1983.
Taken is a 2008 action thriller film produced by Luc Besson. Liam Neeson plays Bryan Mills, a former Central Intelligence Agency SAD operative who sets about tracking down his daughter after she is kidnapped by Albanian sex traders while travelling in France.
"I will look for you, I will find you, and I will kill you." - This is the line Bryan says to his daughters kidnapper on the phone whilst it is under the bed she was taken from.
