Essay

In horror film, what most people don't have any idea about is that they are witnessing a massive amount of codes and conventions and they don't even realize but that is done to make horror movie what it is and another thing is that it is mostly related to teen horror genre.

 They are two types of codes that are used in films:



Technical    
Technical codes are all the ways in which equipment is used to tell the story in a media text, for example the camera work in a film like the camera angles, camera movement ad camera shots and it is also the way that lighting is used in a film, what titles and sound (diegetic and non-diegetic- plus most important of them, the editing. when editing is used in a horror movie because it increase the horror aspects of it to give the audience a better experience to horror films and the face paced aspect of editing makes the audience feel involved in the film and allows them to witness the chaos from the victim or villain perspective etc. diegetic and non diegetic sound are also part of technical codes -  diegetic sound such as walking, speech and other things to make the scene make sense and non diegetic sound is the use of background sound like creepy noises such as cracking, static noise to make the audience more scared of the what they are looking at. overall, technical codes make the film more professional and successful.

Symbolic

Symbolic codes is basically the main element of mise-en-scene and this is what the audience sees in the film e.g the costumes that is used in the film, the make ups, the setting and the props. for example, if man is wearing a tank top with sweaty all over him and his car with no gas in the middle of road with no one around. the facial expression from the character also gives more explanation on what situation the character is in and that make the audience feel like they are involved and they do this because of the symbolic value of the clothing and make-up.

convention
Convention is also what is used in film that attracts the audience to view the film.

Convention is been set as unwritten rules that is expected by the audience in films. for example, the victim dies in the first five minute in a horror film which is used to show that it is a horror films and that the audience should be expecting that they should be more deaths that will be coming later on in the film and this also sometimes shows blood in the film which also means that they will be more blood scenes in the film.

the three films that i am going to be analyzing is: dead wood, dead Mary and wrong turn and they are three different horror films with some similar conventions.

Dead Wood

In the dead wood film, there is a bird eye view shot in the beginning scene of the location which gives the audience the ideas that it is set in a secluded place which means the audience will get the idea that it will be hard for the victim to escape the situation they are going to be in. the way that the filming i been done from a quite place with non diegetic sound to the victim running of his life till he gets to the point of jumping over the edge which then gives the audience a proper definition that is he going to be the victim that dies in the first fie minute of the film.

The camera shot of the dead wood very cleverly done at the beginning when it started off at the start with the location looking very peaceful and the camera going down wards like it is zooming in to the end of the opening when the camera looking like it is zooming out and another clever thing with the start was when the shot was looking like nothing bad was going to be going on until the victim runs into the camera and it seems like a little falls jump  that the film want at the beginning of the film.

A technical codes as in non diegetic sound was used in the film as the sound of nature which refers to as bird, squirrels etc. and that it used to show what type of location is being used for the film and another non diegetic sound that is used is when the victim was about to jump and suddenly birds starts to fly out of the woods with the non diegetic sound as a falls jump to show that danger is getting closer to the victim

One of the convention that was used in the film dead wood is the victim is close to close to escaping but failed because of an hazard that prevent them from safety and it is used when the victim was about to jump over an edge to the other side of the woods when i figured that it was too long for him to jump but when he jumps, he then was struggling to get over it because he find it extremely hard to climb over until he ran out of time which lad to him dying. another convention that was used in dead wood was the location was a secluded place like the other horror films and dead wood opening scene was set in the woods with no help around for the victim that is in desperate need of help.



Dead Mary

In the horror film dead Mary  it start of with a close up of what the secluded place looks like which means they have less chance of escaping the danger and the lack of escaping gets worse when to shows that there car had stopped in the middle of nowhere and to make that even worse the phone as no connection at all which means they can get any help at all in the middle of nowhere, it then goes to an extreme long shot of something coming towards the victim but it turns out to be another victim that is in danger of being killed by the villain.

Dead Mary used similar convention as the wrong turn and one of the convention was that the victim is a female, they use this because female in a horror film are classed as more vulnerable and are more likely not to be able to defend themselves as males are classed to. another convention is the secluded place and the secluded place in dead Mary is in the middle of nowhere that was abandoned where their vehicle had stopped with no help around which lead to the male fetching for gas while the female is been left alone which made it more scary for her because there is no help around. another convention that is used in dad Mary is that the phones as no connection at all which means she can get any help from anyone if she is in danger, this is shown when the female is trying to call someone and the phone didn't work but she also tried lifting up the phone to try and get connection but nothing happened to till the point that she chucked the phone away out of frustration.

  Wrong turn

The wrong turn film starts of with a birds eye view of the secluded place which means that the victim will find it hard to get help and then goes to a camera shot looking down at the male and female victim from there rock climbing, which then lead to the killer killing the male victim first which gives the audience an idea that the female is going to die next and the need that she needs to escape before it is too late.

The editing that is used in wrong turn is very effective when it comes to fast cuts of the female as she is trying to escape the villain but the clever thing was that they started the cut very slowly till they get to the point of the female struggling to escape and this is used to build up the tension that they was the audience to have to make them get involved in the reaction they was the audience to have. 

 The camera angle at the beginning of the film is a shot of the camera looking down at the victim which shows that the villain is in control which means the killer as got more power over his victim and this will give the audience the idea that the victims are about to die 

One of the convention of the that was used in wrong turn was at the beginning when it started with a birds eye view is the location being a secluded place and it is secluded because it is based in the woods and as it is based in the woods, it shows that it may be that they are the only one in the place which lead to no help for them when they are in danger. another convention that is mostly used in lots of horror films is when the victim get very close to escaping and something happens that made it impossible for them to escape before the villain gets to them and this convention is used in wrong turn when the victim is running towards her car when she was been chased by a villain and unfortunately the villain trips her up which lead to her falling on the fall which then makes it very easy for the villain to get his/her victim. another convention that is used in wrong turn is that the victim dies in the first five minutes and this is used because it is a horror film and they use that to point out that they is going to be more killing in the film and it is also used to give the audience the idea of how the villain are going to be killing there victims. another convention of the film wrong turn is that you don't get to see the killer in the beginning of the film and this is also used in both dad wood and dead Mary and it make it very interesting because it gets the audience thinking in their mind of how they would imagine the killer to look like and this is mostly used to get the audience involved in the movie.


A symbolic code that is used in the three films is that the female left a lot of body uncovered which is aimed to the female as it shows that they move vulnerable victims and this is showed in "Dead Mary" as the female was dressed in a tank top and shorts which means many parts of there body is uncovered and this is also used in the film wrong turn as the female victim is also wearing a tank top and short trousers while the male is wearing cloth that covered most parts of his body. another symbolic code is when the victim in the film dead wood is being chased, the make-up that is used as in the blood in the victims face which shows that the victim was in a form of victim before and the killer isn't finished with him.

Overall i think wrong turn uses more of the codes and the convention from the camera angles that was used including the camera angle that shows the location that they are which is a secluded place and also shows shot looking down at the victim which shows that danger is coming for the victims cause they have less control of if they are going to die or escape and the editing that was also used as when it starts of slow till it gets on a fast pace when the victim is in danger was about to fall. the sound that was also used get the audience involved as well when she was escaping the danger. they was also symbolic code on how the female dressed to the way the male is dressed that shows that the male is more covered up other than the female who is a lot exposed with her clothing. and the death in the first five minutes shows that the way the killer kills his victim make the audience think that there is going to be more unexpected deaths in the film later on.

Planning : Initial Ideas

In this task i had added different ideas as a brain storm with my group gathering ideas together to make a good horror movie of our own, the thing we came up is a hunted house and an asylium but we have decided that the haunted house if the best ideas for the type of film we are going to do and we also have an idea of the victim making bad decision to be in the in the haunted house. our working idea is "the last night"

Research: conventions commonly found in horror films

characters ignoring threats

In most horror film, they are mostly situations when people know that certain places are dangerous and they end up putting it out of their mind and making bad decisions even though the place there about to go gives them a sense of danger in its appearance and the people chose to ignore it.

secluded locations

In horror movie, victims tend to end up in secluded location probably from the beginning of the horror film or later on in the horror film. the find themselves with no help around and mostly places that has a history with bad things happening, places like the woods, ghost town, abandoned places, abandoned religious places and a place in the middle of nowhere e.t.c















power cut
 In horror movies, power cuts always are a good scary part that is added to it and it takes place usually at the scariest moment of the movie for example a victim is alone with the killer about to kill her then there is a power cut to make the victim even more scared.










phone lines are cut
In horror movies, the killers mostly cut phone lines sot the victim wouldn't get any help if with their phone if they are in danger and that is added in the movies because it makes the victim more hopeless of surviving and get the audience thinking about how the victim can escape the danger.


someone runs upstairs instead of outside
This is a stupid decision that a character makes in an horror movie of going to hide upstairs instead of running outside and i think this is used because they want the victim to remain in the danger zone because the audience will be expecting the killer to find the victim after the bad decision



someone investigating a strange noise
This something tat victims do a lot in scary movie which is investigating strange noise which i find is a stupid thing because they should be running away but instead they choose to investigate which means they are more likely to get killed if they make the bad decision



victim cowers in front of a window or door
victim cowers in front of door or windows in horror movies is what mostly tend to happen and that isn't very smart due to the fact that the killer can easily break it down and this gives the victim a more likely chance of getting killed by the killer

victim inexplicably falls over
this is used in horror movies a lot and this is a part of the film that most people are expecting to see when a victim is trying to escape and the thing that makes it worse is they don't get up straight away but they tend to start crawling instead which give them less chance of escaping.

The fake scare
I think fake scare are used to make the audience get a felling of what they need to be expecting to happen and it is very much used in horror films. i also think it is used to give the audience like a demo reaction of what is going to happen later on in the horror film.

vehicle won't start
one of the stupidest things that happen in horror films is vehicle not starting at the most point of need which always seem like a curse but i think it is used to make the audience have less hope for whoever is going to escape.

someone is killed in the first 5 mins
this is a good thing that shows the audience a sign that it is going to be a horror movie and there is going to be more killing involved for example the movie scream, the victims die in the first five minutes to show the audience the style in how the killer kills their victims.

x years before and after
this is the convention that is used a lot in horror films where something may have happened in a place in the past that involves people possibly dying and the future comes back to the same place where different people ended up and the same things from the past continues.

Research Essay : Codes and Conventions in Existing Teen Horror Film Openings

Please find below the title of the essay you need to complete by 3pm on XXX. This essay will be valuable for your planning and evaluation.

• This essay should be done as a post to your blog. You can, if you wish, punctuate your essay with screen shots from the openings.
• The word count should be targeted at 750 words
• You should select appropriate examples from the openings to illustrate the points that you make. You do not have to write about everything that you see and hear.

Analyse the codes and conventions of horror films as shown in the openings of 'Dead Wood', 'Dead Mary' and 'Wrong Turn'.

Research : Codes and Conventions of Existing Teen Horror Film Openings (Dead Mary)

The opening of 'Dead Mary' for you to analyse.

Research : Codes and Conventions of Existing Teen Horror Film Openings (Wrong Turn)

The opening of 'Wrong Turn' which we have analysed in class.

Research: codes and conventions of existing teen horror film opening (dead wood)

The opening to 'Dead Wood' for you to analyse.

Research: thinking about fear

we were in groups and was asked to write down on some papers of what our worse fears are, along with what the fears are we need to write down the reasons why we are scared of these things. three things were put don't about what scare us  and they were chosen because they link to different stuff that scare us even more. we did this because we had to find out what fears other people have and for our main task we will have to create 2 mins opening scene to a horror movie and this can help up give us ideas about what actually scare people.

The History of Horror Films : A Journey Through Time

(pre 1930s horror movies)

Nosferatu
Nosferatu is the very first vampire movie, baldly plagiarising the Dracula story to present Count Orlok, the grotesquely made-up 'Max Schreck', curling his long fingernails round the limbs of a series of hapless victims. Described as the vampire movie that actually believes in vampires, Nosferatu gives us a far more frightening bloodsucker than any of its successors; Shreck is simply inhuman. Murnau demonstrated an early mastery over light and shadow which was to distinguish his subsequent work in Hollywood, such as Sunrise (1927), as well as sheer inventiveness with the photographic image, in the microscope sequences and the stop motion special effects. He also clashed with Bram Stoker's widow over the rights to the Dracula story, which had proved very popular as a stageplay. He changed the names of the central characters, but did not alter the story, and the subsequent legal wrangling meant that prints of the movie were destroyed, Murnau lost control of the film, and it is only relatively recently that a version approximating to the original has become available to the viewing public.The film, shot in 1921 and released in 1922, was an unauthorized adaptation of Bram Stoker's Dracula, with names and other details changed because the studio could not obtain the rights to the novel 

The Golem (1915/1920)
There were several versions of this, dubbed 'the first monster movie', based on the Jewish legends about a clay man created by a magically-inclined rabbi. The 1915 version, purportedly about an antiques dealer who discovers a four centuries old golem and uses it as a personal servant, has been lost, but it was so successful that it generated a comedy about an actor in a golem suit and a prequel, made in 1920, which is the only one of the three films to survive. Paul Wegener directed and starred in the origin story of how the golem came into the world. He is brought to life by Rabbi Loew to save the Jews of sixteenth century Prague from persecution. However, this noble intent is defiled by the Rabbi's assistant, who tries to use the golem for his own nefarious ends, causing chaos in the ghetto.
The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari (1919)
This is largely because the diegetic world is wholly artificial, a complete re-imagining of a Northern German town. The audience views the tale throught the twisted vision of the narrator, where roads, hills, houses and even trees take on a menacing new shape. This is not reality, and the stylised performances reflect that, with the players moving as symbols through the surreal landscape, their stark make up adding to the dreamlike sensation. This contrasted dramatically with the documentary style of film making prevalent in Europe at the time, and proved that film could be a poetic, stylised medium as well as a reflective one. Much has been written on the politics of The Cabinet..., representing as it does puppet humans controlled by a sadistic madman. It certainly struck a chord with German audiences of the time, suffering as they were from the economic consequences of war reparations, helpless in the face of spiralling inflation.the film used stylized sets, with abstract, jagged buildings painted on canvas backdrops and flats. to add to this strange style, the actors used an unrealistic technique that exhibited "jerky" and dance-like movements. this film is cited as having introduced the twist ending in cinema.

Often cited as the 'granddaddy of all horror films', this is an eerie exploration of the mind of a madman, pitting an evil doctor against a hero falsely incarcerated in a lunatic asylum. Through a clever framing device the audience is never quite clear on who is mad and who is sane, and viewing the film's skewed take on reality is a disturbing experience, heightened by the jagged asymmetry of the mise en scene. Although modern viewers might find the pace slow, with long takes and little cutting between scenes, "The Cabinet..." is stylish, imaginative, and never less than haunting.

preliminary task evaluation

For the preliminary task, we first have to learn what continuity task is referred to. continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with whom she/he then exchanges a couple of lines of dialogue. this task should demonstrate match on action, shot/reverse shot and the 180 degree. corrected for instant clothing, and the location must not change throughout the scene to therefore create an effective continuous scene. match on action: angle but cut during an action to another camera is when showing the action from the same point in time that you left it previous shot. This is important to continue the flow of the scene. Shot/reverse shot • Shot reverse shot is as a film technique where one character is shown looking at another character and then the other character is shown looking back at the first character. Since the characters are shown facing in opposite direction, the viewer assumes that they are looking at each. The 180 degree rule is a very important concept in video and film production. • It refers to an imaginary line which cuts through the middle of the scene, from side to side with respect to the camera. • Crossing the line changes the viewer's perspective in such a way that it may cause disorientation and confusion. For this reason, crossing the line is usually something to be avoided.

pre-production

before we started filming we looked at look at different clips of the oct videos which gives us explanation of guide to 180 degree rule, guide to basic camera rule, guide to basic camera movement, and guides to basic camera shots and one of the videos looked like this:

Then we researched and find camera angle and camera shot for our selves to show that we understand what the rule of film ins are and i showed example of that when i posted images for different shots to proof as my

mid shot

close up shot

 two shot

 extreme close up

 establishing shot

Then we write a plan of what we are going to do for the task and a brief note of what type of show the filming needs: (The location of the setting for each shot is exterior (outside of the school) types of shots that are going to be used are the two shot, tracking shot, shot reverse shot, point of view, close up shot, establishing shot long shot, mid shot, match of action etc.
 theres camera movement in tracking shot because there going to be following the character towards the door. it starts with an establishing shot which is going to have the panning camera angle of the school and the whole thing might be 1-2 minutes long with different camera shots and camera movement happening and at the end will have two shot, etc and were going to have the knock knock joke with over the shoulder shots.

storyboard
we made a story board what shows what we are going to do for our filming as in where the location is, what shots and who is going to be the character for the film and then we made example of how its going to be like in given paper and we use that to help us notify what we need for each shots and what it have to look like when we will be filming e.g.

production

we started the film by following our storyboard steps on the location that the filming is going to take place which make the work easier to carry out and through out the filming we had to film two or three time on the scenes to pick the best clips out of all of it and we had some difficulty finding the perfect location like the room that will be used for the knock, knock joke. but luckily we ended up with a suitable place for filming the scene needed. but with the storyboard we had very good ideas and how opinion but the thing that made it a littler difficult is the lack of right equipment and it became more difficult while we were filming, it was extremely winding which therefore the wind sound is affecting the filming but the other filming were successful. also during the filming we ended up doing different shot over again to give us the ability to pick the best one.



post-production

when the editing was about to be done, i choose the best clips to go with the editing to get the best out of what we have been filming and i imported the to imovie which allows me to cut bits of the clips and joint it together to make a film,





after the import i then cut out bit that aren't wanted and i also removed the background sound that aren't needed for example, the sound of the wind that was not a good impact in the film



after the removal of the background sound, i then used a site tat allows your to get different sounds that i then used and had to my editing to make it more interesting.




evaluation

overall i think our final piece went well simply because we had no major difficult doing the short film, and it turned out to be straight forward, and we pulled it off by working together to make it the filming work.
i look at the final piece and find out that there is a lot of improvement that could have been done like the angles that the film as been recorded could have been better and there are some angles that made my shadow appear which then had the shadow of the iPad that i was filming with.

Main Task Set Brief

The titles and opening of a new teen horror film, to last a maximum of two minutes.

All video and audio material must be original, produced by the candidate(s), with the exception of music or audio effects from a copyright-free source.