Genre Research

 The Horror Genre

Who is the horror genre for?

Horror has a wide variety of amazing movies just by story alone but what makes horror pop are the scares and the blood. Due to the heavy gore and sexual themes, most horror movies tend to be rated R and are mostly targeted towards older teens and young adults. It would although be a crazy thing to say if horror could only be seen by an older audience since there is much more to it than scares and blood. A great example being the psychological horror movie the Shining known for its low deaths but stunning story.

What is horror's genre convention?

 Within horror conventions include common themes, character tropes, and plot structures, such as the "final girl" trope in horror. With production techniques, they show stylistic choices like lighting, sound design, and pacing that give off specific emotional responses. Most commonly dark lighting and settings such as a haunted house or graveyard with rather quiet sound design focusing on subtle or abrupt noises. Even things like color typically are on the darker end.

What is horror's institutional convention?

These would refer to conventions such as story structure, promotional tool trailers or posters, or the way in which studios distribute. For example, some imagery, or even the use of cliffhangers or teaser campaigns, could build anticipation in viewership. It is basically important to build excitement from these promotions, for they condition the audience and determine the success that will come. Examples would be like Chucky killing off the Toy Story cast to promote the new Childs Play.

Samples

The Exorcist (1973) follows the story of Regan, a young girl who becomes possessed by an evil spirit. As she becomes increasingly violent her mother Chris, seeks help from medical professionals, but their efforts fall short. Desperate, she turns to Father Karras, a priest struggling with his faith, who recommends the help of the seasoned exorcist, Father Merrin. Together, they fight the ghosts threatening Regan’s soul. The poster shows it through the dark and sinister color palette and man giving off an eerie vibe.

The Babadook (2014) tells the story of Amelia, a single mother dealing with her husband's death and the challenges of raising her son named Samuel. When Samuel discovers a mysterious book titled Mister Babadook he becomes obsessed with it. As the presence of the Babadook begins to come in their home, Amelia's quickly panics, blurring the lines between reality and hallucination.

Other movies

Halloween (1978)

Friday The 13th (2009)

Scream(1996)

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974)

Representation

 During class we learned about how media can typically represent certain groups positively or negatively. The show I found fig the exact meaning of representation was Amazon Prime's show The Boys. The story is set in a world where superhero's exist and  help save civilians, or so we thought. The main group of hero's call themselves "The Seven" under the company of Vought. The characters I want to discuss are Homelander the leader and man with blonde hair and a cape. The other being Starlight the new recruit and Woman with blonde hair .

Let's start with Homelander, the leader of these so called hero's, with a trait like being the captain of a super hero team you would expect him to be good right? You would be wrong. Homelander is a terrible person who is crazy and driven by how other people think of him on the media he needs to be loved all the time or he snaps. He kills, manipulates, and destroys since he was born one of the strongest hero's on the planet but nobody knows that they all think he is a bringer of justice and there is a reason why. He looks like a hero with his cape, blonde hair, and muscles while the governing faction known as Vought redacts any bad information on him so he looks good to the public at all times giving him the love he enjoys most but mostly being hidden behind his heroic stereotype.

Starlight recognizing all the good the seven do for people applies to be a hero and gets accepted now being a hero of the seven! It was her dream being born a hero to join the seven being most inspired by the Deep a handsome, muscular, and attractive man to join as he was always her favorite.Even being featured and seen all around on water related attractions through creator bias. But in reality he is evil as he sexually assault's star light traumatizing her and realizing that the deep is nothing like he was represented. Later on she was forced to change her original outfit to something more revealing as she was the woman of the group. The needing of changing outfits to wear something more revealing is an excellent example of how woman could be seen negatively in representation. The clothing change is shown below with the left being the new outfit and right being the original.

My Sound Project

 In our most recent lesson we learned a very important factor of a production in which most people struggle on known as sound. Unfortunately, it is overlooked most of the time but arguably the most important as it is the first thing recorded in a production! Sound design can help convey a shot or scene tone and mood not only through effects but another technique of sound production called "Foley". Foley is a technique named after Jack Foley an American sound effect artist who invented the technique were the effect artist uses different props to mimic the noise of the desired sound. For example, the sound of someone's footsteps in a wet forest instead the effects artist puts wet leaves underneath a shoe and uses his hands to mimic the movement of the shoe walking on the wet leaves to sound like the damp forest although it isn't.

Later, the class was assigned a partner along with the sound project with the goal of making a 1-2 minute audio recording with no video of a made up scene requiring at least 4 Foley sounds being utilized. Before that we had to brainstorm with our partner and create an outline helping us plan out what Foley or downloaded sounds were to be used for our project. We needed to submit 3 things, the project itself, editing proof, and a file with videos of our Foley.

During brainstorming my partner and I thought of a scene. It was that an owner was going to take his dog out for a walk in a noisy neighborhood but the dog runs off at a squirrel scratching at a tree trying to catch until the owners catches up and calms the dog down. We jotted all of this down on our outline along with sounds to download that all structured and gave us an idea of how it would turn out. We downloaded things such as birds singing, traffic, dog panting, ducks, woodpecker, and a plane flying overhead.  We also assigned our selves our individual Foley sounds such as pouring dog food and water into a bowl, door opening and closing, leash clicking, and the dog scratching the tree. Since I was editing I chose to use the excellent Adobe Premier Pro since it excels in easy and accessible sound design.

I am confident to say my partner and I did a fantastic job on our Foley and choice of sounds along with the ambience oozing throughout the project making it all feel like an owner was truly walking his dog! Unfortunately, we could improve on managing our limited 2 minute cap at the video and make the pacing just a bit more clean.

Sound Project Link: FreytezRuz soundscape per.5 or https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Miw_JFazVOEvQR8j999XIkFkJ3CdNK6y/view?pli=1

Foley Link: FreytezRuz foley_per5  or https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1dxS9fSAC4D_5te6_lZPeTE8gGzJv7_MV