Analysis of Horror genre and 'The Strangers'

'The Strangers' is a psychological, dramatic horror/thriller. Directed and produced by Bryan Bertino. It is about a young couple in an iscolated vacation home who are slowly terrorized by three pyscopaths. There is a definate psychological presence in this film as it is all about hearing creepy sounds, seeing people from far away, and the use of masks. Ther use of masks is an important role in this movie as you never see the psycopaths faces once, even when they take off their masks. The idea of this movie was the thought of iscolation and terror, being trapped in a house with three maniacs who want to kill you. The use of suspense is used perfectly even as there is no music (apart from the use of a jammed record player). Having no music to the movie also means that it feels more realistic to the audience therefore they can relate to the movie. This movie keeps everybody stuck to their seats for the whole movie as the tension builds through out the movie.

• This is a review from 'Maitland McDonagh' who works a reviewer for the 'TV guide'...
  

"First-time director Bryan Bertino's no-frills thriller is a throwback to the 1970s' heyday of nasty, relentless movies in which ordinary, unsuspecting folks are trapped and terrorized by remorseless sociopaths, right down to the solemn assurance that it's based on a true story. There's nothing more to it than meets the eye, but Bertino understands the mechanics of suspense and knows how to use them.

In the movie that we are filming ourselves, We have based a lot of our ideas on the movie 'The strangers'. This is because we are filming a psychological horror. It helps to have lots of different influences for our movie.

The Horror genre is a very interesting concept to deal with as you can have so many different ideas for a horror movie. Over the years the horror genre has developed from a normal psycho who kills a few people like the film 'Pyscho'. Now it has developed to psychological horros such as 'The strangers' or developing on a psychopath killer like the film 'saw'. The horror genre is now a very popular genre in cinemas. This is because they can be mixed with other type of genres, such as thrillers and comedy. Using the horror genre for our Coursework film was a very good choice, as we were able to say what type of horror movie we would do (Pyschological). We were also able to think about horror without boundries.

Cheers. x

Insomnia and Memento

• In one of our lessons, we watched the opening of two films, Insomnia and Memento.

The opening title credits of 'Insomnia' was a basic opening as it was a a blurred vision slowly focusing into white as the title of "Insomnia" fade in and then fades out. The white background then faded into a very interesting view of an extreme close up on fabric fibres as blood seeps into them, giving it a dark red and damp colour to it. There are lots of different clips of this blood seeping into the fabric fibres. The music contained strings crescendo as a feel of suspense and tension grips the audience. The fibres then fade into another piece fabric, but a white sleeve with blood on it. The camera zooms out to see a man trying to wipe the blood off his sleeve. Once again there is another fade, but this time into a plane flying over the icy mountains of Alaska.

The opening title credits of 'Momento' The background is black while the credits slowly come into focus. Then the title "Memento" slowly fades in blue. we then see someone's hand holding a polaroid picture. But this picture has already been processed. the camera moves back as we see a man holding this picture. Ths man starts to shak the photo and as he does, it seems to get weaker. there is a hint of a tatoo on the man's hand which obviously means somehing will be related to that during the movie. The picture on the camera slowly gets weaker and weaker unitl thee is nothing left on the picture frame. He then puts the picture into the camera. As this happens we can see that everything is actually happening backwards. We see blood on the wall running backwards, the shell of the bullet come off the floor, glasses coming off the floor and onto the shot man's face, the man with his photo having the gun go back into his hand. We hear this as the sound flows backwards and then a shout as victim is about to be shot.

I personally prefered the 'Memento' opening more than the 'Insomnia' opening as I feel that the use of reverse was used very well and was very different. The blood seeping into the fabric fibres was a good effect but I feel that it went on for too long. I loved the idea of a ploaroid picture going from stronger to weaker as i feel it could be a metaphorical meaning for the rest of the movie. Cheers. x

Warner Bros

Five Facts on warner Bros:

1. The historic studio was built over 110 acres of farmland in Califonia.



2. Old time movies such as "Little Caesar" and "The Public Enemy" were made in the manydifferent studios. The Studios theselves were and are so big that they can design scenes from an Amazonian jungle to a LA ghetto.



3. By the late 1930's, nine new sound stages were used, which are now used today. These sound stages were used for voiceovers, sound effects and theme tunes such as the classic Looney Tunes theme. Voiceovers included charcters such as bugs bunny, silvester and tweety, Daffy duck etc. Actors like Bob Clampett, Chuck Jones, Friz Freleng and Bob McKimson, did the voiceovers for these cartoon charcters.



4. In 1956, the 'Studio jungle set' was constructed for the movie "Santiago". It was created to simulate wooded areas. The lagoon that was made for the jungle set held 250, 000 gallons of water.



5. In the 1990's, Warner bros became one of the most successful televiosn porduction companies of all time. New television programmes were created such as, "Friends" "ER" and "the Drew Carey show".

• Two other companies are owned by Warner Bros, These are:

- Castle Rock Entertainment, Inc.

and...

- StarParks S.A.

Warner Bros is a subsidiary of Time Warner -

4 facts:

1. Number of employees- Total Worldwide: Approximately 38,000 as of March 2009.




2. Stock Ticker information- The common stockof Time Warner is traded on the new york stock exchange under the symbol TWX.




3. So far, Time Warner have won 23 awards and honours over the last 2-3 years.




4. Time Warner are related to other companies but do not own them:

Cheers. x

My shocking group! (In a good way)

Hi there, and welcome back to my blog with dr. veira.
This post here is to give you fabulous readers an insight to my truly b... e... a... utiful group and what we will be doing with our media coursework.Here we go, (and brace yourself):

First of all we have the fabulosis German exchange student Anika Franko.... (I can't say her surname) She is Directing, filming and editing this movie. She's rather clever!

Then there is Thomas Derek Bates, who, to be honest, really doesn't work hard enough in life, but who can blame him!? Tom is taking part in this movie as he is one of the characters in it, he is also, directing and editing.

Then there is me, Nick Veira. I am also taking part in the movie and editing.

A few lessons ago, we were talking about what sort of genre our film coursework should be. We had some minor disagreements and tantrums were thrown (Tom) but in the end we decided we would either do a thriller or a horror genre. We talked about it in more detail and looked at some examples fom the previous year and relaised that horror would be best to create, as there were many ideas that could be thrown into the stirring pot.

Hopefully it should be a success, who knows.

Thanks for reading and I hope you are well.

Also, A name has been created out of our "stirring pot". We have decided to call it....... "SORROWFUL FOOTSTEPS"


Nick, Cheeerss! x

Psycho

One lesson that we did was 'Semiotics'. This lesson was the study of signs and symbols. In order to analyse a film we needed to study literal and potential meanings. We had two options:  

• Signifier- Denotation- literal. e.g. red rose, flower itself is the signifier.
• Signified- Connotations- Potential. e.g. red rose signifies love, sorrow, passion, labour party, England rugby team etc.

 In this course we looked at the 1960 horror film 'psycho' directed by Alfred Hitchcock. We watched the scene where a lady is packing her bag to flee somewhere. She keeps on looking at a big wad of money on her bed during the whole scene. this wad of money is the signifier and it signifies that she has stolen the money or it is not hers etc.

The most famous part of 'Psycho' is in the picture displayed above. The same lady is taking a shower and then a killer comes up behind her and lifts a knife to stab her. The knife is the signifier and it signifies death and violence. it shows that this lady will be killed.

The Dark Knight

I am looking at the three main stages that a film goes through. These are:

• Production,




• Distribution,




• Exhibition

http://www.warnerbros.com/?page=movies&pid=f-ce83422e/THE%20DARK%20KNIGHT#/page=movies&pid=f-ce83422e/THE_DARK_KNIGHT&asset=064159/The_Dark_Knight_-_Original_Theatrical_Trailer&type=video/

This is the home page of 'The dark knight'. It contains much information on the movie and it would be very helpful for people looking for this information.

Once you open up the page itself, There are two different trailers; Blu-ray advert and the original theatre trailer. These both have most of the same shots as the other but the original theatre trailer is much longer than the blu-ray trailer.

There is a synopsis at the bottom of the trailer giving a long paragraph but short description about the actual movie itself. It also has a link to the cast, and special downloads that are avaliable.