Alternate Ideas for Creative Project

Alternative Narratives

Here are four concept possibilities for the opening sequence for my the creative project.

The first would involve a film-noir detective in an equally dated environment, using stylistic editing and dialogue to pull interest into the characters emotions rather than extensive action sequences. The detective finds the girl he loves murdered in their house while he slept, and resolves to find out how it happened, leading him deeper into the corruptions of his city and its government than he'd ever hoped to go.
Due to the extent of location and props this project would require, I abandoned the idea.

The second opening idea would have involved a young woman, who, after the dissappearance of her brother in a hostile dystopian future, dares the outside world in order to reclaim him. She explores the nightmarish reality, avoiding death and torment at the hands of inexplicable creatures haunting the sunless realm, until eventually discovering she was too late to save her brother. The audience, along with protagonist, eventually come to understand the existence of the alien environment and its horrific inhabitants.
Again, to create a believable dystopian world would require cgi and, most likely, funding, and thus this concept was out of the question.

The third involved a man, an ordinary man living in britain, becoming trapped inside of the skyscraper he works in. He endevours to escape, and finds himself and his fellow office workers stranded by a supernatural phenomenon, unable to even break their way free through the windows. As the plot progresses, they come to realize they they aren't the only ones stranded, and eventually, after turning on one another on the most part, find themselves being killed off one by one, trapped in a game in a futuristic programme.
I chose not to begin with because, as a plotline, it was largely psychological, making it far more challenging to have explicitely represented the conventions of the horror genre.

Conventions of Horror

VARIATIONS BETWEEN SUB-GENRES

Psychological Horror
Normally a femenine lead, often interlinked with detective crimes, and usually based on realistic events as opposed to fantasy-based frights. Fear and scares in psychological horrors are usually focused on tension rather than gore and graphic horror.
Some examples of psychological horrors would be Silence of the Lambs, it's sequals Hannibal and Red Dragon, and the Shining. In all of them the antagonist is an intriguing and intelligent, yet totally psychotic killer.

Fantasy Horror
Fantasy horror covers a broad spectrum, as the majority of horrors invoke some usage of the supernatural. Vampires, werewolves, ghosts, demons and occultism are common themes, most commonly focused around some sort of haunting. Largely these films focus on families, and generally a family with some sort of peculiar history. More often than not, the family moves into a house with a suspicious past, such as being built upon a burial ground or the previous inhabitants being murdered.

Some examples of fantasy horror films are The Ring, The Grudge, and The Omen, in which thrills come from ancient monsters and curses. Again, female characters are either the protagonist or central to the events.

Slasher Horror
Dating back decades, the slasher horror has progressed with the times. Originally the sub-genre focused around a serial killer, combining elements of tension and out-and-out gore to create fairly basic storylines, mostly to do with a murder-spree. Now however, through video-games and perceptions of youth culture, the slasher horror has become far more brutal and visually opressive, using advanced CGI to recreate more grisly deaths and invent more harrowing torments for the characters to survive, or not, respectively.
Examples of the slasher horror include anything from Saw and it's endless sequals to the original Halloween. Previously, teenagers were the general victim or the genre, but that trend has faded somewhat recently.

Anaylsis of Continuity Piece

CONTINUITY PIECE


As far as the continuity piece went, there were several issues with the camera to begin with, such as being out of focus and issues with adjusting the tripod. I did manage to, on the most part, keep true to the ideas in my storyboard, despite a few alterations in order to keep the 180 degree rule correctly. The camera work was sometimes jerky however, and the idea itself was nothing particularly original, so if I was to reshoot I would aim to take more time on the planning process, just to ensure fewer slip-ups and necessity for changes.

Box-Office Results

Box-Office Research

The highest grossing Horror film of all-time was the Sixth Sense, bringing in over almost $673 million dollars since its release. Whereas this is a phenomenal intake of money, it still ranks only 35 on the overall survey of highest-grossing films of all time, taken in 2009. This proves a very commonly held perspective to be true: Horror films are no longer as popular as they once were, and that Horrors are most likely more suited for one time viewings, as opposed to DVD purchases. This is of course the main flaw with the who-dunnit theme of almost every Horror since the dawn of time - once you know what's happening, all the fear of the panic and unknown fades away and the audience is left with little to discover, and thus making it pointless to re-watch.

The highest grossing film of all time that can be construed as a Thriller would be The Dark Knight. Only released in July 2008, it is already the fourth highest-grossing film of any genre in the history of cinema, taking in over a billion dollars in barely eighteen months. This however says fairly little about the genre of Thriller. Although awarded and critically acclaimed, the majority of the films success can be contributed to the popularity of the Batman series - a franchise over seventy-years old to date. All the same, it's popularity at the award ceremonies, earning it 2 Oscars, a staggering 76 other awards recognised in the film industry, and on top of that 58 extra nominations, proves more than merely a steady franchise.

The highest grossing Romantic-comedy of all time was My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Little can be said about the originality of the franchise other than an exceedingly well-received revival of typical genre stereotypes, proving bigger is sometimes better in Romantic-Comedies, so long as the narratives leaves room for such flamboyance without seeming surreal.

Questionnaire

Summary of results for Research Questionnaire

My questionnaire, consisting of the following ten questions, was handed out amongst approximately five people of a variety of age-ranges and backgrounds:

1. Which is your favourite genre? (Horror, Thriller or Romantic-Comedy)
2. Why is this your favourite genre?
3. What is your favourite element to any Romantic-comedy?
4. Which sub-genre of Horror do you prefer? For example suspense horror, sci-fi horror, fantasy-horror etc.
5. What would you say the majority of Thriller films ought to improve upon?
6. Which Horror film scared you the most?
7. Which aspect of this film did you find most terrifying?
8. Respectively in Horrors, Thrillers, and Romantic-comedies, which would you expect to have a happy ending?
9. Which sub-genre of thriller do you prefer? For example action, psychological, science-fiction, etc.
10. Does music play an important part in films for you?

The age-ranges for this questionnaire spanned between fifteen to fifty years old, and gender specified. The majority of questionnaires were responded to by 15-25 year olds, nine out of thirty. Thirty questionnaires in total were completed.

Question One resulted in the majority of the public responding with the Horror option. There was a fluctuation of results between male and female participants - men who didn't choose Horror more commonly answering Thriller, and females who didn't choose Horror responding with Romantic-comedy. This was a result somewhat stereo-typically to be expected. This ratio also changed as the age of the participants increased - fewer and fewer people above the age of thirty said they preferred Horrors.

Question Two was responded to with a variety of somewhat detailed answers. For Romantic-Comedies, the answers were largely female and above the ages of 25. The particular element they generally preferred was the protagonist, and the quality of humour they delivered. Another favourite was the soundtrack. In Horrors, the younger audience generally preferred the more violent elements of scary than the psychological elements, and again, as the age of the participant increased, the results were vice-versa. Another particularly crucial element was shown to be a believable villain. In thrillers, almost all questionnaires resulted in the answer of the action sequences, although humour also became an inherent factor as the age of participant increased - the film not being taken too seriously.

Question Three (somewhat begrudgingly answered with "the end" by a number of male participants) was answered more enthusiastically by women. Unexpectedly, a younger audience were more drawn to the emotional content and romanticism in the films, whereas an older audience, again almost entirely female constructive responses, preferred to see a dashing male lead and the more believable, every-day aspects of the every-day heroine.

Question Four resulted in a younger audience preferring largely pain-related as opposed to psychologically related horrors. Participants under the age of 20, on average, preferred a balance between interesting plots and sadistic violence, the majority of results categorized as escape-based horror-thrillers such as Saw. An older audience agreed largely that psychological horrors were their preference, such as Silence of the Lambs, where any violence is a pre-requisite to a solid plot.

Question Five, throughout all age-ranges and gender varieties, was answered based upon the plots. Almost everyone agreed that Action movies have mastered the majority of stunt-based excitement, but an unbelievable array of characters and plot-twists often dampened the enjoyment of the chase-scene or final-fight.

Question Six. The Saw series, amongst both genders, was exceedingly popular amongst a younger audience (generally below 35). Another popular outcome for was Shaun of the Dead, although that would fall more under the category of horror-comedy or parody movie, although in terms of fear-factor, didn't rank particularly high. The scariest films comprised of The Others, the Blair Witch Project, The Ring and also the Grudge series, several of those receiving more than one vote. 28 Days Later was another popular result, giving the impression that a lot of the audience would prefer more Horrors set in Britain. This logically would make any surreality or feelings of alienation in a very American Horror seem more local, and thus scarier.

In Question Seven, the aspect of almost every single Horror that terrified the audience most universally was a moment of suspense, in which a single character is alone yet without any visible threat present. This suggests a masterful use of sound and lighting in the modern Horror to create suspense and a terrifying atmosphere. Another particularly scary Horror moment was the chase-scene, or panic-scene in which the protagonist and opposing forces eventually collide head on.

Question Eight was answered with relatively similarly. Action movies were expected, one-hundred percent to end happily, as were Romantic Comedies. Horrors on the other hand were fairly varied, resulting in an almost equal divide of opinions.

Question Nine was answered almost universally with Action-thriller - psychological-thriller was seen to be a generally weaker genre than the similar psychological-horror. The conventions of the action-thriller seem to be working continually well as cinema progresses over the years.

Question Ten. The majority of participants whole-heartedly agreed that, regardless of genre, the non-diagetic soundtrack of any film played an entirely crucial role, particularly for Horrors and Romantic-comedies. Without the soundtrack, many participants believed the most crucial moments of any film would go almost unnoticed and without anywhere near the same effect as with the perfect score or tune coinciding.

Textual Analysis

Textual Analysis of the opening of the movie Underworld (2003)

The opening corporate insignias are displayed briefly to a black backdrop, to the sound of screams, in sharp white lettering. The theme is already set. The steely lettering of the word UNDERWORLD revolves onto the screen to the distorted yelp of a wolf (or so we believe). Every detail from the connotations of shadow and darkness behind a black backdrop to the inevitably horrifying screams introducing the innocent businesses involved, all give prominent evidence that the movie Underworld (it's title itself implies enough) is not one filled with sunshine or happiness.

It does however contain a certain beauty. The slow, long track through the arches of a steeple tower in an unknown metropolis, tinted an eerie, miserable blue, continue to suggest the macabre nature of what's to come. Religious imagery is used from the off, and as the camera cranes down and reveals the statuesque figure of Selene (portrayed by Kate Beckinsale) the Gothic nature of this production grows more and more apparent. She squats, clad head to toe in black, hair strewn by wind and enduring rain as lightning flashes above, her trench coat billowing behind her from atop the treacherous stone railing she perches upon. Black, as mentioned previously, is itself significant to traditions of the horror genre to signify darkness, malevolence, and terrors of the supernatural. Unnaturally luminescent forget-me-not blue eyes, mesmerizing enhanced through CGI, combined with our protagonists deathly white marble skin, leave little to the imagination as to whether or not she is human. The thunderstorm brewing, her perilous location miles above the city she scowls upon, both suggest an air of continual fantasy, intricated with her sinister aesthetic, bring the word Vampire correctly to the forefront of assumptions.


If enough clues hadn't yet tipped off the audience, the voiceover of ancient wars, mythological evils, internal warfare and in fact mention the sole purpose of her continued existence, is sure to set the stage, when combined with the irresistibly potent imagery, for a slick spin on an age-old concept.


The contemporary portrayal of supernatural warfare is officially clamped to the audience's perceptions as, after a brief nod to a similar entity at equally awe inspiring heights, the character of Selene plummets earthwards, lancing past unfathomable storeys at inhuman velocity, to arrive on the roadside, unharmed and as if having put one foot in front of the other, striding onwards entirely unfazed. The wording of the voiceover, combined with a visual conclusion she draws with her Vampiric colleague, summarise both the originality of the genre, a combination of fantasy-horror-cum-supernatural-warfare and out and out action-thriller, and storyline, as well as give an engaging portrayal of what the audience is in store for as her war progresses. Three minutes in.

Textual Analysis of the opening of the movie The Omen (1976)

Red font on a blacked screen rarely suggests happy endings. The thousands of connotations of both colours suggested individually, regardless of being combined - evil, blood, anger and darkness just as an example of some - rarely, particularly in cinema, give impressions of anything other than a Horror. As an operatic orchestra combined with choir vocals are heard startlingly, religious turmoil is impossible to deny as a feature of the following production. Particularly as even the name of the unfortunate child who merely portrays Damien fades onto screen, and is met with a climactic crescendo from the entourage of voices.

"The Omen" fades on screen to a sombre violin chord, accompanied by the scarlet outline of a boy, his shadow casting the shape of an inverted cross. The symbol of the inverted cross is rarely a positive image in religion, and offers even more malice projected by a child.

The credits vanish, to be replaced by a man, expensively dressed, in the back of a limousine or taxi - despite being clarified as the cars entirety fills the camera with the actor's equivalent of a medium shot, it was logically to surmise this man was being driven in a limo. During this introduction, the location, Rome, which happens to be the religious capital of Europe, appears in white, a stark contrast to the night's sky above the busy traffic streaming throughout the city. It is accompanied by a date - June sixth, six o'clock AM. The number sixty-sixth, also commonly recognised as being the "number of the beast" in Christian mythology, foreshadows the events to follow. During this furtive ferrying, the voice of an elderly Italian accept repeats the mortifying phrase "the child is dead." The audience can, so far, predict events from then on aren't to about to be jovial.

An interior establishing shot moved throughout an aging wooden hall, a nun in traditional black habit heading away from the viewer as the camera descends. This shot, to add extra discomfort to the discerning opening, is a point-of-view shot, from above.

The silence of the scene is already somewhat troublesome, particularly after the busy highway recordings from the previous road-shoot. Sobriety abounds. At long last, muttering begins to become audible hushed voices, until at last, a conversation is brought into shot. The suited man from the back-seat of the limousine proceeds to discuss the death of his child with a man in religious attire. This seems almost a fairly logical situation after the death of one's offspring, but after the introduction thus far, and the suggestion to adopt said religious man offers after five minutes or so's conversing, all seem just a little out of the ordinary.

The genre is established, a lead role introduced, and the plot is fully hinted at without revealing a twist or turn anywhere. An introduction to anything ought to aim to achieve this much information in the space of one-hundred and eighty seconds.

Textual Analysis of the opening of the movie Constantine (2005)

The reasonably recent release of the film Constantine, initiates just what it is within the first five minutes. Perhaps the first thirty seconds.

The trademark Warner Brothers logo enters in silence, golden and perfectly conventional. Crackling sounds, the sound of crumbling woodwork and dirt, soon replace this harmonious nothing, as the very shine is peeled away and decimated to ashes. The cloudy blue sky begins to darken, replaced by a hellish amber horizon, scorched earth, and scarlet flashes of thunder, as the insignia fades into ashes to reveal another, once again the incinerated husk of it's genuine aesthetic, and again, until nothing remains and the screen fades to black. The symbolism is clear - an apocalyptic environment replacing what we know, hell on earth and it's unalterable horizon.

And so we enter the prologue opening sequence proper. White lettering appears over a black screen, informing the audience of a religious prophecy - reasonably conventional in the genre of fantasy-horror. We enter the first scene.

A subtitle reading Mexico appears briefly in front an establishing shot of a collapsing stone church, or at least the structural remnants. This immediately brings to mind, particularly in combination with the previous text, a theme of Christian mythology. The camera zooms through the stone arches, a stray dog pressing its snout into the earth, until we cut to a medium long shot of two men squatting within the structure. They appear to be foraging beneath the sand, presumably for something of value. An old car speeds along the dirt road outside of the church, playing a foreign track over the stereo. This, in my opinion, is merely to excuse and aid the audience's suspension of belief before what happens next.

One of the men, wearing a soiled red sportscoat with some equally shabby trousers, and clearly of local or of similarly Latin origin, steps forward from his crouch. His foot collapses some floorboards underneath, and immediately the camera cuts beneath, within the orifice, to capture his reaction. A hollow, sombre sound begins to emanate, from what we believe to be the hole. This creates total fascination from what would ordinarily be an everyday occurance, as the tension rises as the man reaches one arm into the shadows, something no one I imagine would feel particularly keen on. Once again looking from close to a point of view perspective, we now witness him withdraw a furled up Nazi flag. This brings to mind a dozen instant connotations in the eyes of almost any audience. Initially, the surprise at seeing such an article: notably due to it's antiquity, but more prominently due to the common knowledge of the horrifying Nazi regime of World War II (a subject previously noted upon in the pre-scene text), yet also the suspicion as to why such a thing resides buried beneath the floorboards of an abandoned church in Mexico.

The unfavourable echoey rumbling reaches feverr pitch as the man stares about in panic, clutching his unravelled prize close to his chest. The flag he has unwrapped reveals a runic golden spear-tip (only distinguishable from a knife due to the introductory text) and he seems instantly, sinisterly attached. The audience immediatly is able to recognize something diabolic has been discovered, largely due to the continual use of sound effects and his own reaction.

The introduction scene continues, and if the audience was somehow unable to distinguish hints of the paranormal, by the time the protagonist is introduced, they will have.

Textual Analysis of the opening of the movie Pitch Black (2000)

Pitch Black starts like almost every other film. The Universal Pictures insignia, almost symbolically a revolving planet, was most likely left plain and simple by the production crew, referencing the science-fiction genre. The following Interscope Communications intro is displayed - a shabby, dark room with studio lights in eerie corners pans across the screen until the logo appears, once again a possible reference to the films theme of darkness, claustrophobic terror and the unknown approaching.

The music, a low, bass-filled and traditionally sci-fi theme is heard, gradually becoming louder, as the camera, as in uncountable other futuristic, space-set films, pans slowly and zooms outwards across the surface of a space-shuttle, eventually revealing its entirety drifting through space towards and ominous ring of purply dust and matter. The title appears, reading Pitch Black after anothing brief faded in appearance of the production companies. The font is clean-cut, modern, and fades in and out in pace with the space shuttle. Shadowing on the letters is cleverly used to contrast the font enough to be read while still maintaining the obviously symbolic pitch-black colour of the words. The music reaches a crescendo as this happens.

A voice over by Vin Diesel, who portrays the protagonist, speaking low and gruffly, begins. He mentions a fictional phrase, "Chryo-sleep" and explains that in this "Chryo-sleep", all but the primitive side of human nature is left dormant and no longer in control, leaving way for animalistic instincts to overule logic or what's considered rational human behaviour. The mention of humans as animals gives fair warning of the upcoming nature of both character behaviour throughout the film - revolving around the needs of the one to survive despite others, and his own personality - he is clearly intelligent enough to summise this theory, and a dark, unsavioury character, displayed by his willingness to accept this theory, and that of human's being merely animal at their cores.

The camera begins flashing within a red-tinted, distorted view of a man's face, rigged up in some kind of tubing apparatus in a tank of some variety. Strobe lighting, the colour of lightning, a traditional element of horror, is continually flickering on screen, giving the impression a flash-back or distortion of chronological events is occuring. The innards of a space ship is shown as we move from person to person, each in their respective "Chryo-sleep" condition - unconscious in the red glow. The protagonists voice-over continues to form our opinion of him, thus-far unnamed, as somewhat wild and more than a little diabolic, as in the continues grumble he explains the scent of the other characters - surmising their careers and personalities from the toolbelts they wear, the dirt on their shoes, their gender, any detail other than their words and actions at the time.

Already, barely one-hundred and eighty seconds in, the largely murky, eerily-distorted content conventional to a horror is portrayed in a variety of manners, and our intrigue is sparked by the bizarrity of the protagonist and his own anti-heroic tendencies merely from voice-over. Combined with his use of fictional dialect and terms only created for the purpose of filling out the universe of the movie, a fascinating alienation of the audience keeps interest high.

Genre Conventions

Genre Stereotypes



Every genre in film and television comes with endless steroeotypical assumptions even prior to viewing. These presumptions can be based on anything from the trailer theme, the lead actor or actress, the director to the lighting - it's an endless list of typecasts, and without them, there would be no such thing as a genre to begin with.



Here are a few examples of conventions from a few specific genres - some true, others not so. Most genres divide into several categories, such as Suspense-Thriller compared to Action-Thriller, or Slasher-Horror to Fantasy-Horror, and so the majority of conventional belives can't apply to all subdivisions, so the lists below entails some of the most widely-held views:



Horror

• Excessive use of dark exterior locations
• Female lead
• Fantasy or excessive violence
• Prolonged tension
• Secluded locales e.g abandoned house
• Subtle, eerie use of orchestrated music, often with a particular theme (such as the now infamous theme from "The Excorcist")
• Rarely songs by contemporary artists used in soundtrack
• Religious imagery and references, largely satanic
• Serial murders
• The undead, for example set post zombie apocalypse or involving vampiric/demonic mythology

Thriller

• Police officers
• Legal officials
• Car chases
• Explosions
• Technology, ranging from advanced military weaponry to handguns, to helicopters and spy satellites
• Beautiful but dangerous female co-star or antagonist (femme fatale)
• Loud and adrenaline-fueld music compositions, more and more involving contemporary artists
• Criminality, i.e mafia organizations or underground drug trades
• Muscle-bound protagonist, although this image seems to diminish as action-thrillers become less common, more veering towards suspense and psychological drama

Romantic Comedy

• Single (unmarried) female lead
• Quirky family traits
• Everyday living such as the protagonist working in an office
• Makeover!
• Handsome, debonair employer/coworker
• Contemporary soundtrack, largely women vocalists singing power ballads
• Generally set in New York or London (romance is uncommon elsewhere)
• One or more weddings
• Embarressing incidents in which the protagonist pulls through
• Very rarely illness, suffering or death
• Hugh Grant

As mentioned beforehand, these conventional features vary throughout subgenres and eras (aside from Hugh Grant), but are largely considered to be the key components to the make-up of said genres.