Text 1- Unfriended
Text 2- The Blair Witch Project
Does the narrative themes of the horror genre reflect societies issues?
Female representation- the final Girl theory,objectification and male gaze
Fear sells. Fear makes money. The countless companies and consultants in the business of protecting the fearful from whatever they may fear know it only too well. The more fear, the better the sales.
DANIEL GARDNER, The Science of Fear
^found on this websitehttp://www.notable-quotes.com/f/fear_quotes_ii.html
The way a film was marketed to attract an audience- blair witch website ?
Unfriended (Text 1)
Basic's
Made in - 2014Director- Leo Gabriadze
Audience- Teenagers/young adults
Certificate Rating- 15 ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/unfriended-filmtrailer )
Genre- Horror
R rating
Release date- 1st may 2015? UK
Tag line - 'Online, your memories last forever. But so do your mistakes'
Potential points/things to research
How many hours to teenagers spend on social media/ internet - society effectshttp://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/digital-media/11597743/Teenagers-spend-27-hours-a-week-online-how-internet-use-has-ballooned-in-the-last-decade.html
 |
| From the telegraph resource above |
What are the most popular apps- colour blue theme - keeps you awake
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| From the telegraph resource above |
Desensitised generations
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-11-13/news/ct-met-tolerant-teens-bd-20101113_1_millennials-teens-generational-shift
violence linking to social media ?? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21143346
The final girl theory:
http://offscreen.com/view/feminism_and_horror
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalGirl
https://elizaoboadihorror.wordpress.com/2012/11/02/the-final-girl-theory/
http://2013.neutralmagazine.com/article/the-final-girl-gender-in-horror/
Review on Unfriended
Effectively cyber stalked, its the old horror trope its 'Halloween', 'Bloody Valentine', 'I Know What You Did', its the anniversary death thing, something happened a secret in the past and now the vengeful spirit is coming back but because its all played out on a computer screen this instantly isn't something that is completely original I mean if you look for example, the idea of computers as being demonic goes back to 'Demon Seed', and to 'Evil Speak' which is the famous video 'Nasty'. and then you get chat room which fails in anyway to get a handle on what online interaction looks like in this case this film is one that actually understands its skyping culture. so during the movie each of them is being cyber stalked with revelations coming out online which it causes the protagonists to turn against each other. as I said the central gimmick is that it plays out on the computer screens and as you are watching it you are seeing windows within windows following text messages and i think your response to will be to some extent how you feel about that culture. if you are an older member of the audience one of the things that can happen is you can start to feel panicky about how much there is to keep up with, where to look and also the sense that these teens are completely dextrose with this, they're not even thinking about the way its working. what makes the film work however is that if you are at home with the culture. at home with the online culture then you know what it does is says something quite interesting about cyberbullying because many people have seen the trailer and are being okay you're being stalked on the internet just log off and the smart thing about the plot is at several points where they tell each other just log off walk away but the point is they can't, why can't they, because they are addicted because they are addicted to the thing and i what i think is interesting about it is quite apart from being a horror movie which is that it has the strength of its formal convictions so if you think for example the blair witch project. the blair witch project was a film which said okay this is going to play out as the found footage of these people who went out to make a documentary in burkersville wood and were going to say thats all there is there isn't an exterior thats what there is and at the beginning of liar witch you think that this is going to drive me mad. this is a long time this is the load stone of the found footage genre obviously it owes a debt to 'Cannibal Holocaust' (...) But blair witch project has the strengths of its convictions and despite the fact of its shrieking young film students seen all the way through seen on these shaky hand held cameras like this is going to drive me mad but actually did it made the thing believable it made it credible. i know people who saw blair with when it came out who genuinely thought is this real is this actually real. well the case of unfriended which was at one point called cybernatural what is has is the strength of its conviction so although a movie like 'Open Windows' last year might have sort of looked at doing this, this is a complete hermetically sealed world in which actually the irony of it is whilst they are all online. trying to figure it out, is one of them playing the trick on the other one, who is? who is actually behind all this, all these Facebook messages that they are getting from someone, who's hacked into that account and they start distrusting each other and in fact what the movie is doing is is its saying you're looking the boogey man straight in the face and the boogey man is the screen itself and in many ways its a shrieky teen terrorised slasher movie. but actually below that its a film which is about the fact that cyberbullying only works if you partake in it if you cooperate with it. and all the way through the film its says don't click this link don't do this don't do that and they do any why do they because the underlying thing with it is its to do with the fact that you can turn the screen off. (6:25)
The Blair Witch Project (Text 2)
Basic's
Made in-1999
Directors- Eduardo Sánchez, Daniel Myrick
Audience- Teenagers/Young adults
Certificate Rating- 15 (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/releases/blair-witch-project-1999-1)
Genre- Horror
R Rating
Release Date- 30th July 1999
Tag Line- 'In October 1994 three student filmmakers disappeared in the woods near Burkittsville, Maryland, while shooting a documentary... A year later their footage was found.'
QUOTATIONS - BIBLIGORAPHY
The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her 1992 book Men, Women, And Chain Saws: Gender In The Modern Horror Film, a critical examination of slasher movies.- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalGirl
David Cronenberg
'If you accept, at least to some extent, the Freudian dictum that civilisation is repression, then imagination - and an unrepressed creativity - is dangerous to civilisation'; and for all of horror films' often formulaic nature, the genre throws up a kind of wild creativity that just isn't seen anywhere else.'
page 1
horror films
james marriott
final girl page 35
more vulnerable
negative representation because you think she's weak have doubt that she's not going to survive
blaire dies
girl in blaire witch is the leader and the only girl and the final girl
"The image of the distressed female most likely to linger in memory is the image of one who did not die: the survivor, or Final Girl."PAGE 35
In schoell's words: "The vast majority of contemporary shockers, wether in the sexist mold or not, feature climaxes in which the women fight back against their attackers- the wandering, humourless psychos who populate these films. They often show more courage and levelheadedness than their cringing male counterparts"
PAGE 35
PAGE 37
given the drift in just four years between Texas Chain Saw and Halloween- from passive to active defines- it is no surprise that the films following Halloween present Final Girls who not only fight back but do so with ferocity and even kill the killer on their own, without help from the outside.
representation of women
shows how things that work stick with the genre
development etc etc
"The reason horror isn't as lively as it once was is because people are out of ideas"- Drew Grim Van Ess
"Horror movies are a barometer of those things that trouble the night thoughts of a whole society)" - Stephen King
QUOTATIONS - BIBLIGORAPHY
The term was coined by Carol J. Clover in her 1992 book Men, Women, And Chain Saws: Gender In The Modern Horror Film, a critical examination of slasher movies.- http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FinalGirl
David Cronenberg
'If you accept, at least to some extent, the Freudian dictum that civilisation is repression, then imagination - and an unrepressed creativity - is dangerous to civilisation'; and for all of horror films' often formulaic nature, the genre throws up a kind of wild creativity that just isn't seen anywhere else.'
page 1
horror films
james marriott
final girl page 35
more vulnerable
negative representation because you think she's weak have doubt that she's not going to survive
blaire dies
girl in blaire witch is the leader and the only girl and the final girl
"The image of the distressed female most likely to linger in memory is the image of one who did not die: the survivor, or Final Girl."PAGE 35
In schoell's words: "The vast majority of contemporary shockers, wether in the sexist mold or not, feature climaxes in which the women fight back against their attackers- the wandering, humourless psychos who populate these films. They often show more courage and levelheadedness than their cringing male counterparts"
PAGE 35
PAGE 37
given the drift in just four years between Texas Chain Saw and Halloween- from passive to active defines- it is no surprise that the films following Halloween present Final Girls who not only fight back but do so with ferocity and even kill the killer on their own, without help from the outside.
representation of women
shows how things that work stick with the genre
development etc etc
"The reason horror isn't as lively as it once was is because people are out of ideas"- Drew Grim Van Ess
"Horror movies are a barometer of those things that trouble the night thoughts of a whole society)" - Stephen King
http://www.indiewire.com/article/how-the-team-behind-unfriended-pulled-off-the-most-ingenious-horror-film-in-years-20150424 more sources on cyberbullying, how they filmed it etc
^
The horror of it all came one night when we were all talking about this and he pitched it to me a bunch of times. I never understood it and suddenly when we landed on the horror it all clicked for me. I said, "Oh, I get it. You use the restrictions and limitations of a computer desktop the same way that ‘The Blair Witch Project’ used the restrictions of a single camera.” And suddenly that made sense for me. (Nelson Greaves )
http://www.refinery29.com/2015/04/85830/unfriended-movie-review
^
"One of the most frustrating and tantalizing things is when you send that text message, and it says the other person has seen your message, but isn't responding. It's that ellipses; that's something that we've learned to care about. We've learned to be afraid of it, and it's a source of tension," Greaves says. It's an update of the found-footage genre. "We used the constraints and limitations of a computer screen the same way The Blair Witch Project used video cameras."
https://prezi.com/3ewc87yoxddt/steve-neales-theory-of-repetition-difference/
Steve Neale quote
