The conventions of the genre horror

 How the genre of horror has changed over the past few years:

The horror genre is one of the oldest ones, dating back to the early 1920s. From day one to around 1960 horror films were almost always just about your typical horror monsters - Count Dracula, the Frankenstein Monster, Mummies and occasionally zombies. Over the years the horror genre has been forced to change and adapt to suit audiences as not to become boring and predictable and instead continue to entertain and scare viewers. These changes include the plots becoming more complex and psychologically baffling, a change in the way films are shot and arranged and the blood and gore has increased to shock the viewers more and more.

In the 1930’s – horrors were based on literature and films such as Dracula and Frankenstein were made.
In the 1990’s – psychological thrillers are introduced and fear of the unknown is used widely. Films such as The Blair Witch Project, which was the first of its kind and changed the horror genre completely, introducing a completely unique style. Also films such as se7en had a lot of religious connotations, the victims having to pay for their sins.
Now in the 2000’s – religious connotations followed into the noughties, with films such as Saw being made. Also predictions for world chaos and destruction such as The Day after Tomorrow and 1012, as well as inescapable and unprovoked deaths such as in the film Final Destination. More recently films such as Paranormal Activity and The Orphan have reintroduced psychological horrors.


 The conventions the audience can alwys expect to see in horror genres: 

The setting for a horror film is usually in an isolated, abandoned or locations with a hidden past, this can create a sense of tension and how they are alone, these are usually set at night time. However the setting for a horror genre is varied and can be set in almost any location at any time of day.

The weird camera angles are common in horor movies. They use extreme close ups and point of view shots in order to show fear or to make the audience feel more involved or to add tension.

It uses props such as knives, axes, guns and blood to show that its a horror film, this all adds to the effictiveness.

The narrative strucutre is how the story is told and in horror films they usually have a cliff hanger at the end of the movie and a never ending plot.

     

Friends with Kids- film review

Six friends are enjoying life without responsibilities, until married couple Leslie and Alex fall pregnant. This is quickly followed by Ben and Missy's pregnancy. Life changes, as it becomes harder for the friends to meet up. The remaining two friends, Jason and Julie, have been best friends for years and live in the same New York apartment building. Following their friends route into parenting, they begin to question whether they too would like to have kids. They decide on a plan to have a baby together and carry-on with their platonic relationship. They share the childcare and they each begin a new relationship with other people. The plan appears to be going very well.

Life as parents becomes increasingly difficult for the once passionate Ben and Missy, as they have become distant and resentful of each other. An honest dinner conversation, between all the friends, on a ski trip brings everything to the surface. On returning home, they decide to separate. Meanwhile, after some kind words from Jason about her at the dinner table, Julie comes to realize that she harbors feelings for Jason. She later admits these feelings to him during dinner in a restaurant. He rejects her, as he is in love with his current girlfriend and doesn't see Julie in this way. She moves out of their apartment to Brooklyn and they continue to share custody of their child.

Later, his relationship ends because they have different views about children - she doesn't want to have any. Jason then realizes that he has feelings for Julie. He goes to her Brooklyn apartment and and confesses his feelings. She is scepitcal at first but he manages to convince her.

 

The film is really funny and a has some good comedy in it.The best thing to say about the film is that it does have a real pace to its dialogue and I liked some of the snappy delivery and tone of it, some of it being funny but just generally it had a good rhythm to it. Problem is that the rest of the film really doesn't do much that works particularly well. For me it wasn't "bad" just weak, but this was because I didn't hate the characters quit as much as I can imagine that some will. They are hard to like and it doesn't help that the plot is built around a device that requires them to be narcissistic, selfish and spoilt for the vast majority of the running time. They have some changes in their characters late in the game (the changes you know the anti-couple will have from the moment the first scene finishes) but by the time these changes occur, you've probably given up caring about these spoilt unlikeable people.

The cast keep that at bay for a while – although I was a bit behind from the start because I found both Scott and Westfeldt to be the least of the cast – a problem considering they are the leads. Hamm, Wiig, Rudolph have the charisma to carry some of the busier scenes but I have no idea why they had O'Dowd doing an American accent that is terrible (when he keeps it up long enough to notice). Fox, Burns and a few others add starry names but not too much else.

Friend with Kids has some energy to it and at times the snap of the dialogue is entertaining but the film can never get away from its main problem which is that the core plot and characters are both predictable and hard to like. These two things combine to limit how interested the viewer is in the film and with fewer laughs than there should be, there isn't much beyond the famous faces and snappy delivery to hold the interest.

 

star rating: 3 stars

Advert comparison

Chanel advert:

Denotations:

• A woman is wearing a long black dress and is very slender and thin, she looks like a model.
• She looks quite wealthy as you can see by her appearance.
• She is on a train looking out of the window.
• Her body image shows that she is posing as you wouldnt stand like that normally.

Conotations:

• Her long dresss and figure attracts people to the perfume and persuades them to purchase it.
• The wealthiness also makes it more attractive for the people to look at as it makes them want to buy it as they may think that by buying the perfume will make them feel expensive and elegant.  
• The train adds to the effectiveness and gives it more of a glow and again makes the whole advert look expensive and posh.
• People would want to look like her as she looks perfect. She looks as if nobody can touch her.

  Nina Ricci advert:

Denotations:

• She is wearing a white gown which blends in with the background.
• There are red apples on the floor.
• The branches match the lid of the perfume. 

Conotations:

•  The whiteness makes the woman look pure and innocent.
• The red apples and the woman dressed in white reminds people of snow white as she ate a red apple.
• The branches go with the advert and make it look more elegant and also like a fairytale.

Camera angles in film making:

 

• Extreme long shot  

 

 This can be taken from as much as a quarter of a mile away, and is generally used as a scene-setting, establishing shot. It normally shows an EXTERIOR, eg the outside of a building, or a landscape, and is often used to show scenes of thrilling action eg in a war film or disaster movie. There will be very little detail visible in the shot, it's meant to give a general impression rather than specific information.

The extreme long shot on the left is taken from a distance, but denotes a precise location - it might even connote all of the entertainment industry if used as the opening shot in a news story.

•   Long Shot

 

 

This is the most difficult to categorise precisely, but is generally one which shows the image as approximately "life" size ie corresponding to the real distance between the audience and the screen in a cinema (the figure of a man would appear as six feet tall). This category includes the FULL SHOT showing the entire human body, with the head near the top of the frame and the feet near the bottom. While the focus is on characters, plenty of background detail still emerges: we can tell the coffins on the right are in a Western-style setting, for instance.

 

• Medium Shot

 

 

 

Contains a figure from the knees/waist up and is normally used for dialogue scenes, or to show some detail of action. Variations on this include the TWO SHOT (containing two figures from the waist up) and the THREE SHOT (contains 3 figures...). NB. Any more than three figures and the shot tends to become a long shot. Background detail is minimal, probably because location has been established earlier in the scene - the audience already know where they are and now want to focus on dialogue and character interation. Another variation in this category is the OVER-THE-SHOULDER-SHOT, which positions the camera behind one figure, revealing the other figure, and part of the first figure's back, head and shoulder.

 

• Close-Up

 

 

 This shows very little background, and concentrates on either a face, or a specific detail of mise en scène. Everything else is just a blur in the background. This shot magnifies the object (think of how big it looks on a cinema screen) and shows the importance of things, be it words written on paper, or the expression on someone's face. The close-up takes us into the mind of a character. In reality, we only let people that we really trust get THAT close to our face - mothers, children and lovers, usually - so a close up of a face is a very intimate shot. A film-maker may use this to make us feel extra comfortable or extremely uncomfortable about a character, and usually uses a zoom lens in order to get the required framing.

 

•  Extreme Close-Up

 

 

As its name suggests, an extreme version of the close up, generally magnifying beyond what the human eye would experience in reality. An extreme close-up of a face, for instance, would show only the mouth or eyes, with no background detail whatsoever. This is a very artificial shot, and can be used for dramatic effect. The tight focus required means that extra care must be taken when setting up and lighting the shot - the slightest camera shake or error in focal length is very noticeable.

 

• The Bird's-Eye view

This shows a scene from directly overhead, a very unnatural and strange angle. Familiar objects viewed from this angle might seem totally unrecognisable at first (umbrellas in a crowd, dancers' legs). This shot does, however, put the audience in a godlike position, looking down on the action. People can be made to look insignificant, ant-like, part of a wider scheme of things. Hitchcock (and his admirers, like Brian de Palma) is fond of this style of shot.

• High Angle 

Not so extreme as a bird's eye view. The camera is elevated above the action using a crane to give a general overview. High angles make the object photographed seem smaller, and less significant (or scary). The object or character often gets swallowed up by their setting - they become part of a wider picture.

• Eye Level 

A fairly neutral shot; the camera is positioned as though it is a human actually observing a scene, so that eg actors' heads are on a level with the focus. The camera will be placed approximately five to six feet from the ground.

• Low Angle  

 These increase height (useful for short actors like Tom Cruise or James McAvoy) and give a sense of speeded motion. Low angles help give a sense of confusion to a viewer, of powerlessness within the action of a scene. The background of a low angle shot will tend to be just sky or ceiling, the lack of detail about the setting adding to the disorientation of the viewer. The added height of the object may make it inspire fear and insecurity in the viewer, who is psychologically dominated by the figure on the screen.

• Oblique/Canted Angle 

 

Sometimes the camera is tilted (ie is not placed horizontal to floor level), to suggest imbalance, transition and instability (very popular in horror movies). This technique is used to suggest POINT-OF-View shots (ie when the camera becomes the 'eyes' of one particular character,seeing what they see — a hand held camera is often used for this.