The Role Of The Distributor.

The role of the distributor is to make a distribution plan for the film. This is vital to the overall success of the product, and most importantly this should make the product even more appealing for the target audience. In order for this to be successful the distributor has to make decisions on where it will be released and in which media format it will be released, this will maximise profits, boost sales and increase the films popularity. When doing this it is important that the distributor thinks about specific things, market knowledge, commercial experience and statistical research. The distributors look at what they believe the film will likely make, and always have a budget plan. 

The distributor must perform audience profiling, specifically looking at age group, gender, lifestyle, media consumption and social networking, this helps the distributor learn a lot more about the audience, it also shows the distributor the different forms in which the audience are consuming the media, telling the distributor where when and how to launch the film, in the way that it will be most successful. One problem that the distributor faces is the ever changing taste of the audience, it changes with technology and other things, suggesting that traditional methods don't always work, to counteract this further research must be done so that the film is promoted and marketed in the bet ways possible. Competition has a big effect on the release date of the film, because there will be several films released at the same time, and within quick succession of each other, some may be completely different genres, but other could be the same, and be targeting the same target audience as the distributors film. Another factor that effects the release date of the film will be holidays, school ones, and religious ones, but most importantly holidays that effect the lives of their target audience. The distributor will be looking for space within the media market, a time which will allow the success of the film.
  

Distributors produce a trailer for the film, this is the most cost effective marketing technique, and generates the most interest for the film out of all the marketing techniques, therefore it extremely important that it is done well. They will do this after being given content from the film itself, they can then use this to make the best trailer possible, it must make the audience want to see the film, and also film marketing raises awareness of the film, it creates interest in it and attracts the target audience. Distributors have to complete against other distributors for popularity of their film. 

 

As well as the trailer the film will be promoted by using posters and billboards. Posters are sometimes brought about before anything else, these are called teaser posters, these let the audience no that the film is coming soon, and this will create excitement in the target audience before the film is released. Posters usually include the film title, name of the stars, an image that relates to the film and genre, a tag line and names of everyone involved in it which make up the billing block. The most effective things about posters are all the places they can appear in, for example in cinemas, this is part of expanding the audience, so that it does not just include the target audience, because people going to see other films could see that poster and then go and see that film at a later date. This is why posters are so common when it comes to marketing. On the online website for the film will be the trailer, information about it's production, exclusive stills, interviews with the actors/actresses, and other things. All of this contributes to the online awareness of the film, this is another way in which the audience are excited by the distributor. The distributor has a publicity team, they arrange interviews with the cast and crew that were involved in the film, making up press kits, these are done for the journalists, and give facts and the movie itself and how it was produced. Film festivals are held world wide, and are very popular events. Journalists and film buyers and sellers attend them, which means that marketing here is very important in promoting the film. 

The distributor is responsible for putting together promotional partnerships, allowing the film to be displayed in places that it wouldn't reach through conventional marketing alone e.g. shop. Competitions are a common thing that are used to help gain interest in the film, they are effective because they allow the audience to interact with characters from the film. 

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

Drafts of both ancillary tasks.

This is a hand drawn draft that I did for my magazine front cover.

This is a hand drawn draft that I did of my horror poster.

Storyboards and Shot List.

These are 4 storyboards that we made to aid us in when shooting the trailer. They were basic plans of certain scenes showing the shots that needed to be in them. They include a picture of the shot, the angle and some sound directions.

It was helpful to be able to visualise the scenes before actually shooting them, because it gave a structure to the trailer, and made sure time wasn't wasted on shots that we didn't need.

This is a shot list that we made in our group to help us be more organised when it came to shooting the footage. Although we didn't follow this exactly, it did help as a basic guideline.

The Hobbit Empire Magazine Cover.

The Hobbit Empire Cover, a photo by Lewis Lavery on Flickr.

Click on the image for annotations in Flickr.

Total Film Magazine Cover.

xTotalFilmCover, a photo by Lewis Lavery on Flickr.

Click on the image for analysis in Flickr. 

Original photos for film poster and magazine cover.

This trailer uses several horror conventions to make sure that it is a success among it's target audience. IT takes place in a large isolated house, which is a conventional setting in horror, known as the 'haunted house', it is usually a big a creepy old house, with one place that you can't get into. In this trailer we see this exact concept. "There are more than 30 rooms in all", this gives the audience a clue as to the scale of the building, the main protagonist, or 'final girl' then goes on to say, "there's a door in the attic, it doesn't open". This has now confirmed in the audiences mind where the horror is to be found. The genre of horror often plays of disabilities, and we can also see that in this trailer, "he can't talk at all". This immediately makes the audience want to no what happened to him, and therefore they will keep watching. They find out that "it happened a month ago, up in the attack". This is the room which the "Skeleton Key" doesn't open. This will make them want to see the film, because the automatically need to no what’s inside that room that’s so horrifically terrorising that it caused the Man to have a stroke. This trailer uses the past, and voodoo to add a sense of ancient terror. All the unanswered questions are used specifically to make the audience go and see the film. The lighting is very dark in this trailer, and the Mise En Scene consists of old objects that look like they haven't been used for years, especially in the 'voodoo' room, and in the majority of the house. I like the sound at the start of this trailer, it's not conventional for horror, but does work because it creates a representation of the place they live in and that their may be spells at work. Towards the end of the trailer we hear some more conventional type sounds, for example, bangs and lighting strikes to match the cuts, and high pitch strings to build the tension.

How did you use new media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

evaluation question 4, a photo by Lewis Lavery on Flickr.

Click on the image for analysis on Flickr.

Web 2.0 allowed me to do all of this, working on web 1.0 would have had limitations, and would not have enabled my blog to exist and look as good as it does. Web 1.0 was mainly used to find out information, and to search for things, the content was already there. But Web 2.0 completely changed things and the world suddenly became connected through the internet. It changed from being something that was used to find out information, to something that was used to create online sites. People could now create the content and information themselves, and see everone elses work. Sites like 'wikipedia' and 'youtube' are prime examples of this idea, and they would not exist if it wern't for the users that update and upload the websites. If I hadn't had access to the internet then I would have probably had to evaluate my work by doing an essay on it. I feel strongly that this wouldn't work as well as my blog does, because to fully understand and see what I have done, a visual representation is needed, this allows anyone who is reading it to see exactly what went on, rather than making their own assessments and judgments by reading an essay. Technology has evolved, and therefore so has the ways in which things are evaluated.

What have you learnt from your audience feedback?

We screened our teaser trailer to our class, this is because our target audience are people between the ages of 16 and 25, and the people in our class fall under that category. This meant that the feedback they gave us would be of extreme value when it came to improving our trailer, as it was coming from our audience and not just anyone. They gave us feedback based on what they thought of it. The feedback was mixed and we got reviews on what they thought was good and bad in terms of Horror and trailer conventions. As we screened the trailer in class, alongside our peers, we were able to fully experience their reactions, we were able to process them visually and by listening to them. This is a better method than just reading written evaluations. 


Feedback benefits the distributor, when they are producing an advertising campaign to help promote the movie. It helps them to decide what to keep and what to cut out of the trailer, and this will make it more popular and sell better among it's target audience.

When we played our trailer to the class, we had feedback on different areas of it, one of which was sound.  The general soundtrack went down well, they liked the fact that it was a minor piece of music, that was quiet dynamically, and told us that it filled the necessary horror conventions needed in any soundtrack. Although it was agreed the heartbeats added suspense in the ending of our trailer, the general opinion was that they went on for to long. They though that the voice over of the antagonist in our trailer was very well done, because of the depth in the voice and the reverb, they got a sense of power from hearing it, and it allowed them to feel the horror and relate to how powerless our protagonist is against him. In contrast to this our audience really liked the scene in which our main protagonist, Emily, is saying "please.. please", this is because it shows her helplessness. They also thought that the sounds at the beginning of the trailer worked very well, the heavy breathing and footsteps connoted that she was running away from something or someone scary, and that she's desperately trying to get away, the fact that the audience don't no what this is and only hear it, makes them curious to find out what it was and watch the rest of the trailer. 

When I looked at the feedback on the editing of my horror trailer, one of the most interesting points came up. They said that they didn't like the scene of gore in my trailer, this was unexpected, because in my audience research gore was voted as one of the favourite genres among my target audience. Our trailer fitted in with the conventional length of trailers, and this was picked up on when we screened it, the audience liked the length and found it appropriate. The shot of the light was something that they didn't like, they said that it was too long, killing the tension and disrupting the pace of the scene. They also thought that the scenes in the woods at the end could have been edited and cut a little faster, to build up suspense towards the end of the trailer, to make it more scary and abrupt which is convention of horror. The colouring and general darkness of the trailer was something that was liked when our trailer was viewed, they said that it added to the horror and filled the forms and conventions needed to make something in the horror of genre succeed. The intertitles had mixed reviews, the colour of them wasn't working with our audience, as it didn't look scary enough, and not everyone liked the effect we used. 

Finally we were given feedback relating to Mise En Scene and Filming. One of the opening scenes in our trailer is the scene that takes place in the 'monsters' office, they felt that it was a bit "cheesy", meaning that they felt they had seen this type of opening scene far to often in the genre of horror, but due to lack of time we kept it in there, because we needed to show a logical order of the narrative in the trailer, so that it made sense when watched. The close of of Dale went down well in our screening, they liked the fact that he looks menacing and thinks the dark lighting makes him look even more evil. They also like the shot of Dale holding the torch, because of the low canted angle, they said it makes the shot seem more creepy. This combined with the pov shot of Emily running seemed to work well for our target audience, they said that the ideology was "powerful", another good point we received about the opening running shots was that is brought them straight into the action and pace of the trailer. Emily being a teenager is convention of horror, punishing them for their sins, and our audience got that point and said that it works well. To film our trailer we used virtually all handheld camera work, in the screening the audience also told us that this looked good and was very effective in giving our trailer that edgy feel that's conventional in the genre of horror, these along with canted camera work and close ups create the technical code needed to make something appear scary. We used a low angle canted shot to create the conventional horror look, when we filmed our staircase, leading down to the 'lair of the monster', the audience liked that it was part of this big haunted house, with no escape and light, they did say that we should have included more of it in our trailer though, to add to the general representation of the world in which the monster lives.

The feedback we received was extremely helpful, because after the screening of our trailer we went back to make improvements it, we studied the comments carefully and changed what we thought now needed to be changed. When we watched our trailer back, we realised that the green coloured intertitles weren't working, so we changed the color to blood red, this gave more of a representation of horror. The office scene wasn't framed particularly well, but we didn't have time to go back and completely re-film it, so we just adjusted the zoom and position of the shot on screen in Final Cut Pro. To add an extra sense of horror we put a grain effect across the entire trailer, and then made it wide screen format, we felt this made the whole thing look more professional. At the end of the trailer the main action scene and chase that takes place in a woods, was considered to slow paced, so we speeded up the cuts and the speed of the running, this ended up having much more impact and made a big difference in terms of leaving the audience with the feeling of excitement to see the movie. Even though the gore didn't go down particularly well, we still didn't feel that the trailer had the same impact without it, so we decided to leave it in. The only change we did make however, was to raise the certificate from 15 to 18, although this makes us loose some of our audience, it makes the film more suitable for those who watch it, and the gore scenes more accepted. When making improvements to something, it's always good to get a second opinion and see's things from other people points of view. This enabled us to create a better trailer than we had before screening it, and is one of the best evaluation methods there is. It made sure that our horror trailer would be suitable and please our target audience, as this was our primary objective.

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

A common convention of trailers in general, but more specifically horror trailers, is to have inter titles that continue throughout the trailer, eventually forming a complete sentence, these help build suspense and leave the audience wondering what’s coming next, my inter title reads, "...abuses your faith...", this shows that it's only part of a sentence. There is usually an effect on the writing to make it more interesting, as you can see in the stills both our trailer and the real trailer have a glowing effect on a black background, creating the sense of delusion and some that is not normal.

In the genre of horror a common concept is that the 'monster' is something of darkness, something of evil that holds connotations of death. This is often shown through the use of a silhouette, as seen in these stills,or by having the shadow of something evil reflected on a light wall. These stills also show use of the extreme low angle shot, this gives the audience the impression that the monster has power over them, and that they are smaller and weaker than they are, this adds to the horror of the frame. Expressive camera work is a big part of horror. It worked very well in my trailer, because it gave an creepy feel to the monster and making him seem something of darkness that is not from our world, and is nothing but pure evil.

In horror films extreme close ups are used a lot, the idea behind this is that the invasion of our personal space, and leaves the audience with the feeling that there is no escape from the monster. These stills are used to scare the audience, it gives a feeling of helplessness, but at the same time it can allow us to sometimes sympathise or even understand the monster, this is most effective when the monster is the was he/she is because of a traumatic past. In our trailer it makes puts the audience in the place of Emily, because they can full on see what she's running from, this intensifies the evil presence of the monster and add's an extra dimension of fear for my audience.

The rating for my horror film is an 18 certificate, this is because it includes elements of gore, films such as 'Saw' and 'Hostel' also have gore in. This is popular among my target audience, and will help make my film a success. These stills show the scene's of gore that are in my trailer and a real trailer, I had to have some gore in the trailer to attract my target audience. This falls under the genre of gore-nography, which is sometimes known as torture porn.

These stills inherit the same ideology, which is that the audience are being drawn into the darkness, connoting that all hope is gone, it gives them a taste of the world of the monster, reinforcing it's evil.The light represents the only happy place in the frame, holding connotations of heaven and peace. This puts the image of isolation and hell into the audiences mind, and that there is no escape from the dark horrific place they are being taken into.

This shot makes use of a staircase, it's a conventional setting in horror, and something that is iconic in the genre. The idea of it is that the staircase takes you down into a dark hellish place, with no escape. The whole idea of a basement is scary to are target audience, it holds connotations of our primitive instincts. This shot is very effective and has been used in many genres of horror for a long time, this is because it's so effective and has a scary ideology. It's usually used to lead down to the torture room of the monster, and we used the shot for that exact purpose, and down here is where he "corrects there sins".

Having an extreme close up of my 'final girl' is a popular technique, it allows us to identify with the terror of the victim and brings us into her world. Another thing this shot does is to exclude all threat from the frame, this makes it scarier for the audience, as they don't no where the monster will be coming from. This is something that the audience of my movie will want to see, they enjoy the thrill of not knowing where the evil is coming from, and being able to see things from the point of view of the victim. Shots like this will make the trailer more of a success because it will make my audience want to see more of it, as it's something that they like to see in this genre. 

A lot of horror films have scenes that take place in a forest, and my trailer takes place in this stereotypical setting. This still is from "Eden Lake", and shows the main protagonist running through the forest away from the monster, in my trailer we have used this same exact theme, it works with my target audience. This conventional horror setting works in my trailer, as it certifies the genre of it, it also helps to attract the right target audience, as it is appealing for them to see a 'final girl' of similar age, running through the woods, away from someone of complete evil.

My finished magazine cover.

My finished movie poster.

My finished teaser trailer.

Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Beginning, poster evaluation.

 Click on the image for annotations in flickr.

What's different between A Teaser Trailer and A Theatrical Trailer?

Teaser Trailer:

This type of trailer is much shorter than a full theatrical one, the usually last between 30 and 60 seconds, never usually any longer than a minute and a half. This is because the primary objective is to and excitment about the realease of the upcoming film. It wouldn't give a release date like a theatrical trailer, and wouldn't contain a large amount of footage from the feel, they are designed to leave the audience a bit confussed as to what they saw, which will give them a sence of wanting to see more, and this is why teaser trailers are such a popular device in making the target audience go and see the film. 

Theatrical Trailer:

This is a preview of the film that is going to be released, it will include, the genre, the production values and the title of the movie. There would usually be a mixture of voice overs, and actual dialogue from the movie in this type of trailer. Unanswered questions are a very popular device used when making a horror trailer.Music will be a big part of this trailer, it will be very dramatic, and give us a feel of the genre.

Target Audience research and analysis.

This chart shows the most popular genre of horror among out target audience, this is vital to the success of our trailer, because we need it to fit in with the genre that people from the ages of 18 - 25 watch. The results show that Psychological was the most popular genre, closely followed by Gore, therefore we have based our trailer around these Genres. I believe that our trailer will work in our demographic due to this.

This graph shows how regularly our target audience actually watch a horror film. Once a month was the most common, by almost half, so this will help decide when our trailer should be released, for example at the beginning of the Month, and possibly when no other horror trailers are coming out. 

This chart shows us the amount of people from each sex that took part in our survey, it shew that more Girls answered it, which means that our target audience includes more Women than Men, this will help us in making the trailer, so aim it slightly more at Women, which should make the trailer itself more successful. 

This graph shows the most and least common ages of the people that took our survey, 16 - 18 was the most common age gap. This will aid us when we come to decide what rating to make our trailer.

What are some of the key conventions of the horror genre

   All films are made up of certainly rules and conventions that define which genre and sub-genre they will fall into. I have been studying the conventions of the horror genre and what makes a horror a horror. Elements to take into consideration are settings, technical code, Iconography, narrative structure, character types and themes. Horror settings are typically set out of the way, for example somewhere like, the suburbs, this allows for any kinda of secret organization of evil or mutant race to exist in complete secret. Of course everything needs to happen at night time, or out of hours, so for example someone stays late after work, only to be axed to death with no one there to save them. Secrets, innocence and ‘the past’ also play a big part in the conventional settings of horror. A school has that feel of innocence which is why it remains a popular choice of horror films. There are clear examples of secrets and the past in a lot of horror settings, for example in the “Amityville Horror” the house is built upon an Indian burial ground, this exact same idea is also used in “The Shining”, as the hotel is also built on an Indian burial ground, this helps to show just how conventional the rules of setting in a horror film are.

In horror films the technical code is very distinct. The camera work often uses weird and unconventional techniques of filming, for example strange and expressive angles causing disorientation. POV’s and ECU’s are very common in horror films, because both shots allow us to relate with the victim or sometimes with the monster. The editing is never smooth in a horror film, it’s very jumpy and eerie, adding fear and tension to scenes, and the sound often backs up the cutting, by including a high stab note with the cuts. Musical techniques are also very obvious in horror films, the minor key is always used! For example, when tension is building up in the film, the orchestra would play an ascending scale, incorporating a crescendo, and then end on a non perfect cadence; this leaves the audience with the feeling of, what next?

The horror genre itself is iconic, and this comes from the iconography within the films. The colors red and black directly represent horror, simple denotations of these colors would be darkness, evil, blood, pain, anger, danger and the unknown; all of which are big elements in the genre of horror. Low key lighting is also used to create the iconic idea of shadows, connoting hell, primitive instincts and death. The topic of innocence is also an iconic part of horror; we can see this with the use of nursery rhymes, and songs sung by children.

Narrative structure takes a big role in the genre of horror, many horrors use Todorov’s theories. There is never a simple hero; they are always a victim/hero who is in some way mentally or physically scared.

In all horror’s there has to be a few character types included to make it fit completely into the genre of horror, first we have the main protagonist, which is usually a ‘final girl’ and in slashes she is often a tom boy who is virginal. There’s the ‘Monster’ which is often some kind of beast that doesn’t die, leaving room for a sequel, the monster often has some kinda of creepy past, which has left them mentally scared and often with a desire to kill! Silly teenagers that are anti social and not ‘morally correct’, who get punished for this by being killed. There is also Scientists or doctors that make a mistake in an experiment, the ’have a go hero’, that gets killed, those who refuse to believe, who often finally accept the truth just before there death, children, for the added sense of innocence and useless policemen, or some type of law enforcement, e.g. security guards or doormen.

Lastly I will discuss themes. In the horror genre there is the theme of binary opposites, the most obvious being good vs. evil, which is the foundation of all horrors, but there are more deeply imbedded binary opposites, such as, natural vs. unnatural, known vs. unknown, strong vs. weak, and life vs. death. Horror is often close to sex, this is what a theorist called Freud said, and in most horrors we see some kinda of sexual or maybe rape scene, making sex a big theme in the horror genre. The biggest there themes date all the way back to the three classic novels, Dracula, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and Frankenstein’s Monster. Those three themes are, what lie's on the other side of death? The hidden evil inside of us, and science gone out of control. Some believe that ALL horrors even made are based on one of these three stories.

The Skeleton Key, poster evaluation.

 click on the image for annotations in flickr.

skeletonkeyposter
Originally uploaded by Lewis Lavery

Initial idea for horror trailer. Casanova.

We have chosen to make a trailer that falls under the sub-genre of psychological horror, the main idea is for the film to 'play with your mind'. The main character Josh Woods, is a typical 18 year old high school student, he enjoys sports and drinking, but most of all he enjoys women! His friends have given him the nick name, Casanova, because of his endless list of women. Casanova is a famous character who is considered 'one with the ladies', which is how his mates came up with the name.


But there is more to it than a simple boy that likes girls. All of his 'ex-girlfriends' have gone missing! He claims that they either left town or changed schools, being the most popular Boy in school nobody dares question him, even the teachers believe him. Josh now finds himself on the prowl for A new girl, but the problem is, all the popular girls are gone! So he decides to hit the libary and 'bumps' into a slightly nerdy girl, her name is Katie, Josh is happy to call her his girlfriend, and she falls completely in love with him, but little does she no what shes in for. Josh invites her over, and she glady comes. When she arrives he tells her that he lives alone, his house is desolated and old, and located out of town. He claims that his Grandmother left it to him in her will, but Katie still finds the place gives her an unsettling feeling, they move to the lounge and begin to kiss leading to them having sex and telling eachother that they love the. Katie goes upstairs to use the bathroom, but descides to have a look around, and passes the door that Josh said was the bathroom. She goes into what looks like a bedroom and catches a glimps out of one of the windows and is shocked to discover a garden full of graves, she screms at this discovery and goes to leave the house, but Josh knows what he's doing, all the doors are locked, and so the chase begins. Will she get out alive and unvail his dark secret to the police? Or will she die? Another ex-girlfriend that made the mistake of falling for Josh Wood's... 

Mood Board.

My mood board contains my favourite elements of horror films, these are all things that would make me want to see a horror film, or enjoy a certain one particularly. I have included a few crosses, a crucifix, a church and two famous religious paintings. One of the last supper and one of the virgin Mary. All of these things connote religion and I think that horror films with a religious element, specifically Christianity, work very well and tend to add another dimension to the overall horror of the film. The reason for this is because religion, to me, is a very mysterious and creepy idea and there's not anyone in the world who's completely 100% sure what the truth is. I like the idea of the past, and things returning from the past because it's usually for a bad reason, most things dead are supposed to be dead, and when they come back it's often for revenge. Therefore I have used old photographs and fire to suggest things that have been lost, but still remain.

The Strangers Trailer.

This trailer begins in a strange way, at first it almost appears not to be a horror, but as the music begins to fade out and change tone to a slightly darker feel we see that it is indeed a horror film. After this the Central characters are introduced, and there relationship, in this case, they are in love. This mood is broken with a knock at the door, immediately reminding the audience that this love story doesn't have a happy ending, then the question, "what is it, like 4 in the morning?" this connotes that it's not going to be your normal average person at the door, and the dark feel of the music helps represent that to the audience. I think the framed snap shots of terror along side the creepy looped "woo" in the music, works extremely well and adds a great sense of fear, this is a technique that I would defiantly want to en corporate into my horror trailer.

This trailer begins with an interesting ticking sound, this represents the sound of a bomb that's about to go off, this noise is used to attract fans of the previous film, because being a sequel it will already have a fan base who knows the plot, which is that a nuclear bomb went off some time ago, contaminating the area, causing the people to mutate and in terms of narrative 'become the monsters'. So they instantly know that it will be the same monsters that were in the last film. As writing appears on the screen we hear what almost sounds like a knife cutting skin, almost representing as if the writing is being carved into the screen. We can instantly see what sub genre this horror is because it gets straight into the gory scenes, making it 'torture porn'. Typical of horror trailers we hear the question "where is everybody?" this makes it conventional and makes the audience want to watch the film to find out the answer. After this the stereotypical conventional heartbeat sound effect comes in, I will be using this in my trailer because it simply works, regardless of what horror film it is.

Narrative Theory in 'The Shining'.

Tzvetan Todorov - At the beginning of the film everything is fine. This equilibrium is then disturbed, when the ‘happy’ family move to the hotel, this starts off a chain of bad events. In the end the problem is resolved, because Jack is dead, and there is no longer a threat to the life of Danny and Wendy, however in the grand scheme of things, there is no clear resolution at the end, because although Jack was a lousy person and a bad Farther, the Dad and Husband has been lost, therefore the family is no longer complete. This is useful because it helps to give a general structure to the film. I feel that The Shining does fit into the classic Hollywood structure of narrative, therefore Todorov’s theory is useful and can be applied to this film, although the ending could be debated slightly.



Vladimir Propp - This Russian critic looked at and examined 100’s of folk tales, and was able to identify 8 character roles. This can be mostly applied to The Shining:

The Villains - Jack, Grady and The Hotel.
The Hero - Danny
The Donor - Hallorann
The Helper - Tony
The Princess - Wendy
Her Farther - N/A
The Dispatcher - Tony
The False Hero - Wendy

Claude Levi-Strauss/Roland Barthes - These theorists presented the idea that all narratives were made up of binary opposites. And in the film there are clear examples that prove this theory to be correct. For starters we notice that Jack is insane and that Wendy (until the very end) is sane, because whilst he is having conversations with ghosts, she is doing all the hotel work and keeping the place up to shape, which is his job title. But as for Danny we remain uncertain, this is because he talks to himself and has this ability to ‘shine’, making his sane, but at the same time not sane. There’s a big contrast between real life and ghosts in this film, and what happens when they meet. Good and evil is simple to see in the Shining, Jack and the Hotel are evil, and on the good side there is Danny and Wendy. Basically this theory works for this narrative, but I believe there is more to this film than simply binary opposites.

Bordwell and Thompson - We can apply this in the shining because the events are between a family relationship and happen over a series of time, as Jack becomes more and more insane, many flash backs in time occur showing the horrific back story of the hotel. Time is a huge factor in this film, and many different ideas, interpretations and assumptions can be made from looking at the narrative. So applying this theory has parts that work and parts that don’t work.

My pitch for a new Horror movie.

The house of an elderly lady who has recently passed away is up for sale, it is located way out of town and is in complete isolation. The family go to view the house, and fall in love with it immediately, soon after this they move in. All seems well until one of the children goes into the attic, and discovers a photo album of all the previous families that have lived in the house. He picks up the book but drops it, due to receiving a paper cut, even though it has no sharp edges. The child screams and the Mother and Father rush upstairs, they take the book into their room later that evening and look through the photos. They then notice something very strange and frightening, the elderly lady who’s house it had been had was in every picture, dating back hundreds of years, family after family, she was there. This scarred the parents, so they stashed the book under their bed and promised never to speak of it again. But suddenly the Husband fell ill, a Doctor comes to see him, but claims that there is nothing he can do for him. During the following nights the old lady began to appear in the Fathers dreams. He eventually looses his mind and plans to perform a spell that he was "told" to do in his dream by the Old Lady, he has been possessed and told to kill his family, and sacrifice them in order to bring the elderly Lady back to life. It now becomes clear why she has always been in that house. His Wife hears him sleep talking one night, and learns the horrific truth about what has happened to him, she grabs the Children and makes a run for it, but is it already to late...

Freud - The Return of the Repressed.

This is the process where elements that have been repressed in our subconscious reappear. Freud states that everything we've ever known and seen we remember, even if we have forgotten it. For example, every second of your life is stored in your brain, but not all is visible to you on a daily basis. But occasionally those things we have forgotten, and that are stored in our subconscious, suddenly return into are conscious state of mind.



This relates to the genre of horror. Because it is very similar to the idea that something returns from the past, which is considered to be one of the three stories that all horror films are based upon. This idea comes from the famous novel of Dracula. Although in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, we see this idea of the return of the repressed, because repressed in Dr.Jekyll is Mr. Hyde.


 Freud also states that we have to represee primal urges in order to take our place in culture. These urges may include rage, anger, murderous impulses etc.For example, Freud believes that we all wish to rape, hurt and kill people, in our subconscious, but we choose not to, because we no that it would be wrong to do so.

Horror Trailer. Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning.

This trailer,demonstrated many techniques that are conventional of horror trailers. There is a shot of a back lit staircase in this trailer, connoting , the path way to hell and venturing into the unknown, which I would like to use in my trailer, because it's a great shot that works regardless of the story. I'm also a huge fan of the soundtrack in this trailer, it uses "mockingbird" and "amazing grace", two very old and classic songs, this sets a certain mood that instantly attracts the target audience to the trailer, I will be using this type of soundtrack in my trailer, to give it that creepy feel, that puts the audience on edge. I also love how at the beginning of the trailer the shots are fading nicely along to the beat of the song "mockingbird", but then towards the end when the heart beats come in, the cuts become more abrupt. I think the best bit in the trailer is the creepy noises that sound almost like a creaking door, I think this techniques is very effective in creating the sense of horror. Perhaps the most convention technique we see is where the question, "where are you taking us?", is asked in this trailer, because it sets the mood and due to the question not being answered, it leaves the target audience on the edge of there seat, where they are at the point that they simply must know what happens!