Evaluation: Part one: Questions 1 - 4

AS Media Studies: Foundation Portfolio Evaluation Questions Part One: Half Term Homework

1: For my AS Media project I was briefed to create the first two minutes of a Horror film. The film had to show an understanding of the horror genre and an exceptional standard of directing capability.

 I began this project in a group of three with Sophie Liddiard and Michaela Megran-Handley but due to a difference in creative opinions the group split up. I personally preferred working alone and the benefit of having total creative control outweighed the liabilities.

The concept was originally taken from an online BBC news report published on the 16th December 2010. The article was written about a growing number of organ trafficking cases within Kosovo and the expected amount of deaths that had already occurred because of it. As I researched more I began to understand the velocity of this subject and how it had actually dated back to the Kosovo war in 1999.

2: People being abducted and their organs taken out I felt was a unique yet realistic topic. If I was going to continue the film I’d make it a hybrid of genres between Physiological horror and a thriller. The narrative would not be linear and it would follow the story of the criminal organisation abducting humans, parallel to the detectives trying to uncover where these killings are taking place.

For this specific brief the genre of my film shall be Physiological-horror. The definition of a physiological horror is as follows:

“Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror fiction that relies on character fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot. Psychological horror is different from the type of horror found in "splatter films," which derive their effects from gore and violence, and from the sub-genre of horror-of-personality, in which the object of horror does not look like a monstrous other, but rather a normal human being, whose horrific identity is often not revealed until well into the work, or even at the very end.”

With this in mind I understood that I could not make the beginning of the horror cliché with gore and a horrific antagonist. I needed the film to introduce the scenario and maybe only partially reveal some of the antagonists that were going to be involved.

The two films that influenced my directual technique were ‘The Thing’ directed by John Carpenter and ‘The Exorcist’ directed by William Friedkin. Both of these films are critically acclaimed horrors but they both introduce the horror later on within the film. This is different to other sub-genres of film, for example ‘Slasher’ where the antagonist and violence is introduced early on within the narrative. The horror that I would link most closely to mine within my sub-genre would be Silence of the Lambs. This film follows a number of twists and turns within the plot being and if my movie narrative continued it would do exactly the same.

 

Within a physiological horror genre there is a regular occurrence of twists within the plot. As well as looking at the human psyche films within this sub-genre will also play with the audiences mind sometimes changing the perspective on who is the antagonist. The film may also show the odd logic of the killer or killers for example Silence of the Lambs where its shows the killers perspective. It also shows a more multi-dimensional aspect to the protagonist character compared to other genres such as slasher where the evil guy can be quite one dimensional. While researching a number of physcological films such as The Others and the exorcist I noticed both started there films slowly and they don’t reveal the protagonist until later on in the movie. I followed this convention and I merely showed the consequences of the psycho’s actions within the opening two minutes of my film.

3+4:  The target audience for my film would be fifteen years of age and above. I decided to choose this certificate as The Exorcist; another psychological film had a highest number of views from females under the age eighteen on IMDB. 

With this information I decided to make the victim within film an older male. I felt if the victim were too young, male or female the audience would still think the film was unrealistic.