Film Make up Research

So I've been looking a little bit into make up research in links with our storyboard idea, to see how we can effectively make someone look beaten up. One video that I've come across on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvcePKwOgpM) is a video tutorial of how to do this look. I think it works really effectively, and I am going to attempt to recreate this look to see if it can be translated just as well to camera. It also made me think that the dark hair really aids the make up and would work effectively for our main character within the cult, as a specific when casting. I look forward to trying out this, and am excited to see the outcome.

History of Horror

1900s

At the beginning of the 1900s came the first monster to appear in a horror film. Quasimodo, the hunchback of Notre-Dame who had appeared in Victor Hugo's novel, "Notre-Dame de Paris" (published in 1831).

 

1910-1940
Hollywood was influenced by the era of German Expressionist film during 1910-1920 where German film makers created many of the earliest feature length 'horror films. In the early 1930s American film producers, particularly Universal Pictures Co. Inc., successfully made horror films popluar. They used Gothic features such as: Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931). Some of the films were science fiction as well as Gothic Horror for example James Whale's "The Invisible Man" (1933)

1940-1960
Universal's success with horror film carried on into the 1940s with "The Wolf Man" (1941) which was the most influential werewolf film even though it wasn't the first. Horror films mostly have low-bugets. During the 1950s there were a lot of horror films that featured humanity overcoming threats from aliens and deadly mutations of people, plants and insects. This was most noticeable in Japanese films as there society had clear knowledge of the effects of nuclear radiaition. In 1957 "The Incredible Shrinking Man" from Richard Matheson's novel become one of the most well-known films of the 1950s.

1960-1980
Hitchcock's The Birds (1963) is one of the first American examples of the horror-of-Armageddon sub-genre. In the late1960s George Romero's film "Night of the living dead" (1968) became influential, it was direscted and produced by Romero. The 60's horror films influenced the 70's as the youths began to explore the medium.Wes Craven's The Hills Have Eyes (1977) and Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974) recalled the Vietnam war.
 

• John Carpenter created the Independent film Halloween (1978) which became a instant success.

• Sean Cunningham made Friday the 13th (1980). 
• Among the popular English-language horror films of the late 1990s, only 1999's independent hit "The Blair Witch Project" attempted straight-ahead scares.
• Japanese horror films, such as "Hideo Nakata's Ringu" (1998), also found success internationally.
• An updated remake of Dawn of the Dead (2004) soon appeared as the zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead (2004).
• In 2009 "Paranormal Activity" another low-budget production became successful and received good reviews.

WHAT IS A HORROR?

Horror films are films literally made to scare people - to invoke our worst fears, to make us jump, incite panic, dread, alarm, disgust, fright, captivating us with tales of the forbidden, the hidden, the unknown, the unthinkable. What repels some from the genre of horror, is what attracts and enthralls others.

Many overlap into the thriller genre - that ability to makes us jump, and hybrid with several other genres - supernatural, fantasy, science fiction, making it an incredibly versatile genre and perhaps the most personal too. The horror films that scare us the most are the ones that most directly affect us, dealing with our own personal fears, what genuinely frightens us as people, not only viewers.

The conventions of horror and literally all the things you think when told to think of horror: blood, death, murder, evil, ghosts, torture, violence, screams, vampires, werewolves, curses, gore, zombies, disease, cannibals, demons, just to name a few.

As the horror genre has progressed, the more aggressive the genre has had to become to scare a seemingly unscareable generation of horror viewers. The Silence of the Lambs, Jaws, Psycho and Seven were all previously horror films but are now thrillers due to a want from the audience for more gore, supernatural and jump scenes. Newer horror films have to try harder to get that scare, leading to the creation of darker, more inventive and gory horror - Wes Craven's New Nightmare, the Saw films, The Strangers, The Ring etc.

TRAILER: Saw III

WHY IT WORKS:

This trailer is literally a 'tease' - it gives away none of the narrative of the film, but like ours will hopefully, interacts with the audience on a personal level, creating a feeling of attachment to the film through the trailer and building hype. This trailer obviously relies on a loyal and vast fanbase and an inside knowledge of the first few films, therefore not needing to reveal masses of the narrative to hook in fresh, new viewers. I think that personability of the trailer is what makes it so scary, having Jigsaw talking directly to you and that line of 'you are being watched,' taps into the very current fears of the public of constantly being watched, CCTV, government, terrorism etc. Also having shots of the video being played on a TV and mentioning the words 'YouTube' makes it very real as they wouldn't be eluded to in the movie itself and again make it all the more personal.

Brainwashing.

This is a video created by Lost, shown by the 'Others' in the eerie Room 23 for the purpose of brainwashing.


After watching the 'brainwashing' video I really liked the way at the beginning the old camera effect was used. Like the picture start text, giving the illusion the film is eerie and almost not meant to be seen by the public. I also liked the idea of using texts along with lots of different pictures that on their own stand no relevance whereas when put together create a strange sensation to the viewer of a subliminal message being passed on. By using several images flickered in our film we can create the effect as if trying to 'brainwash' the viewer of the trailer while also giving the viewer an idea that the film itself is about brainwashing and cults.
While I do like the video I didn't like some parts of the sound as the laser sound. Although the building of tension sound can be a useful tool to create suspense while also giving a build up the to the end of the trailer with a release date and title.

On the Rebound.

New narrative idea: Cult Promo Video?
 Continuing with our ideas of obsession and being controlled, we've been toying with the idea of a new narrative surrounding cults and dangerous religious sects. Our current idea is something along the lines of a promotional video, almost advertising the cult - something like the Scientology video I've embedded below except with a more sinister and eerie edge. Half way the tape would cut to a girl being held captive in the exact same room the promo video is filmed in, bruised and smeared in blood, and the tape would then cut again to an image of the cult's symbol written in blood on the wall, assumedly hers. The promo video would then continue, hopefully more sinister and eerie than before knowing the true nature of the cult and a series of shots will follow - random, disorienting images sharply edited, almost like a brainwashing video.

Scientology Commercial:

Cults

The word cult negatively refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered strange.The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices.
The word implies a group which is a minority in society.

Studies performed by those who believe that some religious groups that do practice mind control have identified a number of key steps in coercive persuasion;

- People are put in physical or emotionally distressing situations;
- Their problems are reduced to one simple explanation, which is repeatedly emphasised.
- They receive unconditional love, acceptance, and attention from a charismatic leader or group.
- They get a new identity based on the group.
- They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled.

The idea of cult culture has inspired us as a group and we will be looking deeper into the topic soon, with reference to mind control, brain washing and rituals.
Wish us luck.

We're leaving you, Lo.

We've decided to part ways with the idea of our Lolita narrative.
Y'know, it was fun while it lasted but there was just too many foreseeable issues we just couldn't see a solution too.

• The main one being copyright laws, and we mere students quite blatantly can't afford the incredibly costly rights to reproduce Nabokov's novel. We also felt attempting to reproduce the narrative but under a different name would look just exactly like that - some students attempting to reproduce Lolita under a different name, and quite possibly not as well as the first two remakes anyway.
• We also felt actors was an issue for concern. Finding a convincing thirteen year old female actress who was versatile enough to portray overt flirtatiousness and believable distress and fear would've been hard enough, but finding a forty year old male actor who would be willing to portray a paedophile seemed like an even harder task.

So farewell Lolita.
It's wasn't us, it was actually you.

ANOTHER INSPIRATION HIT: Mouth by Natasa Vojnovic and Barnaby Roper

http://showstudio.com/project/fashionbody/video/mouth

This is a short film I found on Showstudio.com in their current project 'The Fashion Body' - entitled 'Mouth' and is focussed on, perhaps decipherably, the mouth, lips and the confusion and sexuality they can provoke. I'm quite besotted with it - every shot has something edgy or different to it, and the mash of close ups of lips and layering of speech and sound was exactly how I'd envisioned our Lolita trailer. As my friend said when she watched it, it's almost like slipping in and out of consciousness - the way the sound dips in and out and echoes and layers - and combined with the jumpy, snappy editing and caledioscope camera flares (some shots look like they've been filmed off mirrors or through water), it's almost like how I'd envisage some sort of LCD trip. There's definately something psychological about it - the section in the middle when the voices are reduced to a whisper and she seems to gasping for breath is quite intense, but oddly throughout that comforting sound of a human voice doesn't seem to make it overly disconcerting.

Lo. Lee. Ta.

This summer I've been reading Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - admittedly a slightly obscure beach read, but the ultimate tale of fixation and infatuation, bordering into our own narrative ideas of stalking and obsession. Set in the present day I feel Lolita would've been an entirely different story - whereas child molestation in the Fifties was something grossly under reported, and purposely hushed up if revealed in that typically 1950s manner that induced panic at the thought of a tarnish to their social standing or idyllic family reputation, today paedophilia is perhaps the only social taboo left, in some cases inducing something of witch hunts in the general public, repulsed and disgusted by the thought of child exploitation. In the Fifties I feel it would've been easier for a paedophile to have operated unnoticed, taking on the guise, as Humbert Humbert did, of a dedicated and overprotective parent, whereas today it is drilled into our children's minds to speak out against abuse, and is made resolutely clear where help is available through massive police and government campaigns - this could, of course, be extremely naive of me, and is not to undermine the control and manipulation the paedophile would exercise over their victim in ke eping them quiet.

I also feel I am only interpreting the novel on a very superficial level, that this is simply a story of a basic paedophile but Humbert himself is a compassionate man - his struggle with his desire for Lolita is long and agonized and extremely contemplative and though his desires for Lolita are made clear and detailed graphically, there is nothing in the first few chapters to suggest he will act on these desires. Lolita does also appear to be something of a willing candidate - a flirtatious and provocative young 'nymphet,' though the reader can tell in her mind this is simply a girlish game toying with her new found sexuality - something if exercised with another more morale male adult that would've been brushed aside, and it is undeniable she is exploited by Humbert and unfairly stripped of her childhood. I feel Humbert's only saving grace - not that he deserves one as he is essentially a perverse and weak man - is that he is genuinely in love with Lolita and so passionately and intensely so, that he eventually destroys himself with it.

After reading the book I ventured further to watch Stanley Kubrick's version of it, and excerpts of the Adrian Lyne 1997 version too and I must admit I am quite fascinated with the narrative and its translations to screen. I think it could be a really interesting narrative for our trailer - because the actual book is written in first person, we aren't sure of the reliability of the narration and I think it could be something of shocking to show Humbert's interpretation of her actions and her actual feelings - I was visualizing lots of close ups, particularly of her lips, whispering seductively one of the book's lines - 'I've been revoltingly unfaithful to you,' and then cutting to her crying for help, maybe even screaming, and another of her sucking on that iconic heart lollipop. I also think setting it in modern day could leave us room to experiment with today's reaction to paedophilia - we could include close ups of strangers repulsed, building up a voiceover of their insults, then layered over lines from the other characters - I'm thinking Lolita's mum when she screams thats he's a monster, etc. then layered again against his diaries entries, a faint whispering in the background, detailing her constant movements quoted from the book and then the whole thing simmering down to simply him chanting 'Lolita' to symbolize his complete obsession of her.

First storyboard.

The Psychology of the Poster.

The main features of psychological thrillers are: character fears, guilt, beliefs, eerie sound effects, relevant music and emotional instability to build tension and further the plot. Another aspect of psychological horror is its use of body horror. The purpose is to develop a feeling of unease by playing on human fears of the abnormal, human experimentation, disease and suffering.

These are a few posters of psychological thrillers:

Paranormal Activity has a black and white image of a couple in bed huddled together pointing towards a shadow on the open bedroom door. The image has a time on the bottom right which is portraying that the couple are being watched. It has a quote from the premiere of the film from a newspaper or critic saying its "one of the scariest films of all time." The title of the film is in red which stands out against the black on white writing surrounding it, it is a larger font and the letters are well spaced making it easy to read. The font of the white writing looks like a typewriter and at the bottom is in capitals portraying that it is an important statement for the film and is meant to make the audience think before and after the film.

The Ring poster has a white glowing ring of light surrounding the white child like handwriting title the lower case lettering with large spaces between the letters. The white on black is a well known convention of psychological thriller films. "BEFORE YOU DIE, YOU SEE" is in capitals to create suspense they have offset the writing to make it more scary and to look like a reflection. The shape of the ring is the shape of the moon and by having it still glowing looks like an offset ofan eclipse which would lead to complete darkness which plays on peoples fears of anything coming out of the darkness.

The Butterfly Effect poster has the protagonist male and his love interest taking up the alloted space. The lighting is blue tinted with more emphasis on the male as the female is facing sideways of the camera. There is a reflection in the males left eye making it stand out and it contrasts the light pale colours of the faces.  The names of the actors on the poster are written in white across the top in capital letters. The title is in red signifying blood, lust and romance. The letters vary in size which is effective because it is confusing hence following the ideas from the film.

Dial Hitchcock for Thriller.

"Unquestionably the greatest filmmaker to emerge from these islands, Hitchcock did more than any director to shape modern cinema, which would be utterly different without him. His flair was for narrative, cruelly withholding crucial information (from his characters and from us) and engaging the emotions of the audience like no one else." - Daily Telegraph, 2007

Alfred Hitchcock was an English filmmaker who produced some of the most suspenseful and intense psychological thrillers in all cinema, also dabbling in silent films establishing himself as a truly great director through the early stages of talkies. He became an American citizen in 1956 when he moved to Hollywood and produced his vast back catalogue of films through 1921 - 1976, an inspiring and prolific career.

He described his childhood as sheltered, plagued by his obesity and loneliness and inspiring many of his films. After caught misbehaving by his father, he was sent to the local police station with a note to lock him up for 10 minutes. He was treated with distance and a strictness by his parents - made to address his mother from the foot of her bed, and sometimes forced to stood for hours and his father tragically died at the age of 14 - a memory amongst others which inspired the character of Norman Bates in his magnus opus, Psycho.

His films always included unexpected twists and thrilling plots, laced with violence, murder and sex and he became notorious for pushing the conventions of every genre he dabbled in. Hitchcock also liked to make cameos in his films in all his films, for example trying to get a double bass onto a train.

“Psycho” Produced in 1960 on a controlled budget of $800,000, shot in black-and-white and considered his greatest masterpieces. The exceptional violence of the infamous shower scene, the early downfall of the heroine, the innocent lives ended by a disturbed murderer were copied in many subsequent horror films.

“The Birds” Inspired by a Daphne Du Maurier short story combined with an actual news story about a mysterious infestation of birds in California, this was Hitchcock's 49th film, released in 1963. The scenes of the birds attacking included hundreds of shots mixing actual and animated sequences. Therefore some of the conventions we follow today come from Hitchcock and the 60+ films which he directed.

TRAILER:The Killer Inside Me

Code breaking.

Dealving further into our genre, I found this article on the Guardian film blog about a new psychological trailer by Darren Aronofsky, called the Black Swan, starring Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as two rival ballet dancers. I love the fact that simply by having it set in the decadent world of ballet and performing, it is already breaking the conventions of it's genre - ballet being an unusually glamourous and stereotypically feminine backdrop in comparison to the generally more male and urbanized settings of psychological thrillers e.g. derelict buildings, busy cities etc. - though when considered the world of dance and ballet is just as pyschologically intense, if not more so, than many others. Perhaps having their psychological thriller in such an unconventional setting will have changed their whole handling of the genre itself - instead of a faster and more abrasive thriller, maybe they will have handled in a more fragile and tender way, more gracefully to be fitting to grace of the ballet itself? I'm in love with this idea of setting our own thriller - something we'd originally foreseen as very gritty and underground, to somewhere completely uncharacteristic and innovative, glamourizing our thriller as it were. The trailer isn't a teaser and elements of the narrative are revealed, but I'm still finding the narrative hard to decipher - which the article discusses, could it be mental illness it's toying with or are there elements of the supernatural, as some scenes suggest? There doesn't seem to be too much of a buzz around it and I can't seem to find any sort of promotional website for it but I will be interested to see the teaser trailer, and the actual film, when it's released.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/filmblog/2010/aug/18/black-swan-natalie-portman-trailer

NOT QUITE A TRAILER: Alexander Wang

This is the new Alexander Wang Fall Winter Ad Campaign, created with British fashion photographer Craig McDean - though of course not a trailer, I've been something of inspired by it, the composition of the high fashion against dilapidation, the glossy and new, against the old and dirty and aswell, the complete abandonment incorporated through the whole thing, that the whole thing is on the edge and at an end - I think it's very eerie and slightly pscychological to watch. I love the rough handheld camerawork and the lighting too - having it focussed centre screen almost unnaturally bright and the edges being dimmed, the fast and pacy, but altogether messy and erratic editing and I particularly love the paper being strewn about in the wind - it reminds me of natural disasters - tornados and twisters with everything recklessly flying about, and I imagined the complete vanity - or apathy - of the model to keep desperately clinging to her own beauty and fashion and to keep posing amid catastrophe and potentially the end of her world.

TRAILER: The Strangers

Trailer Deconstruction

Within this trailer, I really liked the way they conveyed the idea of being watched through the use of the non diegetic camera clicks and the use of a projector show reel. It gave it an interesting old fashioned feel through the jitteriness of the picture. This intensified the tension within the trailer through the quick editing.

I feel it is a good trailer to take influence from as it shows that just through special effects and editing, we can easily make simple camera shots seem effective in creating a type of mood to scare the audience.

The use of whispering combined with an eerie airy sound within the trailer works extremely well at intensifying the mounting tension within the film. It makes it creepier than simple silence, as it is more foreboding and realistic to real life.

There is also an interesting shot that would be good to take influence from where the word 'killer' is written in blood on glass. I like the way the glass is made to look realistically scratched and the positioning of the word on screen means that through the quick editing, the audience is able to see a flash of it, just enough to leave them intrigued.

TRAILER: Number 23

Media Meeting Number 1

Today we got together for a meeting to discuss our storyline and important things we felt needed to be considered. 


We created a spider diagram of proposed storylines, general ideas of what we would like to see within our teaser trailer and what we felt was important to include. We looked at things such as:

• storylines and overall themes
• location (including some set ideas)
• interesting editing we wished to include
• important codes and conventions
• films that follow the same idea and capture the idea and type of storyline
• Interesting scenes we would like to include
• Sound and the importance of it within our trailer

The general conclusion to our meeting today is that we would like to look further into the concept of obsession, surveillance and the idea of being watched or stalked. 

We also discussed research that we could do to further this proposal, such as looking at related teaser trailers and finding any related articles.

Overall it was a very successful meeting and we hope to have another soon to discuss our findings.   

Psychological Thriller: The Equation.

Psychological: Elements that are related to the mind or processes of the mind; they are mental rather than physical in nature.

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Thriller: A genre of fiction that attempts to "thrill" its audience by placing characters at great risk. This constant unease throughout the story makes the narrative suspenseful to the reader by creating a tense atmosphere.

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Psychological + Thriller: By combining these two terms, the definition changes to a narrative that makes the characters exposed to danger on a mental level rather than a physical one. Characters are no longer reliant on physical strength to overcome their brutish enemies (which is often the case in typical action-thrillers), but rather are reliant on their mental resources, whether it be by battling wits with a formidable opponent or by battling for equilibrium in the character's own mind.