Genre Research (Horror)

          Horror is one of the most popular genres in the world, it’s liked by many specially around fall season. The horror genre is known for obviously have jump scares and being scary. This genre is widely known all over the world, with its famous movies like The Conjuring, The Shining, Scream and also Psycho and way more. The reason we have these amazing scary films that we like to watch to get a scream out is because of the very talented directors, John Carpenter, James Wan or Wes Craven. All known for their amazing films and hard work and creativity. 

          Now, this genre is for all ages but mostly targeted for 15 to 24 year olds. One of the most famous horror films of all times is be The Exorcist (1973). In the Exorcist we see that it’s mainly targeted to teens and young adults, this film is very popular for its very good acting, storyline and filming. In the exorcist like every other horror movie, they go for low lighting and over the shoulder shots with some low angles and close ups, this is to create the suspensions of ‘who’s behind them’ or also to get a clear view of what’s on screen.  Horrors movies are to be filmed in dark settings specially in the climax. This is for the suspense and entregue for the audience, which is what people mainly look for in the horror genre. Majority like having a jump scare or an extreme plot twist, so that’s what makes horror movies, horror movies, the fact that it has that included. The techniques used in films are very important but in horror movies it extremely important, they way a camera does pan or shifts to simulate suspense, or the dark lighting or the angles and shots used, all of that has a lot to do with how the story goes and how good a movie could turn out to be. For example, if we were to take away the slow pans or shifts of the camera in some scenes it would immediately take away the suspense which plays a big part on the films in that genre. 

          Even though, technique has a lot to do with the popularity and good of a film and another big step is marketing. Marketing is what is used many to grabs the audiences attention before the movie is released.  A great example could be for the new movie Smile 2, the movie consists of these creepy people smiling and the marketing team has done an amazing job, since we’ve seen all over our social media how scary people would stand without moving and just smile, no blinking, no moving, nothing. This has made people go crazy, since it’s really scary to see a random person stand and stare with a big smile on their face. Aside from interactional marketing there’s also online marketing. Many films use famous actors to be in their scary movie to get mover views and market the movie more. As the sequence of Scream wasn’t continuing to be as popular as before and at the time the famous actors Jenna Ortega was, the film producers decide to have her in the new movie. This made bank for them, the marketing was great since she had been in the peak of her career this benefited a lot the producers. Another thing could be the design of the head board. When walking into a movie theater we see multiple boards of movies and for horror what mainly caught about eyes is a dark setting, maybe some blood and a known actress or something that’s pops out to the human eye. 

           Lastly, this genre is very popular and without its important techniques it wouldn’t be what it is today. Some examples of films that did good in both marketing and techniques could be The conjuring, as it released more films it did good and people liked it, the marketing was great since also it was based on true events. When the conjuring came out many first learned what an Ouiji board was, and stores started selling them, this helped gain money and also views for the movie. A film that did very good with marketing again is Smile, or also any horror sub genre that has to do with clowns. In 2016, the famous killer clowns were scaring people off and promoting movies of clowns that were at their peak at the time. When it came to selling ‘merch’ or things from the movie, Chucky and Annabelle did very good, this also has a big part in marketing since they were selling the real life size doll that was similar to the one in the movies.  

Representation in media

     The representation in media is very important, it’s what influences our people today and what puts an image on people, countries and things. The way a show, movie or book describes a person could get to influence others to get that concept of life, people and things. A good example could be the tv show, Young Sheldon.The way they portray high schoolers and the environment they usually are in, because of this it might portray a bad image on teens and high schoolers. 

     In teens films, where they talk about high schoolers and teachers, they portray characters very different by the way they are. An example could be ‘the nerd’ who’s usually portrayed as the smart, straight A’s, well behaved and well dressed students. In the other hand, theres ‘the jock’ or ‘the popular kid’. This student is usually portrayed as popular, cute, and most of the time mean or a bully.

Lastly, is the teacher, who is always portrayed as mean and wearing cardigans and sometimes glasses, or in other type of teens movies they could also be portrayed with a strict wear. The clothing and personality doesn’t only affect portraying characters and people, what also is a big influence is the setting. High school is always portrayed as the hallways having lockers, the famous lockers are essential for every high school movie or tv show, also having the football games and the cafeteria. Where in the cafeteria the tables are divided, meaning the football players/jocks are in one table, the pretty popular girls in another and the nerds in another, sometimes they don’t even have a table and instead sits next to the trash or on the floor. The setting, clothing and personality has a lot to do with how characters are portrayed. 

     A good example could be the 2017 tv show, Young Sheldon. The tv show is about the stereotypical ‘nerdy’ student, Sheldon. He is this 9 year old who is extremely smart and instead of being in elementary he is in high school, he is portrayed with very well formal clothing, and being smart and not having many friends. On the other hand, is Sheldon’s bother, Georgie. He is the older brother who is not as smart and plays football, he has many friends and is a bully and ashamed of having Sheldon, a nerd, as his brother. These characters are super stereotypical when it comes to high school movies or tv shows. The representation in this show affects a lot on how the nerd is portrayed and affects on the image people have on nerds, same goes for the popular football player. Another tv show could be High School Musical, Troy and Gabriella. The popular cute basketball player and the pretty popular new girl, who are the known high school couple. Both these tv shows put an image on these characters who are relatable to people in real life. 

     Finally, the representation on a show is extremely important, the way films represent characters affects on how people see those who relate to those characters in real life. This doesn’t only go for personality’s but also countries, the way a countries is portrayed in a film affects a lot on the image people have of this place. Representation could sometimes be wrong, for example the way some races or cultures are portrayed are sometimes incorrectly. Going back to films, the angles a large part on how someone is viewed, for example the villain or the bully of the story usually is portrayed at a low angle to seem off as scary or intimidating. All these factors take a big place on our world today, media itself is very important when portraying races, cultures, people and places. 

Here are some examples:

Sheldon:  

The villain :

Sound Project

 When first hearing about the sound project, we thought it would be easy but after learning and seeing the lesson about sound we quickly realized it wasn’t as easy at we thought it would be. You have to have a lot of technique, it’s something that can’t be done last minute, you have to measure the volume of the sound and what sounds come first and after. The instructions for the sound project were to make an outline of a story that realistically would last around a minute, something creative and interesting. 

At first when brainstorming we came up with a simple idea of being in a coffee shop but then realized we need more action in our project, something more interesting and fun. So, we kept the idea but simply changed the fact that it was a normal day at a coffee shop, we ended up making one of the coffee machines exploding. Making our outline was surprisingly helpful, we notice when we started editing, it helped to organize not only our idea but also was goes first and how loud the sound should be. 

Me and my partner both used Adobe as our editing resource, we had to learn how to use but it ended up working out. Lastly, I really liked my project but I would make some of the sounds more realistic and not so ‘fake’. But at the end of the day, the project was fun to film and edit and I really liked the outcome of it.