Wednesday, October 30, 2024

GENRE RESEARCH BLOG ACTIVITY

 Halloween is right around the corner and so I thought that horror would be the best genre to research at the moment!

HORROR DATABASE

Horror as a genre can be defined as a type of fiction that aims to scare, shock, or disturb audiences for the sake of entertainment. The main appeal from horror comes the thrilling feeling that many viewers crave while others like to watch in order to prove emotional stability. Horror is an easy genre to market and produce, with most not needing a frighteningly high budget to make, hence the reason why some directors' first projects are horror films. During October, these films become more popular than any other genre because everyone's feeling the spooky spirit! 

GENRE CONVENTIONS- CONTENT

One thing that every horror movie has is some kind of memorable menace or terrifying creature that torments the main characters throughout the course of the film. Every viewer will expect this as in order to inflict fear, there typically has to be an antagonistic force. These menaces can either be human like Michael Myers from Halloween or an entity such as a monster from The Quiet Place. Other types of evil forces may include, aliens, possessed people (typically children), ghosts, or large animals. With a good frightening premise and antagonist, the movie will leave the viewers processing what they just watched and a tendency to not sleep for 2-3 days!

EX: Ghostface, the main killer of the slasher film, Scream, 
serves as the main menace/antagonistic force!

Horror movies also mainly rely on the element of surprise. It is not uncommon for these films to have sudden jump scares left and right! Without this factor, a horror film would not be as thrilling as surprise allows for the unexpected to happen, keeping the story fresh. However, a large amount of jump scares and surprises can be seen as a bad thing to many movie lovers due to the fact that they can be seen as cheap and a waste of time.

EX: In Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, a monster 
called "the Jangly Man", acts as an element of surprise.

Another main convention of horror is foreshadowing. The use of this allows for the film to hint at things that could occur later on in the story, causing suspense and anticipation to be felt among the audience!

EX: In The Sixth Sense, it is hinted all throughout the film that the main character, Malcom was dead the whole time, later to be revealed at the end.

PRODUCTION TECHNIQUES
Typically horror films rely a ton on using sound as a horror movie without sound would be lackluster and even a little funny. Sounds and music build tension and add emotion to the film and viewer. A jump-scare used along with the right sound effects, for example a scream or growl can scare the audience both audibly and visually.
EX: The film, Psycho, uses music and sound to add to the overall shock and emotion of this specific scene!

Another technique that horror productions usually use is low, gloomy lighting and color. Horror uses dark lighting to further enhance the sense of danger, terror, and suspense, allowing the viewer to feel a sense of dread and uneasiness. These films also usually use colors such as red, black, purple, blue, green and so on to stack upon that uneasy feeling.


EX: In The Purge, dark lightning (as well as creepy masks) is used to create an uneasy vibe and tension.

MARKETING

The main audience for horror films are 15-24 year old teenagers and young adults as they are most open to thrills than any other age group. Although a good number of females like horror movies, a larger amount of males are more prone to be the target audience as these movies contain weapons, gore, and violence. Horror films like to market themselves by creating a sense of mystery that will immediately attract the attention of an audience. Trailers include quick scenes of the production as well as a terrifying soundtrack and posters may be foreboding and evoke a sense of fear within its viewers, making them wonder what's to come with the movie.

FILM SAMPLE #1:

The film Scream
(1996) follows a sadistic killer terrorizing a small town. In the movie, teenage girl Sidney Prescott, (Neve Campbell) whose mother was killed the year before, becomes the main target of the primary menace of the story, Ghostface, a masked killer whose identity is unknown. Sidney's boyfriend, Billy Loomis, (Skeet Ulrich) along with her father, become the main suspects of the killings. Later on, the town reporter and deputy investigate more to find out, and eventually come to the conclusion that it was the same person who murdered Sidney's mother a year ago! Scream implements dark lightning and color, especially during the last 42 minutes finale of the movie to create eeriness and mystery. The production also utilizes a terrifying soundtrack and a variety of sound effects to add to the anticipation, fear, and shock of the overall story. The main menace of the story, Ghostface is one of horrors most iconic villains of all time as he has a costume that anyone can recognize, and is a compelling character that remains to be a staple in pop culture.

FILM SAMPLE #2

The Sixth Sense (1999), main character Cole Sear (Haley Joel Osment) sees the undead everywhere he goes, terrorizing his daily life. Dr. Malcom (Bruce Willis) finds the boy and decides to help him to relieve the guilt he felt from not helping his past patient, Vincent, with the same problem. Later in the film, Cole gets invited to a local birthday party. While he is there, these two boys noticed that Cole was terribly scared of the house's cupboard, which caused them to force him in there, causing Cole to get attacked by an unknown entity. Cole then finally confides with Dr. Malcolm that he can see dead people. Eventually Cole and Malcolm find a solution to the problem by helping the ghost of a young girl, allowing Cole to learn that all the undead want is help. The Sixth Sense utilizes the element of surprise by using an eerie soundtrack and effects in order to add a sense of disturbance to the film. There are a few minor jump scares in the film that rely on sound in order to affect the audience. The movie also uses dark lighting throughout to create a creepy atmosphere and to add more to some of the jump scares.

OTHER FILM EXAMPLES!

THE EXORCIST (1973)

HALLOWEEN (1978)

THE SHINING (1980)

THE PURGE (2013)

THE CONJURING (2013)

LONGLEGS (2024)

FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S (2023)




























Friday, October 18, 2024

REPRESENTATION POST

 In the workplace comedy, Brooklyn Nine-Nine, representation is done right with a diverse cast of characters and serious topics.



The show follows a cast of cops of different backgrounds and identities, each with their own unique personality and individuality. The captain of the police precinct, Raymond Holt, who is gay and black, doesn't get exoticized or negatively stereotyped because of his identity. Holt is treated the same as all the other characters in the show with only his strict, organized, robotic personality being used for jokes instead of his sexuality and race. Holt's identity is just only few of the facets that make up his character and is not the only thing that defines who he is entirely.



Video of Raymond asking the squad why they aren't having a good time because he "specifically requested it."^^

The show's selection allows many characters from all kinds of different ethnicities to play a major role. One of the other main characters, Amy Santiago, is a Latina woman. Santiago has not been sexualized or stereotyped, she is shown to be strong and capable of defending herself without the need of a man, and her personality is not based off of the fact that she is a woman. The same thing goes with her ethnicity as the show never points out the fact that she's Latina in a misdemeaning or othering manner. Santiago's background is only an extension of her character, and is only brought up casually in the show like it would in real life. Like Raymond Holt, her identity isn't used as the punchline for jokes, her ambitious, perfectionist personality however, is used instead.


Video of Amy Santiago being late to work for the first time ever!

Not only does the show represent it's characters right, it also tackles serious topics with great care and awareness. For example, in season 4, episode 16 titled "Moo Moo", precinct sergeant, Terry Jeffords unexpectedly gets arrested by another cop, only for the reason that he is black. In our society, racial profiling and police brutality against black people is a major issue that affects many everyday. For this issue and many others to be represented well in a show can be such an important and meaningful thing to so many people. Once more, the show's selection allows for heavy topics such as police brutality to be shown respectfully, in order to bring out awareness to the audience.

Racial profiling getting recognized in Brooklyn Nine-Nine.^^



Brooklyn Nine-Nine overall does an amazing job with representing it's cast of diverse characters and serious issues and remains to be a great example of how to use diversity and representation correctly in comedic television.





Tuesday, October 8, 2024

SOUND PROJECT

This past week, we were assigned a project focused on sound. The day before we started the project we learned about all the different techniques of sound used in film, some of which include:

Synchronous sound: Sounds synchronized with what is viewed.

Asynchronous sound: Sound that doesn't match what's on screen.

Diegetic sound: "Realistic sound" that would occur in the productions narrative world.

Nondiegetic sound: Sound that doesn't come directly from the narrative world.

and many, many more!

All these techniques we learned in class complement visuals, makes visuals more realistic, drive character personality, and add emotional impact on a scene!

Following the sound lesson, we were supposed to watch 4 videos on sound.

The first video talked about sound illusion and how it was used in Christopher Nolan's, "Dunkirk." The video basically focused on the Shepard tone, which is an auditory illusion that consists of several tones. This makes audio sound like a never ending piano scale, and when used continuously, the sound becomes more tense.


The three other videos all talked about the art of Foley!

The first video showed a foley artist making noises for a horseback riding and plane crash scene. He explained that a movie is basically like a blank canvas, and foley artists add the brush strokes.

The second video featured two foley artists and a mixer and showed them making various sounds for different scenes. They said that much of what we hear in films consist of foley, and that all sound is two elements hitting one another.

The final video featured three foley artists that worked on the 2018 horror film, "The Quiet Place." They demonstrated the various tools they used to make the sounds in an almost soundless movie. They even used a stun gun on a patch of grapes to create a monster echolocation sound!

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Now moving on to the sound project:

Directions:

We were supposed to create a 1-2 minute school appropriate scene using only sound. The scene should have consisted of an action that could literally happen in that timeframe. No video was allowed, the project couldn't exceed 2 minutes, we may only use 7 words in the entire project, school/work, cooking, and robbery scenes were not available, and at least 4 of the sounds used in the project had to be created using foley. The foley process was to be filmed and put together in a video file. 

Our first step in the process of creating this project is the outline!

Creating the Project!:

My partner and I immediately started to think about different settings that we could use. We first thought about making it take place in a restaurant but then realized we weren't allowed to include cooking in the project, so we scrapped it.

After thinking some more, we thought about a grocery store! As soon as we had our setting established, we began writing on the sound outline document. After finishing the environmental noises heard before walking into the store, we began thinking, "what is the plot going to be?" 

At first it was going to be about a person rushing to get groceries for a party but we didn't really like the idea so that went away. After thinking for a while, we finally came up with a decent plot!

The project was going to be about a teenager fooling around with a grocery cart while shopping. After a bit, she crashes into one of the aisles, creating a whole scene which causes her to get kicked out.

 Simple!! So we stuck with it.

Excerpt from outline ^^

This outline made the editing process much easier, I mostly relied on it while putting the sounds together as I typically forgot what sound was supposed to come next. It also helped us see what sounds we needed to download for the project, and after we found a good sound for one of the items on the outline, we put two little stars next to said item to check it off.


Foley! As said previously, for this project at least 4 of the sounds in our project had to be made through foley.

The 4 sounds we selected for foley were:

Footsteps (running, walking, running on leaves, walking on leaves)

Heartbeat

Products falling on the floor

Leaves falling

The overall process was a lot of fun as I had the opportunity to think up ways to make these sounds. I would say the hardest sound to make was the heartbeat. I tried tapping objects on different kinds of surfaces such as my desk and bed sheets, but neither of those two sounded like an actual heartbeat. After a while of thinking, I decided to create a heartbeat sound by lighting stepping on a rug with socks on. This worked best in creating a heartbeat! 

Definitely my favorite part of this project was making these foley sounds!


The editing resource I used was Adobe Premiere Pro once again! It was easier operating the system this time around since I have a bit more experience! It was enjoyable mixing all the sounds together, and I'm pretty satisfied with the final product.


I think overall the project is decent! 
There were a lot of good moments with the audio mixing, like in the outdoor scenes where we can hear construction sites, far away cars, wind blowing, chatter, crunching leaves, rain, and much more. I also really like the ambience felt inside the grocery store. I think the background music, crying babies, buzzing lights, grocery carts, cash register beeps, along with much more really did a good job in establishing the setting of the scene. I think what could have been done better were some of the transitions, especially the switch from environmental sound to grocery store sound in the beginning. 

          This sound project was a great learning experience, and I had tons of fun while making it!

Sound Project link: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AI-h-ekN33yVI4ICp_O_ytpi4ZrbnLRQ/view?usp=sharing 

Foley video!- https://drive.google.com/file/d/1cAyM4WEE38SoU-UMpYSFSMS3H_oc0yDa/view?usp=sharing  

WEEKEND TIME!! WEEKEND TIME!!! CCR CENTRAL: QUESTION #3! YOUR HOST: A HEALTHIER AND LOW KEY BURNT OUT EMI!

HELLLOOOOO!!!!! Welcome back super awesome blog readers :D! It is a very nice Saturday afternoon and I’ve had a pretty good day so far! Only...