Friday, 3 May 2013
Friday, 26 April 2013
Wednesday, 24 April 2013
Evaluation 1
Evaluation 1
In what ways does your media product use develop or
challenge forms and conventions of real life media products?
When we created our
trailer we initially set out to a conventional horror trailer in every sense of
the word. We looked at previous horror films/ trailers such as the blare which
project, scream house of wax and a few others. We looked at these films
trailers and tried to understand what was traditionally in a horror trailer and
what codes and conventions we had to follow. One big convention we tried to
follow was starting the trailer off at a slower pace and gradually increasing the
pace until the big finale or “Killer Shot”. For example the shot showing the “others”
at the end of the house of wax trailer when developing the trailer always tried
to keep this in mind. While in practise we didn’t get this exactly right we
tried to follow the premise of this convention of horror trailer. Another
convention we were interested in from the get go was the concept of a clear “Final
Girl” in the trailer for house of wax(2005). We decided to challenge this
conventions in ways while there hints of a final girl in the trailer there is no
clear one so therefore challenging this convention
Another convention we were aware of was the
idea that the “monster” or antagonist is heard and saw throughout the trailer
but no showing the full image of him/her/it until the very final moments of the
trailer.
One convention we felt
was vital to follow was length of the trailer as we felt that if it is to short
then it would be hard to get people interested in it and if it was too long
people would become bored and not interested on our trailer. We looked other
horror trailers and found at that the average time for a horror trailer is
between the 1:10 to 1:50 so made sure that our trailer followed this convention
and it was in between those two times in terms of length.
Overall I feel we didn’t try to challenge the codes and
conventions in many respects and tried to stick the a the codes and conventions
of a traditional horror film the best we could. I felt that we achieved just
that as most of the codes and conventions we decided use is shown our trailer
in one way or another.
Tuesday, 26 March 2013
Horror Character History - Dracula
Like many Horror
Characters Dracula started off in a novel. The idea of Dracula was conceived by y a novelist
names Bram Stoker in 1897. Dracula himself was said to be inspired by a prince
named “Vlad the impaler”.
Over 30 years later
Dracula made his debut on the big screen in “Dracula” 1931. However before those 10 years ago Bram Stoker’s film
had already been made in film without his permission as “Nosferatu” which
suggests that Nosferatu is based on the Dracula character. Dracula however had a lot of different characteristics
than Nosferatu. For example like a lot of horror characters Nosferatu is
depicted as a grotesque monster who looks out of the ordinary along the lines
of future horror characters such as Frankenstein.
Dracula appeared as a sophisticated and didn’t look to out of the ordinary. This
is in great contrast to other Nosferatu and other horror characters which are traditionally
monsters. Back in 1931 the film was considered horrific as newspapers reported
that people were fainting in cinema’s watching it. The supernatural wasn’t something
that was used in many films back then so it was considered a big risk, but fortunately
it paid off with huge box office success.
Synopsis Dracula 1931
After a harrowing ride through the Carpathian mountains in
eastern Europe, Renfield enters castle Dracula to finalize the transferral of
Carfax Abbey in London to Count Dracula, who is in actuality a vampire.
Renfield is drugged by the eerily hypnotic count, and turned into one of his
thralls, protecting him during his sea voyage to London. After sucking the
blood and turning the young Lucy Weston into a vampire, Dracula turns his
attention to her friend Mina Seward, daughter of Dr. Seward who then calls in a
specialist, Dr. Van Helsing, to diagnose the sudden deterioration of Mina's
health. Van Helsing, realizing that Dracula is indeed a vampire, tries to
prepare Mina's fiance, John Harker, and Dr. Seward for what is to come and the
measures that will have to be taken to prevent Mina from becoming one of the
undead (Source IMDB))
27 Years later a new Dracula film was released by hammer
studios and was the first time Dracula appeared in colour on the big screen,
this was done with Technicolor. Like the previous Dracula film it was
considered a huge success and cemented Dracula firmly as a huge pop culture
icon.
In 1979 the 3rd rendition of “Dracula” appeared on
the big screen produced by Marvin Mirisch and Walter Mirisch. Despite getting
good reviews this is the first Dracula film not to take the box office by storm
as it only preformed ok at the box office.
In 1981 the Comedy horror “Monster squad” was released and
was the first that Dracula appeared in that was not one of his main films.
Monster squad features a bunch of universal horror characters lead by Dracula.
This showed the first big evolution of his character from an ominous dark
character to a more comedic character
Synopsis Monster Squad 1981
Dracula is alive. In fact, he plans to rule the world and that
is why he seeks the help of other legendary monsters. However, a bunch of kids
regarded by their peers as losers uncover the devious plan and prepare for a
counter strike. Source (IMDB)
The
first Entry to Dracula in the 21st century was offered by “Dracula 2000”
Which shows a more modern Dracula. it shows dracula in a modern setting so the current generation of movie goers would be able to realte to it more as it seems more fammiliar .However the film received a lot of bad reviews
and failed to make back the money it cost to make it.
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