Dom Aitken

MS2 MEDIA PRODUCTION PROCESSES

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY

• These films was originally developed as an Originally developed as an independent feature, the film was acquired by Paramount Pictures.

• The first film was directed by Oren Peli.

• The film was reviewed as “one of the scariest movies of all time” and “bloody disgusting”, “genuinely horrifying” – Film Threat, “people were physically shaken” – Dread Central

• The audience for this film would be 15 + because it was rated a 15 by the BBFC. I think that the target audience would be 15-25.

Read a review here:http://screenrant.com/paranormal-activity-reviews-kofi-27600/

Watch A Trailer here”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_UxLEqd074

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY ANALYSIS

Visual codes

• The dress codes of this trailer are really quite casual. This is because it is filmed in a normal home and done on just a normal home camera. This represents these people as normal, everyday people. I think this is what makes this film so scary because it happens to an ordinary family which means it could happen to you.

• The setting of this film as I have said is in a normal house in a suburban area. This house is fairly big and the camera being used is fairly big and expensive. This connotes them as being fairly well off and wealthy.

• The gesture codes of this trailer get more and more dramatic as them trailer progresses. It begins with just normal house life in what goes on around the house and other average things. However, as it goes on the gestures of the characters get more and more intense and dramatic. This is really shows right at the end as it finishes with one of the characters being thrown into the camera that has been set up in the bedroom.

• The lighting in the trailer is very good in the day time sections of it as the camera is lit by sun light and the house light. However when then the lights go off, the camera has to rely on night vision. This shows that the scary things happen at night and not really during the day when there is light all around.

Textual Analysis

Technical codes

• Filmed by one home camera that was apparently purchased by one of that characters at the start of the film. This means that the audience feel closer to the action because it is filmed by a home camera with no obvious special effects which makes it feel more real for the audience.

• There are lots of parts with very loud dramatic music that cuts out with the camera. This has a big impact on the watcher because you never know what is going to happen next, and because the noises are so loud and so sudden they are not expected by the audience.

• Lots of frequent cuts to loud drum noises or crashing sounds. Editing the footage to the music which works really well on the audience because they see and hear what they are watching at the same time which can have a really dramatic impact.

PARANORMAL ACTIVITY ANALYSISTextual Analysis

Narrative codes• The trailer starts off showing a line of people that were some of the first people to watch the

Paranormal Activity film, it then shows what the start of a section of the film when they get the camera and try to capture what is going on in the house.

• The trailer then progresses on to show some of the more jumpy and scary parts of the film. However, you hear the voices of the film but some of the time the camera shows the audiences reaction to what they have seen.

• This creates real suspense for any audience because they are watching an audience (just like them) freaking out at this film and they wonder if they would react the same.

• Also it creates enigma because it doesn’t show you some of the things that the audience appear scared of.

• The scenes we get to see in the trailer become more and more scary as it progresses and so the audience becomes more and more frightened of what they are seeing, furthermore what they will see at the end of the trailer as it seems to get worse and worse.

Textual AnalysisPARANORMAL ACTIVITY ANALYSIS

INSIDIOUS

INSIDIOUS Background Information

Release Date:29 April 2011Director: James WanWriter: Leigh Whannell

Stars:Patrick Wilson – Josh Lambert Rose Byrne – Renai LambertTy Simpkins – Dalton LambertBox Office:Budget:$1,500,000Gross:$53,991,137

Watch the Trailer here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E1YbOMDI59k

Read review Here:http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/apr/28/insidious-review

INSIDIOUS

Visual codes• The dress code for Josh is normally work dress and this is shown in the professional looking shirt and how

he has it tucked it, also the beige trousers that he wears also is conventional and stereotypical of office clothing.

• Renai throughout the whole film casual clothes connoting typical house wives that stay at home and look after the children. This could represent her being the loving, caring one for the family as she is the woman in the family and this is very typical of women in the media as they are often represented as people that need to get married and raise a family at home while the man goes out to work.

• The gesture codes for this film trailer, at the start, everything seems calm, relaxed and typical of any family, however, as the trailer progresses things start to get a lot more tense and uneasy for the whole family and this reflects in the gesture codes of the characters.

• Renai seems calm and at ease at the start of the trailer but from when she hears the strange voice in the baby monitor she then from then on becomes much more uneasy, tense and scared.

• Josh’s gestures are a lot more stereotypical for this genre of film as he is the one that has to hold the family together as he is the man of the family, this means that he is more in control of his fear as apposed to Renai who really lets go and becomes scared at almost anything.

• The setting of the film is in the families new house in a suburban area and this connotes some elements of wealth and well being.

• The lighting in the trailer changed with the tension of the film. So at the start there was a lot more light and this made the audience feel reassured as mot many scary things tend to happen in daylight. However, as the trailer progresses, the lighting becomes less and less meaning that the audience become more and more scared as they anticipate what is going to happen because of the fading light.

Textual Analysis

INSIDIOUS

Narrative Codes• The trailer is about a family that has just moved into a new house, this plays an important part in the film because

the audience thinks for a long time that it is the house that is haunted, but then later in the film, a bomb shell is dropped on the mum and dad as they are told they it is in fact their child is haunted, not the new house.

• We find out that the child has been possessed and is letting demons into their house from a place called “the Further”. As the child becomes weaker and weaker, the demons possess more and more of him.

• Applying Propp’s character theory, Josh –the father of the family- would be the hero as he has to hold the family together and stop them breaking down, however, he could also be a false hero as at the end of the film, he gets possessed by an evil old lady spirit and kills the women who has helped them. The princess would be Renai as she needs to be calmed down and saved from the demons, however, she could also be the hero as she does begin to take hold of situations and is probably the character featured most in the trailer.

• Applying Strauss’ narrative theory, there are some very obvious binary oppositions such as the light and the dark as the trailer builds, the good and evil as they have to rescue their son from demons. These are the conventional oppositions of the Horror genre and this trailer follows them well.

• Using Todorov’s narrative theory, the equilibrium starts with a clip of Josh sat in a chair which again links into the non linier story. The disruption would be when their Son Dalton falls off the ladder and hurts himself and then goes into a “coma”. The recognition of the disruption is when the parents find out that he is not in a coma but it is something else. The attempt to repair is when Josh calls in help to try and make Dalton better, then the reinstatement of the equilibrium shows what Josh was doing in the chair at the start.

Textual Analysis

INSIDIOUS

Technical Codes

• The technical codes of the trailer include very clever use of camera shots and angles and lots of quick cuts so that the audience is always kept guessing at what will come next.

• One of the more interesting camera shots is when the camera is looking directly at Josh but we can also see over his right shoulder. This is perhaps the scariest section of the trailer because it all happens so fast. In this shot Josh is standing talking to Renai when the demon that is trying to possess Dolton appears out of no where behind him. He doesn’t get attacked it just stares at the person that Josh is talking to. This may be seen as unconventional because when the monster of a film appears you normally expect it do attack someone or something.

• Furthermore another scary camera movement is when the camera is going into Dalton’s room to see what is in there. This is also scary and build tension in the audience as it feels like you yourself are walking into the room to see what is there. It is done deliberately slowly so that the audience will anticipate that something will happen.

• Another technical code is the way that the editing has been done. The camera shots normally change as the metronome clicks in the background. So as the metronome increases, the camera shot rate increases meaning that the tension of the audience is also increases.

Textual Analysis

Saw 2

Saw II (2005)

93 min - Horror | Thriller - 28 October 2005 (UK

• Jigsaw locks a few unlucky people in a booby trapped shelter and they must find a way out before they inhale too much of a lethal nerve gas and die. But they must watch out, for the traps Jigsaw has set in the shelter lead to death also.

• Director: Darren Lynn Bousman

• Writers: Leigh Whannell, Darren Lynn Bousman

• Stars: Donnie Wahlberg, Beverley Mitchell and Franky G

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

SAW 2

Visual codes• The dress codes of all the characters in the trailer are wearing casual clothes as

they have been taken from a normal day in their lives. This represents them as just being normal people and this therefore makes it more scary for the audience as they think it could potentially happen to them.

• The gesture codes of the characters are very subdued at the start of the trailer as they don’t know what has happened to them and they don’t know what to do about the situation they find themselves in. However, as the trailer progresses they get more and more desperate to try and escape with their lives. This is reflected in their gestures as they struggle to survive.

• The setting of this trailer is set in an abandoned house in the middle a run down city.

• The colures are mostly dark being very conventional of the horror film genre.

Textual Analysis

Narrative codes

• This trailer begins with flashback of the first film to remind the audience of what has happened before. This can be scary for the audience as they know what they are getting into, and most people will know that as these kind of films progress they get worse and worse.

• It then goes into a room with a load of people standing around not knowing what to do, there is also a man on the floor. He looks like he may be dead. This is frightening for the audience because they don’t know what he is doing there, and in the first film the man of the floor plays a very important role in the film.

• The voice the voice of Jigsaw then starts and explains to them what they have to do to survive.

• The clip then progresses into what the characters try and do to get out of the house and survive. It shows clips of what they have to endure to live.

• This is very conventional of horror films because they normally show what the people have to go through before you watch the full film. An example would be in Paranormal Activity.

SAW 2Textual Analysis

Technical Codes

• There are a lot of very shots fast cuts in this trailer which stays of the conventions of other films in the horror genre.

• This is done so they audience gets to see a lot but only small sections of it so they not a lot is given away so some enigma still remains.

• There are also some fades into new sections of the film so we as an audience that a new scene is being shown.

• There is also a lot of cutting the camera shots with the music to build tension and suspense within the audience. This again is very iconic and conventional of horror films.

SAW 2Textual Analysis

The Orphan

• A husband and wife who recently lost their baby adopt a 9-year-old girl who is not nearly as innocent as she claims to be.

Director:

• Jaume Collet-Serra

Writers:

• David Johnson (screenplay), Alex Mace (story)

Stars:

• Vera Farmiga, Peter Sarsgaard and Isabelle Fuhrman

THE ORPHAN BACKGROUND INFORMATION

Watch a Trailer here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ywOPNNii9w

Visual Codes

• The dress codes of Esther is very unconventional of horror films as she looks like a well dressed and formal school girl. This shows that as she doesn’t dress normally, it shows that she herself may not be normal.

• The dress codes of the rest of the family are very normal and casual because they are just a normal family and have nothing unusual about them. It is only Esther that is the problem.

• There gesture codes are conventional of the horror gener as they start off normal and at ease, but get more and more scary and crazy as the trailer progresses.

• The setting of the trailer begins in a ordinary orphanage as she is addopted into a new family, the trailer then moves into the families house and local area, such as school.

THE ORPHAN Textual Analysis

Narrative codes• The story starts with Esther in her orphanage where she has grown up. Applying

Todorov’s theory, this would be the equilibrium.

• It then moves into the families house and we meet the other children in the family. We then see her new school and she gets made fun of by one of the class.

• We then see her in a bathroom crying and screaming, this then builds into them parents having to go and see someone about Esther's behaviour.

• We then see on screen in text that there is something wrong with Esther, and this is also the tag line for the film.

• We then get to see things that Esther will do in the film and get prepared for what she will do in the whole film. This would be the disruption.

• We don’t see a real ending to the trailer as it ends with Esther pushing her sister in front of her mums car and the screen freezes and moves on into the final section.

THE ORPHAN Textual Analysis

THE ORPHAN Textual Analysis

Technical codes

• The trailer starts off with some slow cuts and fades to set the mood and tone of the trailer.

• This again is conventional because it starts off slow and calm and then when it progresses it gets faster and faster and more and more intense.

• The camera is normally looking down at Esther showing that she is viewed as lower then the rest of the characters in the film.

• It shows that there is something wrong with her because we associate lower people as people they have things wrong with them and cant cope with normal life.