X SAMPLE SCENE2 Bedroom/Kitchen

SAMPLE SCENE2 BEDROOM/KITCHEN
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AUDIENCE FEEDBACK
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Their points:

1. Didn't see too much difference
2. Should have made face when sniff first top
3. Second was snappier which she liked
4. Likes the sugar
5. Noticed background noise

What I think:

1. He's correct, I didn't change too much about it.  I removed one of the tops to sniff as it just took too much time.  I also tried to make the kitchen shots snappier and with more rhythm, so I downloaded and imported a metronome and tried to edit to the pace of that.
2. I agree with this point to a certain extent.  I think that it would have helped to have that added expression but I think the clothes scattered on the floor covers the slob point enough.
3. I'm glad she noticed the way that the editing was quicker and I'm glad she liked it.
4. I'm also glad she found the sugar element funny.
5. I noticed this background noise too so for my next sample scene I will find a way to remove that as much as possible.

X GENRE RESEARCH2 Studying Horror Cinema by Bryan Turnock

For the past week, I have been reading the book Studying Horror Cinema by Bryan Turnock.  I found out some things which I found interesting.

COMPLEX DISCOVERY PLOT

Four narrative stages:

• Onset
• Audience made aware of monster
• Discovery
• One or more central characters discovers that the monster's existence
• Confirmation
• The wider community is convinced of the monster's existence
• Confrontation
• Humanity confronts the monster and may or may not be victorious

Night of the Living Dead (George A. Romero, 1968) - relatively straightforward example.

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Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock, 1960) - contrasted.

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SYMBOLIC STRUCTURES OF IMPURITY

• Fusion
• Simultaneous occupation of two or more normally exclusive categories
• living/dead, human/animal, human/vegetable 
• Fission
• Occupation of two or more categories, at different times
• werewolves, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
• or in different spaces
• the doppelgänger
• Magnification/Massification
• Takes an existing source of potential horror and either magnifies it
• giant spiders
• Or masses it
• swarms of cockroaches
• Metonymy 
• Representation of something inwardly monstrous, though appearing normal, through association with a recognisable source of horror
• Norman Bates' association with the stuffed corpse of his mother

SUSPENSION OF DISBELIEF

• Often in Gothic novels to claim the work was based on "found" documents 
• Stoker's Dracula - entirely diary entries, journals and letters by and between book's protagonists
• Frankenstein and The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde rely on these devices.
• Continued through horror films 
• Genre depends on audience's ability to suspend disbelief 

TERRIBLE PLACE

• There's a monster or terrible place convention
• Identified by Carol Clover
• Somewhere which seems like a safe haven but in fact acts to trap the victim with the monster
• Often a house or tunnel
• In Gothic literature, often a ruined abbey or castle