The codes and conventions of every film are usually used to
help the audience identify the genre that the film the belongs to. Throughout
time periods, the codes and conventions have been blended over and over
again, to ‘breed’ different sub genre,
one of which is the slasher category. Its roots are found within the slasher
genre, but it managed to stand out through its explicit gore, which is the
quality that turned it into a sub-category of the horror genre. In order for
the audience to recognise the gender, however, many codes and conventions have
remained the same.
There are a range of conventions which help identify the
slasher genre:
• the group
of teenagers whom are murdered one by one
• a
psychopathic (usually) male killer
- a virgin who defeats the killer
Such conventions are displayed in classic slasher films such
as Halloween, Friday th 13th and Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Within our trailer we
complied with the convention of the final girl as being virginal, and without a
voluptuous lifestyle. We also gave her a unisex name, which is another feature
of the final girl, as it helps when the audience be it male or female will
identify with her. What we altered however, is the colour of her hair, which we
decided should be blonde. This was done not only to challenge the conventions
of the final girl, as she usually has brown hair, but to further emphasize her
virginal state and innocence as this specific hair colour is reminiscent of
Raphael’s infants, thus giving her a holy childlike aspect which automatically
makes her stand out as pure, thus following the typical convention of a final
girl. All these features of the final girl have been
emphasized by Carol Clover in her book Men,
Women, and Chain Saws. Most theorists would refer to horror films as a
male- driven genre. However, Clover states that mostly in slasher films, the
audience, be it male or female, it is strategically forced to identify with the
final girl.
However, the final girl can be seen by the male audience as
evil, as subconsciously she conveys castration. This theory was put forward
in Barbara Creed’s ‘The Monstrous
Feminine,’ and it was developed based on Mulvey’s male gaze and then further
built on Freud’s psychological theory. Based on those two theories, Creed was
able to argue that women are often portrayed as monstrous within society and
horror films due to the fact that their lack of male genitals represent
castration. T
In the classical Freudian psychoanalytical theory the Pre-
Oedipal is a stage of the Oedipus complex, and it is the first stage in the
development of a child where he sees his mother and himself as one and the
same, as the child is not yet aware of sexual drives and makes no distinction
between the masculine and the feminine gender. However, the child then goes
through a transition and begins to realise their mother is lacking something- a
penis. And so, the boy will give up his subconscious incestuous desire for his
mother due to the fear of being castrated by his father, when he figures that
the female might somehow have been castrated and this is the transition to Post-
Oedipal Stage. Flipping Mulvey’s
classic male-driven identification process of sadistic voyeur, found in cinema,
to a masochistic-voyeur, by shifting the identification process to the Final
girl, Clover swapped the Post- Oedipal, male sadistic voyeuristic impulse to a
Pre- Oedipal masochistic impulse. Sadism is post-Oedipal as it takes shape when
identification moves from the mother to the father, whereas masochism is
pre-oedipal as it takes place when the mother is the powerful source of the
identification of the child, and so the child takes pleasure in the submission
to the mother. And so, in a traditional slasher film, the viewer takes a
submissive position when they identify with the final girl, as it
subconsciously reminds the viewer of their mother, emphasizing the incestuous
sexual desire. When the final girl manages to defeat the monster (aka the
symbol of empowerment and masculinity), the audience can no longer identify
with the final girl, because now the victim became the castrated. This bring
me to Barbara’s Creed theory ‘The Monstrous Feminine. On a basic level the
final girl is seen as the hero who defeats the monster in the end. However, the final girl can be seen
by the male audience as evil, as subconsciously she conveys castration. This theory
was put forward in Barbara Creed’s ‘The
Monstrous Feminine,’ and it was developed based on Mulvey’s male gaze and then
further built on Freud’s psychological theory. Based on those two theories,
Creed was able to argue that women are often portrayed as monstrous within
society and horror films due to the fact that their lack of male genitals
represent castration.
We decided to reject this theory by having the final girl
not killing the murderer to reject this idea by having the final girl not
defeating the killer in the end. The last scene ends with he camera falling
down and still recording Michael chasing Charlie. Whereas in Creed’s theory the
final girl becomes a monster when she eliminates the killer, we believe that
by having the killer standing alive and
still trying to murder Charlie could portray the oppression of women and the
struggle to escape the patriarchal society, when men still own such invincible
power.
The first girl is another convention which we decided to follow. Due to her promiscuous nature, the first girl (Sophie) always ends
up dead first, reflecting the views of society sexual activeness. As Charlie
has blonde hair, we decided to make Sophie a girl with dark hair, not only to
show the binary opposites between her and Charlie, but also to convey mystery
and seductiveness, things which were also implied by her exotic complexion. After the first girl dies, the next person to
lose their live is usually of a different background other than white. For
example, in ‘Scream’ the black guy always dies first. This could be interpreted
as the cinema industry being racist and therefore falling in line with the
Marxist view that that the people beholding the power are mainly white catholic
men of middle class. Despite the changing of times and the almost nonexistent
racism, ideologies as such have been kept within horror in order to keep the
classic conventions. We also followed this convention by having Michael being
killed after Sophie. We made Henry look like the typical jock, as the jock is
sometimes existent within trailer films and ends up getting killed because of
his fake bravery.We conveyed his typical jock nature through having him using
slang words such as ‘dodgy.’
The killer in our film has an obsession with slasher films,
especially Peeping Tom. We made a direct inter-textual reference to that film,
by using quote from it in the beginning of the trailer. “Do you know what the
most frightening thing in the world is? It’s fear.” We used to to imply the
terrors Michael’s victims will have to experience and also to evoke that he films his murders, just as Mark in Peeping Tom did.
We managed to emphasize Michael’s obsession with slasher
films in the trailer by having him as a non-diegeic voiceover showing off his
knowledge of the slahser genre and his obsession with making up his own movie.
Michael behavior due to slasher films can be interpreted as society’s big fear
that media has a ‘tendency to deprave and corrupt,' making Michael look like the
embodiment of media deprivation. So although Michael does not have a mask, it
is clear to see why he would appear scary to the audience- he is just a normal
teenager, whom has a mental issue which made him copy slasher films and apply
them in real life. This will make the audience (mostly teenagers) scared of the
possibility of this happening to them or to their friends.
Production logos is another convention which we followed as
we displayed them in the beginning of the trailer. For our trailer we included two companies:
film4 and 666Productions which was the name of our main company. More than one
company had to be included as it is well known that low budget independent
films tend to need investment from other companies. 
In his narrative theory, Todorov stated that all stories
must contain an equilibrium, which must then be disrupted, followed by a
recognition of that specific disruption and then an attempt to fix it which
would eventually lead to a new equilibrium. These stages can usually be located
in most slasher films, but we chose to reject this theory in order to wipe out
any sort of predictions (Barthe’s enigma theory) that the audience may have
made about the ending of the film. In the film we decided to have the first four stages, however the
trailer seem to be rejecting the idea of the equilibrium, in order to convey
that the movie may not be what the audiences expects. This is shown through
Peeping Tom’s line which runs over Michael watching Peeping Tom and then
finishes just before we have an over the shoulder shot of Sophie running away from
Michael in a recording frame. Those two shots, are an example of montage
editing, as when they are juxtaposed together they convey to the audience that Michael has been inspired to film
himself killing people as he watches slasher films. Sophie is wearing black in
this shot to emphazise that she is going to die, as black has connotations of
death.
The a non-diegetic sound form a bridge for the next shot in
which we see Charlie walking in front of a church. The sound is used as a form of realisation so
that the audience can automatically recognise that Charlie is too being watched
and followed by Michael. The fact that Charlie is walking in front of a church
conveys Charlie’s purity and innocence. In a voiceover we hear Michael talk about
Todorov’s narrative theory ‘every equlibrium has to be disturbed.’ Thus, we can
understand that he is planning to disturb Charlie’s life. He then goes on to
say that ‘how it’s disturbed it’s up to me.’
This line juxtaposed with Charlie walking past a church conveys the
simple paradox that while a catholic society may believe that your life is in
the hands of God, there is a greater evil out there from which God cannot protect
you. The fact that Michael is the greater evil is conveyed in his next line:
‘I’m the director, and death is on my script.’ This line shows the darkness of
his disturbed psyche as he is easily prepared to kill people just to make a
film. Usually, slasher films would not
have media theories explained within the film, but as we were inspired by
Scream 4, we decided to give out these theories to emphasize the fact that the
audience have became so used to slasher films that normal teenagers know the
basic rules of a horror film, which may make them murder other people based in
those rules, again, making the audience think of whether this may actually have
an effect on people who view violent films.
When Henry says ‘death is on my script’ we have a shot of
Sophie opening a fridge door. This creates meaning as while he says that Sophie
is the shot, reinforcing again that Sophie is his next victim. Matched action
is created when Sophie opens the fridge door and in the next scene Charlie
turns her head to look behind. This creates meaning as it shows that Charlie is
being very precautions whereas Sophie is being almost oblivious to the fact
that she is being watched.
Sophie’s mellow and almost careless nature is conveyed
through the way in which she spills the milk while she’s talking on the phone.
Her kitchen counter is red conveying that she is in danger. Then we have the
next scene which is put into a recording frame. Where we see Charlie carrying
some stuff to the garage. These two scenes are an example of montage editing,
as they convey to the audience that the girls are being stalked within the
comfort of their own houses, automatically making the audience scared, seeing
as a murder can easily get access to your house.
We then the teacher is introduced. The teacher is the benefactor,
or as Propp says in his character theory, the donor which will help the
characters by giving them advice about the killer. The next shot is again put
into a recording frame of Sophie cleaning the milk she previously spilled, and we
hear the diegetic sound of Michael’s intense breathing to emphasize his dark
desire to kill her.
Henry is introduced in the next scene, where he appears to
be kept into detention along with Charlie. This is conveyed through the noises
outside of children talking, while they seem to be doing work. The fact that
they are in detention conveys the fact they are normal school children, with
normal problems, conveying that there might however be an equilibrium. However,
Henry then tells Charlie that he has seen her walking with ‘Michael... that
creep who is always holding the camera.’ The fact that Charlie has no idea what
he is talking about evokes the fact that Henry has spotted Michael stalking
Charlie, and therefore he has recognised the disruption of the equilibrium.
While he talks about his, we see another recording frame of Charlie, to further
emphasize the fact that she is being stalked.
Henry describes Michael as ‘dodgy,’ and in order to prove
his point we have Mr Sharp, their English teacher reading Michael’s rather
disturbing essay. Mr Sharp’s voice fades into Michael’s voice saying how his ‘fingers ache to hurt her, ruin her.’
This bridges into the next scene where we can see Charlie typing something on
her phone. The previous reference to fingers, and the shot of Charlie’s fingers
typing shows that while Charlie is living the life of a normal teenagers,
preoccupied with social networks and such, Michael is not a conventional
teenager, and therefore is different and more disturbing than the rest. While the voice over keeps on going, the
audience realises how deeply disturbed he is. We see the white garage door
opening with a dark shadow of a knife on it, conveying how prepared Michael is
to destroy the innocent. As the g
arage door is opening the pace starts to
increase and the high pitched noise conveys that this is where the violence
starts, as we see a confrontation between the final girl and the killer. The paces increasing as we see a series of
shots where Charlie and Sophie are being chased and/or attacked by Michael. Most of these fast
pace shots are set within a night vision recording frame or a simple recording
frame, to show that they all are part of Michael’s slasher film. We then see a
night vision recording frame as Michael chokes Sophie.
As the pace keeps on speeding up, Michael begins to state
the rules of the slasher genre. Talking
about the people he will kill, by his own rules. The beating sound and the high
pitched music are non digetic sounds used to create tension as we being to see
Michael in action.
Usually the tittle of the film is all shown in one caption.
However, as we made a pun upon the line ‘Lights, camera, action’ we decided to
have the title split in three captions with shots representing each word.
‘Knife’ is followed by a shot of Michael wiping his bloody knife over the body
of a victim. ‘Camera’ is followed by a shot of Michael taking a picture and
‘Action is then followed by a shot of Michael violently stabbing someone. The
non-diegetic noise and the buzzing create a sense of tension of terror
inflicted upon the viewer. The trailer then ends conventionally with the end
card on which we can see the name of the film and the cast and crew.
Poster
The poster for the trailer, I believe is rather
conventional. It complies with the genre and it depicts the narrative of the
film. I have used a black and red colour scheme in order to convey the genre of
the film, as both red and black have connotations of death and danger. Instead of having a picture of the a certain
character wihtin the film I have decided to chose a image of a camera, a knife
and a bloody hand. This was done in order to omply with the title: Knife- the
knife covered in blood; Camera- the camera which seems to be recording the knife
and the hand; Action- the bloody hand which suggests that the person may have
just been killed. Some parts of the poster are much darker than others, I have
made the darker parts distinguish from the lighter in order to portray knife
movements.
Another convention which i have followed can be seen at the bottom of the poster where I have
included the institutional companies’ logos, which helped into the funding of
the film. Along with this I have included the age restriction which is
obligatory to restrict younger people from seeing it as they may be affected by
the violence within the film.
Furthermore, I also had to include the principal cast and
crew along with a review by Little White Lies, to promote the magazine as well
as the trailer, this again quite conventional.
Magazine
As I have chosen Little White Lies as the magazine to
feature my film, I made the magazine cover comply with the format of this
specific magazine. Little White Lies is known for breaking the codes and
conventions of typical magazine, as for starters the shape is rather a square
as opposed to a normal A4 format which other magazine will adapt. The bar code,
the masthead , the issue number, date and price are all put together in a circle
found at the middle top of the page. I had to comply with this format as I
could not break it since the magazine is not owned by my company,
For the main image I have used photoshop to make it look
cartoon-like. Which is a typical format for the pictures featuring film in
Little White lies. I have decided to use a picture of Michael holding the
camera up to his face almost like a mask which conveys that he is the killer. I
also made Michael wear a hoodie which is a typical stereotype for teenage
boys. The background appears to be a
dark alleyway, conveying to only the location of the film, but also the state
of Michael’s mind- dark, scary. I have used primarily a red colour to enforce
the slasher genre, as red connotes blood.
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