Emily's A2 Media blog

Body Horror is a horror film genre in which the main feature is the graphically depicted destruction or degeneration of a human body or bodies History of Body Horror: David Cronenberg , Frank Henenlotter , Brian Yuzna , Stuart Gordon , Lloyd Kaufman , and Clive Barker are notable directors of this genre.   Cronenberg is one of the principal originators of the body horror genre. He directed well known body horror movies such as The Fly (1986), Videodrome (1983), Dead Ringers (1988) and Scanners (1981). The term body horror was coined with the "Body Horror" theme issue of the University of Glasgow film journal Screen (vol. 27, no. 1, January–February 1986), containing several essays on the subject. Another factor that may have influenced the gore within the body horror genre is the development of Special Effects makeup; vast improvements in “animatronics, and liquid and foam latex meant that the human frame could be distorted to an entirely new dime...

Waterborne: In this short film, the zombies are animals who drank from a contaminated lake, who began to attack a park ranger. Key conventions found in this is a contrast between slow and fast paced editing, introducing main characters, cliff hanger, main people dying, conflict between two characters. Alice Jacobs is dead: In this film, it is post-apocalyptic. One man is hiding his wife who will eventually become a zombie. Key conceptions used in this are, apocalyptic world, betrayer, emotionally attached to a zombie, zombies re-populate the earth. History: Films featuring zombies have been a part of cinema since the 1930s, with White Zombie (1932) being one of the earliest examples. With George A. Romero's Night of the Living Dead (1968), the zombie trope began to be increasingly linked to consumerism. Today, zombie films are release with such regularity (at least 55 titles were released in 2014) that they can be viewed as a separate sub-genre of Hor...

The man in the image above is Roland Barthes, a French critic and theorist whose ideas about semiotics and anthropology have influenced the development of many media schools.  Throughout my A2 media coursework, I will be looking at a number of his different theories, such as The Death of the Author, Effect of Reality, and his 5 Narrative Codes.   The Death of the Author   Barthes proposed the theory of The Death of the Author in 1967. He believed that an author's intentions and biographical facts should hold no weight in regards to an interpretation of their writing. In a well-known quotation, Barthes draws an analogy between text and textiles, declaring that a "text is a fabric of quotations", produced from "innumerable centres of culture", rather than from one, individual experience. The meaning of a work depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the "passions" of the writer; "a text's unity lies not in its origins...

The basic theme of the Uses and Gratification theory is the idea that people use the media to get specific gratification. The theory states that all media is constructed in order to fulfil the needs of the audience. This is an opposition to the Hypodermic Needle model that claims consumers have no say in how the media influences them. To get an idea on why people get gratification from watching horror movies, I interviewed a few of my friends: Interviewee no.1: Hannah Why do you like horror films? "I like them because most of the time they're just so unrealistic, they're funny. The scariness kind of disappears because you just know it's impossible for something like that to happen." What horror movies do you like best? The Purge series and The Six th Sense What horror genres attract to you the most? Psychological and Supernatural Interviewee no.2: Broghan   Why do you like horror films? "I love the detail and storylines [that are...

The producer of the film will encode the film with a message and their preferred effect, and the audience will decode the film - they decide how they read the film. They can decide how much it will affect them too. In light of the idea of polysemy - in which media texts are open to multiple readings -  the cultural theorist Stuart Hall outlined different ways in which an audience may respond to a film. Possible readings that an audience may have include: Preferred/dominant - this is when the audience uncritically accept the preferred (or intended) meaning of the film. In other words, they like the film.  Oppositional - this is when the audience reject the message that is portrayed in the film. They dislike the film. Negotiated - this is when the audience partly accepts and partly rejects the film. Aberrant - this is when the audience do not understand the film and completely misinterpret it. Many horror films can be easily misi...

The  hypodermic - syringe model or magic bullet model , is a linear model of communication which implies that an intended message is directly received and wholly accepted by the receiver. The roots of this theory lies in 1930s behaviourism and was largely considered old-fashioned for a long time, but big data analytics-based mass customisation has led to a modern revival of the basic idea. It wasn't until 1938, when HG Wells performed a radio dramatization known as 'War of the Worlds' , in which people began to accept and believe in the powerful influence of mass media. In this broadcast, HG Wells told the world that it was under attack, from aliens from the planet of Mars. The public believed in the supposed attack, so they hit the roads, hid in their homes, and loaded their weapons as a way to defend themselves. The magic bullet and hypodermic needle models originate from Harold Lasswell's 1927 book, Propaganda Technique in the World War. In this book, he ...

Primary Research This is newly conducted research, carried out to answer particular issues or questions. It can involve the use of questionnaires, surveys or interviews with individuals or small groups. Secondary Research This research makes use of information previously researched for other purposes and is therefore already publicly available. Qualitative Research This is empirical research where the data are not in the form of numbers, but in the language of the informant. Qualitative researchers use a variety of methods to develop deep understandings of how people perceive their social realities and in consequence, how they act within the social world. For example, diary accounts, open-ended questionnaires, documents, participant observation, and ethnography (the study of people and their cultures).   Quantitative Research This form of research gathers data in numerical form which can be put into categories, or in rank order, or measure...

When I was asked to research a classic slasher film, I chose Friday the 13th. It's difficult to say, however, if I chose it because my brother was born on Friday the 13th of October - the most ominous date of all time - or because of my fascination of the fact that this franchise carries a legacy of 12 movies. Either way, I would most definitely pen it as a classic slasher film. The first film was produced in 1980, was directed by Sean S. Cunningham, and featured a young Kevin Bacon in his first film. Generally, the Friday the 13th movies involve Jason Voorhees as the primary antagonist. He is the son of camp cook-turned-murderer Mrs Voorhees. In some of the movies however, he may not have much screen time, but he still does manage to propel the plot as a psychological threat to some characters. For instance, in the first instalment, the protagonist, Alice, hallucinates him. Similar to the Psycho franchise, there is a toxic mother/son relationship in Friday the 13th . ...